Grease Pig - My Inspiration

Since I wrote up my burger challenge yesterday, I've already added a couple of dozen places to the list. Some of them are places I've been, like Bill's Place and Bullshead and Joe's Cable Car and Mo's and John's Grill and Taylors' Refresher, which I'll go to after I'm well into this project.

Others are places I know about, but haven't been, like the Tee Off and Grubstake and Home and the Double Play.

I read that Sam's has a burger. That's going to be tough for me to order. Sam's makes perfect Petrale. Perfect. I love it. I always order it, and I rarely order it anywhere else because it's the reason to go to Sam's. It illustrates the problem in looking for the best burger in town while visiting an excellent restaurant. Why order a burger when you can get something you can't get elsewhere? I guess Sir Edmund Hillary got it right. (If you don't know what he said, well go google it.)

I saw someone mention Oola. There is another place I'm going to have a hard time ordering a burger. The BABI boys had our annual post season party there once, and I had the best pork ribs in town there. Unless you were there, I don't think you understand that I had these ribs. We ordered a few plates as an appetizer, and they were so good, we ordered some more plates. Then I ordered them as a main course. And when the waitress came around getting desert orders, I ordered more ribs. Really. They were beyond awesome. I guess I could sneak the burger in there between the ribs appetizer and the ribs desert.

And I've seen some lists with places I've never heard. O Izakaya Lounge in Japantown only serves a burger at dinner, but I'm not sure a plain cheeseburger is going to do it there. They've got some pretty cool dress ups there like maitake mushrooms and shishito peppers. This was recommended on a pretty good list published at Tablehopper.com (you can see the reviews here).

I never heard of Street Restaurant, which is on Polk on Russian Hill. It's a block from Polkers and a couple of blocks from The Bell Tower. I never heard of any of them. I think that's the part of Polk near the now defunct bar disgustingly named The White Swallow.

And there are places like Tony's Cable Car on Geary near Masonic. I'm embarrassed to admit I ate there once. I was hungry, it was there and it was open. I'm going to eat at lot of places on the list before I head back to that greasy spoon again.

I want to give it up for one of my great inspirations for this endeavor. There was a guy who was a regular at Henry's Hunan (there are a few locations, but I share Meatpies with the boys at the Natoma branch). That's Diana's Meatpie pictured at the top. Henry's is awesome. I admit I can't eat it hot (which is their normal), but the food tastes so good when made "mild" I just don't care to admit my lack of manliness on this point.

Anyway, this guy was so enamored with Henry's he decided to eat every single thing on the menu (with normal hotness - in fact, he sometimes added extra heat). And not just every thing on the menu - he ate them in order, from #1 to #78. He could not reorder anything until he completed his journey. And it was a journey - in fact, the blog is called "A journey through the menu at Henry's Hunan." He rated and described each dish. Here is a link to his site. Check it out.

I don't think I'll be able to do anything as cool as that site, but I'm looking forward to burger #1. Meanwhile, I'm owed 2 Meatpie lunches, so somewhere along the way I'll have to interrupt my hunt unless the Cosmos want to pick up 2 tabs for burgers on the list instead. I guess we could go to Oola's, which is fairly near there for ribs and burgers and more ribs. That said, it's hard to pass on a Meatpie.