Offbeat Eats

My brother, being an expat, often found himself craving a proper hamburger. Which is difficult, since Britain is notoriously bad for their burgers (doubly-so since the Mad Cow period, since most burgers here are cooked to oblivion). But in the interest of keeping my brother from going crazy, I asked around, and several reliable sources of mine (primarily from SeriousEats) recommending Byron Proper Hamburgers.

While I’ve previously blogged about Umpleby’s Bakery and Cafe in Hanover, they’ve recently made a menu change that made it worth revisiting my review. In short, they’ve partly entered the world of burgers. Several minor happenings combined to make this happen. First, Umpleby’s has had a good relationship with Back Beyond Farm in Chelsea, VT for several years (if I recall correctly, that’s who supplies the sausage for their excellent sausage rolls). Charles Umpleby also read an article in New York Magazine about Pat La Frieda’s wholesale meat business that sells well-regarded hamburger meat to many pubs and restaurants in the city (you can read more about Pat La Frieda’s in a tour done by Nick Solares over at AHT) and wanted to try something similar. Finally, he’s already running a successful bakery and cafe that includes sandwiches, so it wasn’t a stretch to add a burger: the Umpleburger (great name, by the way).

Last week I had to have a quick trip down to MIT for work, and have been craving a good burger. Luckily, Cambridge sports several burger joints that all have a good following, including Mr Bartley’s Burger Cottage (near Harvard, still on my hit list), Cambridge Common, Flat Patties, Four Burgers (which I almost went to this time), Craigie on Main, and Miracle of Science. I opted on the last of these, since the location is close to MIT (in the shadow of the Tootsie Roll factory, and kitty-corner from Toscanin’s Ice Cream).

On occasion, you run into little joints that have some culinary heritage to their offerings in addition to the food. Examples include Phillipe’s in Los Angeles (a leading contender for the invention of the French Dip) and Matt’s Bar in Minneapolis (one contender for the invention of the Jucy Lucy), although like any sort of invention claims, both of these come with some controversy. When it comes to the idea of who invented the modern hamburger, Louis Lunch is one credible claimant. Now located on Crown Street in New Haven, Louis Lunch has been around since 1895 (in locations ranging from a street cart on Meadow Street to the current permanent location), and has been serving hamburgers for most of that time. Regardless of primacy, however, Louis Lunch is interesting since they haven’t made any significant changes to their menu or hamburger preparation the entire time, and are still serving hamburgers prepared pretty much the same way they were done the beginning of the last century.

Many areas have a particular food item that is well known locally, be it Philly’s cheesesteaks, St Louis’ toasted raviolis, or the Upper Peninsula’s pasties. One of the local equivalents for the Twin Cities is the Jucy Lucy (and how to spell that is an issue it’s own). Basically, a Jucy Lucy is a cheeseburger with the cheese stuffed inside the meat patty rather than on top, with two patties of meat crimped around a molten core of cheese. While having some cooking challenges (like getting thoroughly good melting of the cheese and cooking of the interior of the burger without completely killing the meat), it’s a combination I rather like. It, however, also has some consumption issues: aside from the obviously unhealthy nature, the Jucy Lucy is also well-known for burning peoples’ lips and chins on the hot liquid cheese as it bursts out of a burger, so warning about the cheese are common at Jucy Lucy joints…

(Closed) Revolutionary Burger is a bit of an interesting experimental concept, in that they don’t have a storefront, and aren’t their own restaurant, they are basically a sub-restaurant of the local Lebanon restaurant, Gusanoz. Apparently, one of their employees recently went on a trip to Southern California, and really enjoyed a trip to iconic In-N-Out Burger, and decided to try making a similar burger here. So they invented the Rev Burger, which is their rendition of the basic In-N-Out-style California burger: 100% real beef, never frozen, char-broiled over open flame, a toasted bun, lettuce, tomato, onion and, of course, the “special sauce”. You can order it with american cheese as well, making a “Che Burger” (Anyone else chuckling at the irony of having the Che Burger made with American cheese?). You can even order them In-N-Out style, for example, ordering a “2×2” which is two patties and two slices of cheese. They also offer fresh-made fries, shakes, and beverages (basically, a similar small menu to the In-N-Out they are copying).

One of the big questions I get from people is “How do you find the places you eat?” There are many answers to this, but the primary two answers are “research” and “happenstance”. Mad Madeline’s Grill was a good example of the latter. We were visiting Temecula with Carol’s sister and her boyfriend, and walking down the street we passed by Mad Madeline’s. I didn’t even need to look inside to know that this was going to be a good burger joint. Walking by on the sidewalk, I walked through three successive bands of smells. First was the smoker. Second was the smell of nicely seared beef. The third was a fry cooker. It certainly smelled like a good burger joint.

(Closed) On our recent trip to Montreal, on the way back to our home in Grantham, NH, we decided we needed to stop for lunch someplace near Burlington. While the Burlington area has many establishments we rather enjoy (including Hong’s Chinese Dumplings, Sneakers, and Penny Cluse Cafe, the last of which I realize I’ve never blogged here. I’ll have to correct that), we decided to try another area establishment, finally settling on checking out Libby’s Blue Line Diner, just off of I-89 in Colchester, VT. Libby’s sits up on a hill right off of Route 2, and is your basic Worcester diner (Worcester Diner #838, to be exact), although like almost all extant Worcester diner cars, which suffer from a lack of facilities, when it was moved from MA and installed in Colchester, the owners build some additional seating area, an entryway, and an expanded kitchen onto the building. But they did an outstanding job with the interior restoration, so this particular Worcester Diner’s seating area isn’t as worn and tired as most (the exterior, however, looks like it could use some paint and mild repairs)…

(Closed) Two weeks ago, I had a free evening in Cleveland during a business trip. Coming to Cleveland after a huge bender in NYC (including Scott’s Pizza Tour), I continued the heavy eating with a trip to Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse (part of the conference) and Wonton Gourmet earlier in the day. So, while I needed dinner, I decided to go someplace light. Greenhouse Tavern has been on my list for a while, so I decided that a burger at Greenhouse was just what I needed. However, it turned into a most interesting evening (in a good way), almost as interesting as the infamous Willie Mae’s Scotch House Adventure). Why? Two different (but related) reasons…

In this modern world of web review sites, twitter, facebook, and the like, it’s not uncommon for places to get a lot of hype these days. Sometimes the hype is warranted. Sometimes it isn’t. On our recent trip to NYC, we decided to meet up with my friend Roy and give it a shot. In the case of Shake Shack, the modestly-sized, well, shack in Madison Square Park in New York City, the hype is substantial. Pretty much every respectable burger blog has talked about (sometimes I swear AHT has an article a week on the place), as well as several magazines. The lines are often daunting as well. But, at least from my experience, the hype is warranted (especially if you know a little line management, such as going off-peak).