Heading into the bowels of Manhattan at Times Square / Port Authority is something close to pure hell. Having a burger depot there is the only solace and reason for ever going there, other than to catch a dirty bus out of town.
Schnipper’s is a massive burger factory, yet they still generate some wait time after you order. This joint is a notch above standard fast food, on par with a Shake Shack type of environment.
I got a cheeseburger with crispy onions, lettuce, tomato, pickle and Schnipper’s sauce. Add to that an order of fries, and a vanilla shake. My total was $18.15.
A bit hefty, but I’ll bite. The burger was good; maybe just needed a touch more seasoning/salt. It was nicely cooked to the proper temperature.
The fries were pretty satisfying and on par with a McDonalds-meets-Burger King fry (lightly battered thin, crispy fries).
The shake was good because I didn’t have to dislocate my neck bones to suck the shit up through a single straw. Other joints should take a lesson from Schnipper’s on that angle. Shakes should not be too thick to the point where you need a fucking spoon. They are shakes, after all – not ice cream fucking sundaes.
SCHNIPPER’S QUALITY KITCHEN
620 8th Ave
New York, NY 10018
Bella Vita is a little pizza place on 58th street between 6th and 7th Avenues. I’ve walked by it a bunch of times and was intrigued because the pizza looks like my mom’s style of pizza – unruly sizes of mozzarella scattered upon a saucy pie crust. Let me tell you – the regular slice here was amazing. Not greasy, crisp as hell, soft to bite down on, and tasty as fuck. The sauce itself is sweet but tangy. The mozz is fresh and melty. Al it needed was a few leaves of fresh basil and this place is a done deal for my current favorite in the city. It rivals Saluggi’s. Check it out below – regular slice was $2.75 I think. Sicilian was $3.50 and the topping slice was like $3.25 if I am not mistaken. Yet a pie is only like $19. Not bad. Garlic knots are 3 for $1.25, and they re-heat them by pressing them under a sandwich press, which is awesome!
There are a lot of people claiming to sling great burgers in this big city of ours, but a lot of them fall short of perfection. However, if you take care to follow these basic burger tenets, you will almost invariably end up with an amazing handful of food.
That’s some tasty looking shit!
The Bread: A potato roll seems to be the best, most durable, yet simultaneously soft and pliable bun on the market. You don’t want a flaky bun that crumbles apart in your hands, and you don’t want something so crunchy that it snaps in half when you grab it or bite down. The potato bun is also absorbent of meat juices too, and isn’t too big or thick to the point where using one creates a massive burger that you can’t fit your mouth around to bite down upon. In addition, they offer a bit of sweetness to contrast with the savory flavors of a burger. Last, they toast and grill nicely without too much damage done to the structural integrity, pliability or strength of the bun.
The Grind: What makes a burger so delicious is the fatty meats that are used in the grinding process. Burgers made from lean beasts like bison, or from low fat content cuts like tenderloin, should always be cooked for less time otherwise they will dry out and become too hard. Don’t be afraid of the fat. Fat is what makes the burger good; it adds texture, flavor and it helps in the searing process.
Meat Ratio: I’m going to go ahead and say that anything over an inch thick and four inches in diameter is simply too big, and possibly anything closely approaching said dimensions is too big. There will be too much meat in relation to bun, cheese and toppings. It will taste monotonous, and it will likely soak through the bread regardless of whether you are using a potato bun. It’ll be heavy too, essentially flattening the bottom of the bun, and if it doesn’t, then you’re bun is too hard.
Cooking Method: Cook a burger on a flat top griddle and you will love the result. It will get a nice even sear, a crust will form, and all those juices will get locked into the middle of the patty. If you’re using a grill, you’re losing juices and that oh-so-delicious fat content that a burger needs to achieve true greatness.
Cooking Temperature: This is where I may get some guff from people. I like to order my burgers medium instead of medium rare, because with medium rare you almost always get too much bleed-out and juices flowing, which ruins the bottom bun. Sorry fellas. This ain’t a steak; it’s a sandwich, and sandwiches have toppings, condiments and cheese.
Cheese: I’m not even going to entertain the idea of eating a burger without cheese. Fuck that. And, for me, it’s American, all the way, at least two slices per patty. There’s just something about the flavor of American cheese that works so fucking great with a burger. I guess if you have a fancy grind of meats like aged rib eye or wagyu brisket, then you can accentuate those funky flavors with a different cheese like a sharp cheddar, a gruyere, or a stilton. I like to keep it simple though.
Condiments: I think every burger should have a smear of mayonnaise on both ends of the bun. Not only does it help protect the bread and keep it from getting soaked through with meat juices, but it also creates a glue to prevent toppings from sliding off upon biting down into the burger. It also tastes pretty good too. I’m not really a ketchup guy. I only use it for dipping if my burger seems too dry.
Type & Amount of Toppings: There is a tendency to pile on when you see a delicious list of available toppings. Steer clear of using too many, though, otherwise you’ll lose the essence of the meat, and it will become too tall to get your mouth around, if not just plain old messy.
As for the type of toppings, I think it’s nice to have a crunch element, like lettuce (a leaf of iceberg for me), crispy fried onion, or raw onion (only a few circles for me, otherwise I’m ravenously thirsty for the next three days).
Some may like bacon for crunch and savoriness, but I only go with bacon on occasion because I want to taste that burger meat more than the bacon meat. Bacon is a star. Give bacon it’s own day of praise without the burger being involved.
Besides, crispy bacon also has a tendency to cause rips in the bun when you apply pressure. Not good.
I also like tomato for a fresh pop of coolness, temperature-wise, and jalapenos for my heat, spice-wise. I like half-sour pickles as well, for an acidic zing, but if you use pickled jalapenos then you knock out two birds with one stone (spice and acidity). I do like fresh jalapenos much better though, so then it becomes an art of using a few slices of jalapeno and a few slices of pickle, without overcrowding the burger.
That’s really it for toppings, and that’s already pushing the limit at five items: lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, jalapeno. I realize the peppers aren’t for everyone. If you’re one of those people, feel free to pass on that. There’s always room at my table for pussies who can’t handle spicy food, and I’ll only mock you about it for a little while.
Side Note for Toppings: Many people like an over-easy or sunny side up egg on their burger. I think it should only be used on something like bison or a lean burger, where you need to add the fat from the egg yolk back into the sandwich because the base of the meat is low on fat flavor. Alternatively, you can use it when the patty is texture-monotonous, lacks flavor or is dry.
Last but not least, if all of this extremely simple shit is too confusing for your primitive lizard brains, you can just think back to the old days of Atari and Intellivision, when a game called “Burger Time” helped you understand what makes a good burger:
My industrious, ambitious and extremely brave friend and co-creator of Hungry Dads endeavored to prepare a Turducken for his Thanksgiving feast this year. Lots of people these days, who are interested in indulging in such a menage-a-fowl, are buying them pre-prepared because it is an arduous task to do it oneself. When my buddy told me he made a Turducken on his own, I was extremely impressed. Below is a write-up that he provided for me to share with you, as well as a time-lapse video of his work. Well played!
When it comes to cooking, I’ve embraced the words of my high school Driver’s Ed teacher, Mr. Woods, who preached that people who claim they can’t cook are likely lazy and/or stupid. Any idiot can follow directions. Recipes are just directions. Taking Mr. Woods’ philosophy into adulthood, I’ve boldly undertaken many culinary ventures with unwarranted confidence – yielding more than a few disasters. And when I naively committed to preparing a Turducken for Thanksgiving, I didn’t expect it to be the greatest undertaking of my adult life.
For the uninitiated, a Turducken is a turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. Arrogant and uninformed, I assumed I would just need to shove a small bird into the cavity of a larger bird, repeat, cook, and eat. It turns out the Turducken is a true Frankenstein’s monster of poultry. After 3-5 hours of web research, I began to regret my fowl hubris, but ultimately ended up with a solid strategy by combining a few different recipes. Unexpected challenges included:
De-boning all three birds. I guess I could have gotten my birds from a butcher already de-boned, but I am not lazy or stupid, Mr. Woods. The internet provided some good instructions with photos, which I promptly ignored and instead just hacked away at the poor things like I was Dexter blindfolded.
Flavor vs. poison. When you have this much raw meat, and it comes from three separate animals, there is a lot of opportunity for nasty little bacterial microbes to fester. You gotta cook those buggers out, but not at the expense of your juicy meat. If you layer up that much raw meat and put it in the oven, the exterior turkey will dry out before the inner “ducken” is cooked. The website Serious Eats (The Food Lab) had a great solution: poach the chicken and duck portions before putting it together.
They also recommended browning the duck skin over the stove to add some nice fried fatty flavor.
Structural integrity of stuffing. Bread stuffing is controversial in a normal turkey scenario (under-cooking risks and such) – but in a Turducken, stuffing is important to fill in the gaps like spackle. But web research revealed that traditional stuffing might buckle under the weight of so much bird flesh, resulting in a lop-sided or bulged Turducken. One of the goals of the Turducken is to make it look like a regular turkey on the outside, but with pure un-boned meatiness on the inside. Once again it was the Serious Eats Food Lab with a solution: stuff with sausage instead of bread stuffing. More meat = better anyway.
Duck is mushier than snot. Trying to layer and form everything was a real pain. It was the only point in the process I considered bailing out. But by then I was up to my elbows in soft, fleshy bird tissue – so I crammed raw meat to and fro until everything fit and the outside looked like any other unassuming turkey.
The process is better shown than described, hence my two minute Turducken documentary:
The verdict? Well, I am confident that I created a successful Turducken. It probably wasn’t perfect, but it looked like a real turkey on the outside. Cutting into it revealed a lovely mosaic swirl of dark/light meat on the inside. And wasn’t dry. So I’m calling it a success.
That said, in a final anti-climactic taste review, I must say that the flavor was just so-so. I didn’t think the three birds’ flavors melded particularly well. The chicken and duck skin on the inside didn’t stay very crispy and was a little rubbery. I’d have to say each bird would have probably tasted better on its own.
Nonetheless, a Turducken is about the journey more than the destination. I took pleasure in telling friends and family about the project and enjoyed merely having the opportunity to say “Turducken” on a regular basis. Regardless of flavor, the legend and legacy of my noble Turducken will soar like an eagle for many family Thanksgivings to come.
A waiter named Jeremy over at Capital Grille (midtown west) recommended this place when we got to chatting about the city’s best burgers. He certainly knew his food shit, so I was excited to finally get here to try the burger. The same owners are involved with Bar Sardine, which also slings an excellent burger, so I knew I’d be in good hands at the very least.
Jeremy’s suggestion was a good one! This baby, although slapped between two buttery pieces of sourdough toast (as opposed to on a proper bun), was packed with great flavor. The meat is dry aged beef, and it was seared to a perfect temperature: pink center, good crust all around to lock in the juices, and well seasoned. Above and beneath the patty is a bernaise cheese spinach and pickled onions, respectively. Loved every bite. The bernaise cheese brought a little funk to the party (with a nice nod to steakhouse “creamed spinach,” I might add), and the pickled onion was a great twist on the much needed acid. The fried were natural cut, nice and crispy, and well seasoned with herbs and sea salt. Take a look at this shit:
UPDATE AS OF 8/25/15
My wife and I stopped in for a quick dinner after a Tabelog event nearby. We kept it pretty basic. First was a nice snack of fresh radishes with country bread, whipped butter and salt flakes. The radishes were actually pretty spicy and had a great pop to them.
My wife had the mussels. Many of them were pretty small inside the shell. I don’t like them too big, but I also don’t like them too small. The broth had some fresh herb notes to it, like maybe tarragon. I’ve had better mussels elsewhere, but that’s not to say that these were bad by any means.
I ordered the hanger steak frites. It was perfectly cooked to medium rare and had a good sear on the outside. The sauce with it was garlicky and gave it pop. The texture of the meat was slightly off. It reminded me of some of the odd meats my wife and I used to get in Mexico from the resorts. Almost like it was over tenderized using an MSG type of product. I’m sure that’s not what was done here, but it just had that feel to it. Otherwise I liked it. I’d say its about a 7 out of 10, possibly an 8.
It was PACKED when we arrived at around 1pm on a Saturday, even after all these years of being in business. Good for them! We were looking at roughly an hour wait unless we grabbed a seat at the bar. So we put our name down on the list to be seated, and headed upstairs to the second bar in hopes of scoring a seat a little faster. To our great fortune, a group of four people were getting up from the bar to be seated at their table. When I went to grab a pair of stools for my wife and I, a woman slid over one seat and was claiming the two bar stools in the middle of the four. I asked her politely if she could move over in one direction so that my wife and I could sit, but the loser wouldn’t move.
Four spots open up and she jumped into the center two, by herself, while waiting for her guest, who wasn’t even there yet? That’s just bad social etiquette. She was nasty, too, and had horrible breath. When I explained that there are four available seats and four people who want to sit, she started to argue “but we are getting lunch.” Newsflash: so are we! And she was getting aggressive and loud! So I alerted the manager. He politely asked her and her guest, “Ken,” who had lightly shoved me at one point after his date called me “scary,” to move. They wouldn’t move . The manager kindly sat us right away when they wouldn’t shift, I assume effectively jumping us ahead in the wait line. We ended up with a much better seat anyway, downstairs, with plenty of elbow room.
My wife had one of the $14 cocktails called “Novo Mundo,” made with a Brazilian rum type booze (cachaca), egg white, sugar and lemon.
I had a pair of Naragansett beers, which I like to call Manhattan’s new PBR, because it’s cheap, in a can and because I’ve been enjoying it way before it made it onto the Hipsters’ radar. They always seem take what I like and fuck it up. Whether it is gentleman’s caps, twisty butcher mustaches, vintage graphic t-shirts, bacon, beards or beers. Fucking animals.
We ordered some starters. The pickles were WAY the fuck overpriced, at $6 for what is typically a free amount at a place like Keens. The deviled egg was a little pricey at $4. Both items were tasty. The pickles were bright and tart, and consisted of carrots, gherkins, radish and green beans.
photo by my wife
For the entrees, my wife ordered sisig pork. It had some bits of pig ear and other nice things, topped with a runny fried egg. Essentially this is their English “bubble and squeak” dish, but with Filipino spices and herbs like cilantro. It was good, lots of pork meat, but too salty, and a little greasy as well.
The burger I ordered was good, perfectly cooked. The bun was great, durable and grilled. The negatives: the Roquefort cheese was a little overpowering of the burger meat, and it definitely could have used a slice of tomato and some lettuce. I’ve had this burger in the past, about 10 years ago. I think it may have cost around $16 back then. It’s $21 now, but since it comes with “fries” the cost is very fair.
The shoestring potatoes had fried garlic slices and fried rosemary mixed throughout, and tasted and felt, crisp/texture-wise, like the old school potato sticks snacks.
The banoffee dessert was very good – not too sweet; just right. Essentially this English dessert pie is made from bananas, cream and toffee made from boiled sweetened condensed milk.
THE SPOTTED PIG
314 W. 11th St.
New York, NY 10014
Up on the third floor of a K-town food mall, this little dessert outpost serves up some really nice treats. The Vietnamese coffee cupcake was pretty good, though I didn’t get a lot of that distinct chicory and sweetened condensed milk flavor that I expected.
The other items were pretty good though, like these things which I thought were churros with icing at first. HA! They were just eclairs
Everything else under the glass looked delicious. Lots of green tea stuff, as you might expect at an Asian style bakery. Also some really tasty ice creams/gelatos.
SPOT DESSERT BAR
11 W. 32nd St.
New York, NY 10001
Tucked away on the third floor of a K-town food court, Angry Chicken roasts up some deliciously sweet and savory whole chickens. They were giving out some free samples when I was up there for dessert at a nearby food vendor. Check these gorgeous things out. Why so angry? Perhaps because they tasted heavily of apple? So what. Throw some spicy sauce on there and this is heaven.
This Korean BBQ joint is pretty good. I’ve been here twice now, and I had a good meal each time. While I find the prices of many of these places to be a bit on the pricey side, if you go with enough people you can defray the heavy costs. This time I took some shots of the pork belly. So good.
The other dish is thinly sliced beef, noodles and yummy broth (the noodles are under the surface of the liquid).
A while back Luke’s had a special $5 off day, which made their lobster rolls $10 instead of $15. I put this baby down in no time. It was really tasty, excellent lump style meat, perfectly cooked. I always thought they were too expensive and over-priced until I actually had one. There’s a good deal of lobster meat on these babies. Check it out:
