Minetta Tavern

Manhattan, NY
minettatavernny.com



The Order:  Black Label Burger, medium rare.  With caramelized onions on a brioche bun, also comes with lettuce and tomato.
Side Order:  Comes with fries and pickle.
$26
Drink Order: Fuller's Bengal Lancer IPA
Burger Menu Rating: 14/15




So I FINALLY went to Minetta Tavern to try their burger!  I wasn't avoiding it really, and it's always been at the top of my list of places to try, but I somehow just never went.  Well, with some prodding from Vanessa and Mike, we went for lunch, and let me tell you, Executive Chefs Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr have created a burger that does not disappoint in the least.


I was beyond excited.  Vanessa was too I swear.

We had made our reservation for right at noon, which I highly recommend you do if you can.  You feel as if you're getting special treatment without the attention feeling oppressive.  When we arrived, the restaurant was empty except for the staff, so we were seated immediately, in the back near the kitchen.  I love the decor in Minetta Tavern.  It feels like an old mob restaurant, complete with black and white pictures of celebrities with the original owner when the restaurant opened in the 1930's.


It wasn't empty for long.

 Our server was quick, knowledgeable and attentive.  I wasn't skeptical about the quality of the burger, but when I specified that I wanted my burger medium rare, she went as far as to describe exactly how the chefs at Minetta cook their burger: medium rare towards rare, with a warm pink center.  Perfect, and I haven't even taken a bite yet.


 Medium rare towards rare, with a warm pink center.

And when that burger came out (quickly, I might add), it WAS perfect.  It was cooked exactly the way the sever described it.  The focus of this burger is definitely the meat, which is dry-aged custom beef blend from Pat La Frieda.  It's a coarse grind, delivered every day, and minimally handled to ensure the burger retains all of it's flavors and juices.  What you can't really see in the picture above is just how amazing the fat distribution in this burger is.  With every bite, juices gush out of this patty, and onto your chin, your plate, and a lot of it gets mopped up by this bun, which is fantastic.  It's light and airy, slightly sweet, and soft, perfect for pressing down around the patty and collecting every bit of those delicious juices.


Vanessa enjoys her second trip to Minetta Tavern.

The caramelized onions are a perfect foil for the burger.  The burger is well seasoned, salty, though never too salty, and really works hand in hand with the onion's sweetness.  After a while, the two tastes become one: a perfect union of two flavors that were meant to be together.

The fries here are delicious too, and apparently exactly the same as the fries at Balthazar, where Hanson and Nasr are also executive chefs.  I'm not complaining.  They're delicious, they don't need that much ketchup, and they're not shoe-string fries!  They're a medium cut, gold in color, and impossible to stop eating.

I love the fact that this burger doesn't come with anything else.  Sure there's a piece of lettuce and a tomato on the side, but does anybody put it on?  Our server said no, and she'd know.  According to her, approximately 85% of the orders during lunch hours are the Black Label Burger.  Looking around us, she isn't wrong, though on the day we went, that number was closer to 100%.  Burger after burger rolled out of the kitchen and into the waiting hands of dozens of other hungry denizens.  I'll be interested in the many return trips to come.  This burger has taken it's place as my favorite burger in NYC, but what will be interesting will be to see how it changes, or if it changes.  Under the supervision of Hanson and Nasr, this burger has seen some updates since it was first created, and who's to say that it won't keep on changing.  I will definitely be going back to try it again.  And again.  And again..




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



Still super excited.


Vanessa and Mike's 2nd trip to Minetta Tavern.


The glorious Black Label Burger.

So delicious.

Burger juices.  Everywhere.

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

Hamilton Tavern

Baltimore, MD
hamiltontavern.com


Photo courtesy of Hamilton Tavern.

The Order: Crosstown Burger, medium rare. Roseda Farms beef, shredded iceberg lettuce, onion, horseradish cheddar. Add Sticky-Spicy Bacon and fried egg ($2).
Side order: Comes with chips. Substitute Natty Boh beer battered O's ($1). Fried dill pickle chips with Zippy Goat Cheese Sauce ($5).
$11 + $2 + $1 + $5 = $19
Drink Order: Firestone Union Jack IPA
Burger Menu Rating: 12.5/15




Hamilton Tavern is a little bit out of the way if you're in downtown Baltimore, but believe me, it's worth the trip. Located out in Hamilton, this little bar/restaurant is warm, friendly and inviting, and the burger is to die for. But let me take this from the beginning.

Hamilton Tavern has a large airy room, friendly staff, and games (located in the back corner). It's not too loud, even later in the week, though I imagine that with all the hard surfaces in this place that when it gets busy the decibels can run up. They have a decent beer menu, which gets better after 10pm. Why? Because of reverse Happy Hour. From 10pm til they close, select draughts are $3, and they have $2 Abita. Awesome. They're kitchen closes at 11pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so if you get there right at 10pm, you're golden.

Joined by fellow burger enthusiast, Becky, we began with an order of Pickle Chips. Now. I'm a skeptic when it comes to pickle chips, because every time I order them, they're always made with butter pickles, and they really just don't do it for me. But these were DILL Pickle Chips. Fingers crossed. And they were delicious, as was the Zippy Goat Cheese Sauce! BUT you only get six of them. They're thick, to be sure, but definitely not worth almost $1 per chip. I'd order them again if they were $3/$4.

The Natty Boh beer battered O's were a major letdown. Crunchy, yes, but flavorless. They just tasted like oil, not even seasoned with salt. Luckily, we kept the sauce from the Pickle Chips which, once dipped in it, made the O's better. Still, I'd say they're not worth it. Save the dollar and go for the house made potato chips.

So you're thinking, wow, this place already seems like kind of a let down. Let me stop you right there. Only the O's were a letdown. The Pickle Chips were delicious, just pricy. But now we're past those and onto the main event: the Crosstown Burger. This burger was fantastic. It was cooked perfectly, and it was stacked and huge, definitely not a small burger. My mouth is watering just thinking about this thing again. I had never eaten a sweet tasting burger before this, but the Sticky-Spicy bacon works really well with the ground beef, and the egg oozing all over the place. Brown Sugar and Cayenne Broiled Bacon is a revelation. I've since made it at home, and it's super easy to do so why isn't everyone doing it yet?!

It definitely was a messy burger, so if you go, prepare to get your hands dirty as you dig into this awesome monster burger. And don't skimp on the extras. The bacon and egg really did take it to another level. All of the flavors in this burger were well balanced, all fighting for top billing, but none of them really getting ahead of the others. I did wish, however, that I could taste the cheese more. It added some great gooey texture, but being horseradish cheddar, I expected a stronger flavor to be present. The bread contained the burger well, and helped mop up the yolk and burger juices that had gushed out all over the place, and what they don't tell you is that the onions are, in fact, caramelized, and that the burger patty sits on top of them. Amazing.

This place is absolutely worth the small trek to the Hamilton area, and I'll hopefully be making it over there again soon. Fingers crossed.




Cooked Correctly = 5pts
Presentation/Plating = 2pts
Design/Ingredients = 3pts
Value = 2.5

Hourglass Tavern

Manhattan, NY
www.hourglasstavern.com



The Order: Angus Sliders, comes with 3 cheese blend, sweet pickles and ketchup on the side
Side Order: None
$13.75
Drink Order: Speakeasy Big Daddy IPA


If you're looking for a good slider, this is the place to come. The flavor of the meat wasn't cooked away at all, which is really easy to do with such a small portion of meat, and the three cheese blend was a satisfying compliment: slightly salty but sweet and melty.

The first slider, however, was excellent compared to the other three. A few bites of the slider had hints of pepper which were completely unexpected and amazing. If only the other three had the same splashes of taste.

The bread looked like it was going to be heavy, but instead I found the buns to be light and airy, and warmed just enough as to not be toasted.