Four Burgers

In no particular order:

The Spotted Pig - New York City

Dark, so very dark. Small space. A little cramped, maybe. Doesn’t matter. The burger was transcendent. Matchstick fries piled high encroaching on all parts of the plate. The bun seared in a cross-hatch on the outside. The burger itself a magnificent and significant morsel. Fat seeping out. Held together by the most mere measure but it never came apart in my hands. Open at 1am when I’m walking the streets of NYC alone. I couldn’t have asked for a more welcoming inn. Permanently closed now.

The Corner Bistro - New York City

I’m not purely including New York restaurants. This is just one that popped into my head as being excellent. I tried to skip the long line and start off right at the front of the queue because I was faded when I entered and in my state I did believe that ‘Line Starts Here’ was telling me to line up here at this exact point. To the credit of the restaurant staff they did tell me to get the hell to the back of the line and I respect that. And the burger. Fat. Simple. All the fixings but only the raw onion was included below the burger patty as if to say “This is not optional”. It’s not on my standard burger order but I am a ‘when in Rome’ kind of person. The burger was so simply complicated. They probably push out 500 a night. I ate it alongside a terrible Australian red wine which was what they had when I asked for red wine. I don’t care. The burger melted away into my mouth and crumbs found their way all over my person and I walked out into the West Village tipsy and full and happy to be alive even more so than usual.

Petit Trois circa 2015 - Los Angeles

This one has a time stamp on it because I’ve tried it in recent years and whatever they changed is not doing the magic anymore. Oh well. I do believe I got the best of the best of what they had to offer at the time. Decadence abounds in this one. There’s foie gras ground in there somewhere. The burger patties themselves I would not describe as fat but they were definitely hefty. There are two of them. The cheese is substantial. There’s a bordelaise sauce also. When presented across the marble counter it felt like it would be messy. I rate very highly my ability to cleanly cut a burger in half with nothing more than a table knife and once I’d dissected this one I found it to be perfectly clean to eat with all sauce staying where it should. This particular burger I ate I do regard as my favorite ever. I’m almost glad it was a fleeting moment in time for me to remember fondly.

Wimbledon Burger Shop (exact name unknown) - London

This burger was so good it was my breakfast for several days in a row. Why breakfast? I was pottering about London doing nothing of much consequence but going to parties. Therefore the burger, whilst consumed at breakfast time, was actually the last meal of my day before I turned in for much needed sleep. Standard in all ways. Waitrose buns, maybe. Mass produced patty, certainly. But oh boy, when you’ve spent the last 11 hours at Fabric there is an ecstasy to be found in the most simple of pleasures and this burger to me was peace incarnate. Thank you to the kind staff who put up with me and my friends. I still think about you all these years later.

There have been many more burgers. Just as there shall be many more posts.