Stoned Crow: Mmmm, beef.

what we love: juicy, tasty, no-nonsense burgers, good meat quality, jalapeños included on the plate.

what we could live without: structural integrity of the buns left a bit to be desired. thick bacon could have been cooked a bit more.

burger scale: A-

price range: burgers were $12, fries (separate) were $6

payment method: cashish. Due to our large party (10) they added a 20% gratuity, which, while egregious, would have been paid regardless due to quality service.

This is a no frills west village neighborhood joint. This downstairs bar looks like the sort of basement joint frequented by locals avoiding the tacky NYU crowd. Movie posters adorn the wall, some au courant, some classic, along with a murder of crows on the wall above the pool table in the back.

The burgers are in keeping with the establishment. There aren't a wide variety of options on the menu. Regular or Crow are your choices; the Crow comes with your choice of regular or cheddar cheese and thick cut slab bacon. Preparation was good, meat was cooked properly for the most part, though the un-toasted sesame buns were not at all up to the task of containing a half pound of juicy beef. Fries are a separate affair and were cooked to near-perfect crispiness. We added on the cheese fries, made with real cheese, but they were a tad soggy and disappointing.

If you are in the neighborhood and looking to hide from the hipsters and the trustafarian NYU children, its a good place to grab a beer and a fine, no-frills burger.

For pictures, go here.

A Burger Off?

A Burger wha...?

A Burger Off!

Merchants is running a lunch time burger-off at two of their downtown restaurants, Southwest NY and Pound and Pence. For four weeks, Southwest and Pound and Pence will pit two featured burgers against each other and ask patrons to vote on their fave burger for that week. On the fifth week, they'll feature the two top scoring burgers.

Week 1, which we missed:
1. New York Farmer: Sharp NY cheddar, carmelized sweet onions and horseradish aioli
2. Italian Hero: w/ fresh mozzarella, roasted red peppers, grilled portabella mushroom and balsamic glazed onions

Week 2, which we also missed:
1. Drunken Dutchman: smoked gouda, brandied mushrooms, applewood bacon and pommery mustard
2. The Wild Blue: saga Blue Cheese, wild mushrooms and red wine shallot marmelade, sweet potato fries

Week 3, this week's burger off, ends on Sunday:
1. Smokey Vermont: vermont cheddar, smokey chipotle BBQ sauce, applewood smoked bacon, carmelized sweet onions and tobacco onion strings
2. A Cabernet in France: w/ brie, wild mushrooms and Cabernet glazed onions

Week 4, next week:
1. The Classic: American cheese, applewood smoked bacon, crispy onion strings, Hellman's mayo and French's mustard
2. Everything, Please: w/ pepperjack cheese, double smoked bacon, carmelized onions, sauteed mushrooms and Avocado

Week 5 - The final round of the burger-off where the top two contenders are featured.

gour·mand

Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English gourmaunt, from Middle French gourmant
Date: 15th century
1 : one who is excessively fond of eating and drinking
2 : one who is heartily interested in good food and drink

Burger Series 16: The Stoned Crow

Happy new year! We meet at The Stoned Crow this month.

According to the UG, Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite, the Stoned Crow's burger simply "rocks." And, it ought to. The Stoned Crow's cook, "Jaime Saucedo...was a ten-year veteran of the Corner Bistro"! The good news for us is "while crowds pack the Bistro, the Crow remains under the burger radar, known only to the inner sanctum of pool players and NYU barflies."

We will also be announcing your fave top three burger places from last year, so if you haven't done so yet, be sure to make your vote count by taking the Burger Series Survey. If the link doesn't work, copy and paste the following into your browser: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=7b6PXuCyQ2t8Ht_2bJ61gB4w_3d_3d

We can't wait to kick off Burger Series 2009 with you!

- The Burger Series

Yet another WV pub (sigh)

But this one comes with a pedigree, so we'd like to give it a try.

Joaquin Baca (of Momofuku and Rusty Knot fame) has put together an interesting menu for Wilfie & Nell as a favor to his friend Mark Gibson, co-owner of the WV pub:

Here were shepherd’s pies and meat pies. Here were fries with malt vinegar. And here were Scotch eggs, which in case you didn’t know are hard-boiled eggs wrapped in sausage, then breaded and deep-fried...In short, here was standard-issue pub grub.

Closer inspection revealed things like chicken-liver pâté with onion jam (delicious), Berkshire-pork sliders (delectable), and corned-beef sandwiches with Swiss Gruyère (drool-inducing). Furthermore, Wilfie & Nell, the fine print read, would like to thank the following purveyors: Blue Ribbon Bakery, Murray’s Cheese Shop, Piccinini Brothers (meats), and Bob McClure (pickles).

Ultimate Recipe Showdown Announces the Winning Burger Recipe

Watch the video and get the recipe.

Harold Cohen, 74, a retired plastic surgeon from Hollywood, Fla. has traveled the world and now spends his time developing the perfect burger. Although legally blind, Harold has created a travel-inspired Iberian Burger.

Where to Eat 2009

Hooray, Adam Platt releases his Where to Eat 2009 list! Not surprisingly, chefs have replaced haute cuisine with comfort food made with fresh and local ingredients. These are recessionary times, after all...

http://nymag.com/restaurants/wheretoeat/2009/

2007-2008 Burger Series Survey

It's time to vote on our favorite Burger Series experiences for 2007-2008!

Click Here to take survey

A Travel Channel Show dedicated to our favorite food topic!

The Travel Channel aired a Food Paradise episode on Hamburgers tonight and lists several famous and historic must-visit burger joints across the country. For the show's list of burger restaurants, read more. The hour long episode airs again at various times all next week.

Cheap, Sharp, Lasts Forever

Which is more than we can say for our relationships. (Well, the sharp and lasts forever part, at least.)

Tom Mylan, butcher-in-chief at Marlow & Sons Diner in Williamsburg recommends the best chef's knife for your money:

My favorite for the money is the eight-inch Forschner with rosewood handle ($44.95, from Broadway Panhandler, 65 E. 8th St, nr. Broadway; 212-966-3434). The blade is tall, thin, and tough, perfect for chopping onions and celery for Thanksgiving stuffing. The weight balance between the blade and the handle is nearly 50/50, which is ideal for carving up a turkey. And if properly maintained, the knife should last you a decade or more.

read more

(Photo: Hannah Whitaker/New York Magazine)

Our personal faves for cooking and food prep are the Wusthof Classics. The handles are just right for our small female hand. When it comes to bread knives, however, the Wustof is a little too spendy for our tastes. We chose functionality over looks with the Pure Homachi, the lower end sibling to Shun knives. While it's as ugly as sin, it's got the same blade design as its more expensive Shun counterpart. Plus, it has pictures of loaves of bread in the handle should we ever forget what bread knives ought to be used for.

Rare Bar & Grill: Burgers the size of our heads

What we love: Burgers the size of our heads (only when we're hungry, though), ginormous baskets of fries with dipping sauces, the friendly and accomodating waitstaff.

What we could live without: We're not sure. It's the holiday season, for goodness sake!

Burger scale: A-

Price range: $$ out of $$$$

Payment method: cash, major credit card



In our minds, there are two types of burger establishments. The first is a restaurant where the burger is part of the entire experience -- the beers, the appetizers, the fries, the milkshakes, etc. The second is one where the burger is the experience. Rare falls into the second category, where the burgers take centerstage (although the basket of fries are quite excellent).



For more pictures, go here.

This made me hungry

So I felt I ought you might want to take a look too. Thanksgiving recipes from some of the best greenmarket chefs in Manhattan.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Burger Series 15: Rare Bar & Grill

Happy Turkey month!

Yes, it's short notice, and no, we normally don't do a burger round the month of November. But, we'd like to meet at Rare Bar & Grill this month anyway, because it's an excuse to spread a little pre-holiday cheer.

Can't wait to see you there!

Rare is located at 228 Bleecker Street, New York, NY.

Photo courtesy of Joshua G on Yelp.

Zaitzeff: Disappointing

What we love: The Portoguese muffins, hand cut mixed potato and sweet potato fries, grass fed cows.

What we could live without: Unseasoned Kobe Beef Burgers taste flavorless even if it is Kobe.

Burger scale: B+

Price range: $ out of $$$$

Payment method: cash, major credit card

Given the rave reviews we've read about Zaitzeff burgers, we expected more than the wan beef we got when we recently sat down for a meal at Zaitzeff's LES branch.

We tried both the 1/2lb sirloin and 1/2lb kobe (American Wagyu) burgers. The sirloin burger was a far better burger than the Kobe.

There, we said it.

It doesn't matter how good the quality of beef is in a burger if it isn't seasoned, and the Kobe burger tasted like someone forgot to add seasoning. The sirloin was actually quite a good burger -- a nice moist patty that was just the right amount of medium with a surprising amount of juice for a grass fed cow.

The highlight of our burger, however, was the bun. Zaitzeff serves their burgers on small Portuguese sweetbread muffins that come from Fall River, MA. As weird as it sounds, the muffins are the perfect complement to the burgers -- fluffy, sweet, not chewy and yet dense enough to hold the juices of our burger in nothing falls apart as we eat.

We can't help but wonder if we should have gone to the original Zaitzeff on Nassau, but we were so underwhelmed by our experience on the LES, we probably won't go back for another round.

The picture is courtesy of Adam Kuran's review from seriouseats.com. For pictures of our night at Zaitzeff on the LES, click here.

Oink oink

Here's yet another chance to indulge our obsession with pork, the other white meat.

(Photo: Hannah Whitaker/New York Magazine)

Porchetta

And what, you ask, is this porchetta? Traditionally, it’s a gutted, boned-out whole hog heavily seasoned and restuffed with some of its innards, rolled up like a porky bûche de Noël, and then spit-roasted over a wood fire. Served in slices or in sandwiches, it’s a festival dish but also a popular street food, and can be found at the finer food stalls and butcher shops of Rome as well as dished out from trucks and vans set up along the highways outside of Florence.

The logistics of roasting whole hogs over wood fires in cramped East Village cubbyholes being what they are, [Porchetta's] version is a variation on the porchetta theme, and a toothsome one at that. [Porchetta uses] boned-out pork loins from contented, free-rooting Hampshire hogs, wraps them in pork bellies, and seasons them with a heady paste of wild-fennel pollen, thyme, sage, rosemary, garlic, and an aggressive dose of salt and pepper. These substantial specimens are tied up with string and oven-roasted until the meat is remarkably tender and the skin has turned to something like the color and consistency of a delicate peanut brittle.

Our mouth is watering.