Homage to The Primeburger

Manhattan, NY
primeburger.com



The Order:   All burgers were ordered medium rare, from scratch.  Primeburger, Primeburger with Salt, Primeburger with cheese, Primeburger with chili.
Side Order: French Fried Potatoes, Curly Fries (Seasoned), Steak Fries, and Potato Salad
Total Cost with Groupon: $2.15 + $24 = $26.15
Drink Order: 1x Vanilla Shake, 2x Strawberry Shakes, 1x Neopolitan
Burger Menu Rating:  No Rating.




If you get a chance, get over to this mainstay in the NYC midtown lunch scene before it closes.  You basically have to go today, I'm not even sure if they're open tomorrow.  The Primeburger has been serving breakfast and lunch since 1938, and it's one place where, if you order correctly, you can really get a great burger.  The quality of the meat, delivered each day, the course grind, and the simple seasoning all come together to make this a burger worth eating.  Unfortunately, the building in which The Primeburger resides, was sold and after months of negotiating, the new owners decided this past week to give them to boot... by this coming Wednesday.  It's a sad day for the NYC Burger Scene. Speaking with John before our meal, he told us the whole story of their fight to stay in the location, and their hopes that once they're all moved out, they can find another location nearby.  Check out this video love letter to the Primeburger, and pictures from our somewhat epic burger tasting below the video.






Mike is starving and about to check out the menu.


The Neopolitan shake.


Ordering done.  Anticipation killing me.


Curly Fries (Seasoned) = delicious


Steak fries, a bit limp.


Primeburger with cheese. This looks like it's over, but it's actually a perfect
medium rare.


The chili burger.  Average.


Other solo diners.


Mary joined us as well!


Enjoying a ton of food.


A picture with owners John and Michael DiMiceli.


A final goodbye to The Primeburger.

Darien Social

Darien, CT
www.dariensocialct.com



The Order: Social Burger, medium rare. With slow cooked onion, black pepper truffle mayo. (Add bacon or cheese for $1.50 - local blue cheese, shelburne aged cheddar, cloud nine camembert, fresh mozzarella, or gruyere)
Side Order: Comes with fries
$12
Drink Order: Water
Burger Menu Rating: 10/15




Located in the heart of downtown Darien, CT, Darien Social is an American gastropub which serves upscale comfort food.  They do their best to source all of their ingredients locally, and have built a restaurant that exudes a nostalgia for the early part of the 20th century.  While their attention to the detail of the decor is admirable, their burger was merely an average artisan burger, despite the way the burger and toppings were put together.

A Social Burger.

One thing that was nice about this burger is that I got what they said was going to be on the burger.  Notice that in the pictures there aren't other toppings.  No lettuce, no tomato.  When you order this, you know that you are going to get a bun, a burger patty, onions and mayo.  That's what I mean about this burger being an average artisan burger.  They was definitely thought about the ingredients, and what should go onto and into this burger.


Slightly over medium rare.

Cutting into the burger, it had a nice pink center, but as you can see above, it isn't quite medium rare.  Check out this graphic which details how STEAKS look when cooked to various temperatures.  It's a good reference for when you're cooking burgers.  Granted, burgers, depending on where you go, should be cooked more thoroughly, at trusted establishments, a true medium rare is perfectly safe.  Or, you live on the edge like me, and will settle for nothing less.

There was a nice crunch to the bun of this burger.  The inside was grilled, but not charred, and the rest was soft: perfect for absorbing the juices of the burger.  The bun, however, was really oily for whatever reason, which definitely detracted from the overall taste of the burger.

The fries were a great texture, and perfectly seasoned.

The fries were fantastic.  They weren't over-cooked, some were thin and crunchy, and others were thicker and soft.  And I didn't need the ketchup they provided at all.  At the end of the meal, you get a free small Granita which is perfect for cleansing your palate after a meal.  Delicious.

Baby cousin Aiden loves burgers too.  Good man.

I'd definitely come here again.  It's a fairly good burger for the price, and the beer list is a plus, though on the expensive side.  I'd actually really like to do a side by side comparison between The Social Burger and the Goose Burger, both of which are in downtown Darien, CT.




Cooked Correctly: 4/5
Plating: 2/3
Design/Ingredients: 2/4
Value: 2/3

Kooper's Tavern

Baltimore, MD
www.koopers.com



The Order: Billy's Kobe, medium rare.  Creekstone Farms Premium Angus Beef, foasted garlic cream cheese, arugula, apple-smoked bacon and truffle oil on a freshly baked kaiser roll.
Side Order: Sweet Potato Fries ($1) and a Schwartz's pickle. You have a choice of fries, or sweet potato fries ($1).
$15 + $1 = $16
Drink Order: New Belgium Dig IPA
Burger Menu Rating: 10/15




Having gotten burgers from the Kooper's Tavern Chowhound Burger Wagon on Thursdays by Centerstage in Mt. Vernon, and those burgers having been fairly good, I was intrigued to hear that Kooper's Tavern had a burger that was voted best in Baltimore.  My girlfriend, Becky, and I had been wanting to go for quite some time, so we finally decided to make a day of it.  The Aquarium, and a burger.  Surf and turf, as it were (see what I did there?).  Now, it turns out that it was actually the Lamburger a la Grecque that was voted the best in Baltimore (our waitress told us, as well as a recent call to the restaurant), and it sounded delicious, but at the time, I was supremely interested in a beef burger (and maybe a little disappointed that it wasn't one of their regular burgers that won the awards).  So alas, next time I will have to try their award winner.  This time, I went for the Billy's Kobe.  We were there midday, so the service was extremely fast, and our server was very helpful.


 Becky is super excited about eating this burger.

When the burgers arrived, we were pretty hungry, but alas, I had to take pictures (Becky dove in, as you can see above).  The meat taste was fairly present, but it was cooked just a little bit towards medium, and not the dead-on medium rare I'd expected.  It could have also been more of a coarse grind.

A little towards medium.

As for the other ingredients, the garlic cream cheese was an excellent addition.  It was light and airy, and not overpoweringly garlicky.  I was left with a very minimal amount of garlic breath, but there was enough to add a kick of spice to each bite.  The bacon was thick and not soft (both good and bad depending on how you look at it).  In this instance, the applewood smoked bacon, on its own, had a lot of flavor, but on this burger, it didn't add all that much flavor.  There was a ton of arugula to make a bed for the burger.  It was super fresh and tasty, and the truffle oil came through especially strong amongst the greens.  Not too strong, but a nice hint to give an earthy flavor to some of the bites.

As for the rest, the sweet potato fries were pretty good.  Often I find that sweet potato fries are either under or overcooked, these however, were perfect.  The only thing was that they could have used a little more seasoning.  They just packed an underwhelming little punch when it came to a tandem flavor.  Kooper's Tavern also has a good bottle selection, and a small draught selection.  Plus, their Burger Tuesday special of your first Kooper's Yellow Tail Ale for just $2.50 is tough to beat.  Belgian Thursdays also has discounted Belgian beers for some really low prices.

After we were done, we were greeted by Jeff Bejma, one of the general managers who had seen my twitter updates regarding Becky and my trip into Fell's Point for their burger.  We spent some time talking about the burgers, and Jeff told us a bit about their burger's origin story.  Apparently, they got together a bunch of the beef distributors in the area and made them fight to the death.  Actually, they had to do a tasting for a select number of people, and the restaurant was then able to pick which was the best blend for their burger.  Bejma asked my thoughts, and I detailed a short version of the above.  We'll see next time if there have been any changes at all.

You can follow the chowhound on twitter here: @BRGRwagon and Kooper's Tavern here: @kooperstavern




Cooked Correctly: 4
Plating:1.5
Design/Ingredients: 2.5
Value: 2

Biwa

Portland, OR
biwarestaurant.com



The Order: Biwa Hamburger, medium rare. Seasoned ground beef, Kimchi mayo, and Chasyu.  Served only after 10pm.
Side Order: Comes with small amount of potatoes and slaw (pickled.)
$8
Drink Order: Shibuya Sling - cocktail
Burger Menu Rating: 14/15




I was working out in LA a few weeks ago and decided to take a side trip up to Portland, OR to visit my friend Tim.  Now, Tim loves burgers, and he loves beer, so we've had many a trip to partake of both of those lovely things.  But as of yet, I'd not been able to visit up in Portland, and all he'd been telling me about was how awesome the beer was, and how good the food was.  So I figured, what the heck, I've got the time and the money, I might as well do this while I'm on the same coast, right?  Right.

When I first got into Portland, Tim immediately asks me what we're gonna eat, and how he's been freaking out about which burger joint he was going to take me to, because he wanted my first Portland burger experience to be an awesome one.  Instead, we headed to Pok Pok Noi, a Northern Thai restaurant, owned by Andy Ricker which has expanded across Portland and also into NYC in the past few years.  Absolutely everything we ate was incredibly spicy (Ricker didn't want to dumb down the flavors and spiciness for the American palette), but amazing.  Huge wings smothered in a sweet red chili sauce, green papaya salad, and boar collar with lettuce.  All just so delicious, and so incredibly spicy.  As a first taste of the kind of fare that I could expect in Portland, this was perfect.

We tossed around a few ideas for where to get a burger for dinner the next night, and landed upon Biwa.  Tim had heard about this burger before, and it had gotten a great write-up from Nick Zukin as being one of the top 10 bistro burgers in Portland.  Other places weren't open when we wanted to go, and Biwa's burger sounded intriguing.  Now, Biwa is a Japanese restaurant in Southeast Portland that does not take reservations.  They have a limited amount of seating, and the place fills up really quickly.  We arrived at about 9:15 to make sure we could get a table, and ended up sitting at the bar, where we split a few appetizers to kill time.  By this point, we were starving, and the anticipation was killing us.  We watched as the chefs started to prepare the burgers almost immediately at 10pm.  Mouths watering.  When it arrived, the burger was a beauty to behold; the top bun placed off center to show off the Chasyu, pork belly that's been cured in various sauces, rolled up and sliced, and the dollop of Kimchi mayo, and the potatoes and pickled slaw on the side to complete the picture.


Cross section of the Biwa Hamburger

Now, this burger was cooked perfectly.  The above picture makes it a little difficult to tell because of the stark angle of the lighting, but believe you me, this was juicy with a deep red center that transitioned to pink towards the outsides.  The grind was extremely coarse, and the meat had definitely not been worked over, providing a perfectly crumbly texture with the fats and juices mixed all the way thru, and this was a super thick patty.  The bun was lightly toasted, just enough to provide a crunch, but still soft and absorbent.  A nice thickness too so that when it got to absorbing the juices, it didn't get all completely soaked, but still maintained some of its airy quality.

The kimchi aioli was light and perfect.  It didn't overwhelm the taste of the patty and added an awesome and intriguing slightly sour flavor.  The greens were a great bed upon which to lay the burger, though they seemed to only add texture, and not much in the way of flavor.  The Chasyu was a thin slice, fried, and crunchy.  It added a nice texture, is slightly salty, but I was torn between wanting a thicker piece for the usual soft texture that pork belly provides.  It definitely added to the overall richness of this burger, but the meat is no second contender to the Chasyu.  The meat flavor hits you in the first bite, and lasts til the end.

The potatoes on the side had mustard seeds, which are a nice and surprising texture, and flavor, when combined with the potatoes.  The slaw was made up of a few pickled items: carrots, onion and some kind of pepper.  It was very reminiscent of traditional Japanese tasting menus in that with its sharp flavors, it cleansed the palette in a fantastic way.  Eat a bite of these every few bites of the burger to re-experience your first bite in a whole new way.  And the fact that these sides aren't just a companion side, like fries, but are intended to compliment and change how you taste the burger is amazing.  Some real thought went into the flavor combinations and the presentation, making this burger well worth both the $8 and the wait til 10pm.




Cooked Correctly: 5
Design/Ingredients: 3
Plating: 3
Value: 3

The Grill on Hollywood

Hollywood, CA
thegrill.com

 

The Order: American Kobe, medium rare.  Black and white truffle mayo.
Side Order: Comes with Jumbo Onion Rings
$21.50
Drink Order: Stone Oaked Arrogant Bastard
Burger Menu Rating: 2/15




Situation in the busy Hollywood and Highland mall at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland, funnily enough, The Grill on Hollywood is where you can find many of the designers, producers and technicians who are working on the Oscars during the weeks leading up to that show.  I'd eaten here before, but never gotten the burger.  But this time was the time; the moment was at hand, that hand was mine, and it was holding a burger.  And boy, I could not have been more disappointed.

Sitting with Joe, Gloria, Travis, Damien, and Perry, most of whom were working on the Oscars at the time, I confidently ordered the burger medium rare (I said medium rare twice), after which Joe ordered his burger medium well with fries instead of rings.  And so out came our burgers, rings for me, fries for Joe.  By this point, I'm so hungry that I inhale half of the burger.  It's been hours since my last meal.  Then I realize how much water and beer I'm drinking as I eat this burger, and look down.  It's gray.  Not even pink, but gray.  They cooked it completely wrong.  So then I look over at Joe's burger.  Pink.  They cooked HIS completely wrong.  They swapped our burgers.  Now I was sitting right next to Joe which could have cause the confusion, EXCEPT that they got our sides correct.  So somebody in the kitchen made a huge mistake, and unfortunately, it really cost them.  Zero points for being cooked correctly.

The sauce on the burger was good, lightly earthy, but that was the only uplifting quality to this otherwise terrible burger.  The patty was bland on top of being cooked into shoe leather, and the bun was a bit too charred.  The coarse grind the used I'm sure would've been awesome if it hadn't been cooked well beyond what I ordered (again, I said medium rare twice).  No thought into plating.  The fries on Joe's plate were merely dumped on, though my onion rings only looked slightly better.  Look at how the lettuce is jutting out of the burger on two sides, instead of being neatly stacked.  Overall, this place is definitely NOT worth it.




Cooked Correctly: 0
Design/Ingredients: 1
Plating: 1
Value: 0