The Burger at Peels

Note: Peels closed in January 2014. As Taavo Somer botches project after project, the success of Freemans (which is still open) begins to look more and more like a fluke. Later in 2014, Andrew Carmellini and his team expect to open an Italian restaurant in the space called Bar Primi.

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Peels is the lively second act of those downtown scene-builders Taavo Somer and William Tigertt, whose first place (Freemans) is so legendarily crowded that I won’t go near it.

I wouldn’t have gone near Peels either if I hadn’t walked by at 1:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, one of the few times you can walk in and not wait forever.

The vaguely Southern cuisine has received mixed reviews so far. Sam Sifton gave it one star, though he was more interested in guessing (and guessing wrong) which side of the tracks the clientele was from.

The two-story space is a magnet for sunlight. At off-hours, it’s a cheery main-street diner that you wish all neighborhoods would have. In the evenings, it fills up quickly with a party crowd, though the bartender allowed I might get seated promptly on a Monday a Tuesday evening, provided I arrived early enough.

The kitchen butchers its own steaks (a grass-fed ribeye steak is $45). The off-cuts and trimmed fat go into their burger blend. The hand-formed patty is thick and rich, a good foil to the twice-fried potatoes. At $13, it’s less than most of the city’s high-end burgers these days, and arguably better.

The staff were friendly; helpful; welcoming. They’re probably like that all the time, but on a Thursday evening there’s not much they can do for you, and forget about Saturday. Or even brunch. A late lunch is just fine.

The White Truffle Burger at Burger & Barrel

Go ahead, call me a sucker. When I heard that Burger & Barrel was serving a white truffle burger, I had to have one.

It’s a gimmick dish, but B&B is not a gimmick restaurant. The chef, Josh Capon, knows his burgers. (We tried his burger at Lure Fishbar last year, and thought he nailed it.)

The truffle burger will be on the menu only for a few months, while the fungi are in season. The rest of the menu is classic bistro comfort food, ranging from an old-fashioned cheeseburger for $13, up to a grilled ribeye for $38.

On a cold, rainy Thursday evening at 7:30, the place was packed. The wait for a table would have been over an hour. Even at the bar, I waited about fifteen minutes for a stool to free up.

At $48, Capon isn’t exactly giving these burgers away, but he gives you plenty of truffles for your money. Actually, I tasted them more than I tasted the beef. He uses a Pat LaFreida blend (doesn’t everybody?) that was a shade over-cooked: the specimen he served to A Hamburger Today looked distinctly rarer. The fries were spot-on, and so were the two onion rings, which seem to come with every burger he serves, truffled or not.

It’s not a dish that any sane person will order twice, but I was happy to try it this once. I look forward to sampling more of the menu—perhaps when the place settles down.

Burger & Barrel (25 W. Houston Street between Mercer & Greene Streets, SoHo)

The Burger at Beacon

The folks at Eater.com asked me to submit a favorite restaurant for their late-summer feature, “You May Also Enjoy.” The premise is, “a favorite, somewhat oddball restaurant, bar, or place of note that perhaps exists mostly off the radar.”

A few places came to mind, but I thought I should have a recent data point before recommending anything. A couple of others we need not name flunked the test, and that brought me back to Beacon.

Yes, Beacon—nearly as far off the radar as you can get, but consistently dependable (previous posts here & here). I don’t think Beacon is in any danger of closing, but it does run more specials than most places, and I have never seen its large dining room full. It has received little press since William Grimes awarded two stars eleven years ago.

I came with no fixed idea about what to order, but when the host said that a burger, fries, and two drinks were just twenty bucks at the bar during happy hour, my mind was made up. You get a thick, perfectly-cooked rare burger, and the fries are spot-on. It’s not a LaFreida designer blend, but a rock-solid option, especially at the price.

The bar layout is a bit irritating. The little lamps every few feet are cute, until you realize they are permanently attached, and you cannot move them out of your way. Service was a bit slow.

The menu still emphasizes—as it always did—the kitchen’s wood-burning oven. Unless I am mistaken, the steakhouse theme has been somewhat deemphasized in favor of a more well-rounded modern American cuisine. Beacon was never a pure steakhouse, but I recall more beef on the menu than there is now.

Beacon remains what it was before, a very good midtown restaurant you can always depend on.

Beacon (25 W. 56th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

The Burger at ‘21’

You know the “21 Club,” right? You’ve driven by it a hundred times…wondered what it would be like inside? I’ve wondered too. Lunch with a friend provided the excuse to find out.

The restaurant has a long history, briefly chronicled in a recent William Grimes Q&A on the New York Times website. It actually started as a dive bar in the Village called the Red Head (no relation to the current restaurant by that name). The present incarnation is anything but a dive; in fact, it has some of the highest à la carte prices of any restaurant in the city.

It is not actually a “Club,” but it has a clubby feel. Most of the patrons seemed to be old-money regulars, whom the host greeted warmly. But they’re also mostly over 60, and therein lies the problem. Who will dine here twenty years from now? In a bid to attract the younger generation, last year, “21” stopped requiring neckties for gentlemen. Restaurants much fancier than “21” stopped doing so years ago. Jackets remain de rigeur, and most of the customers still wear ties anyway.

The space is cozy and comfortable, but in fact, not all that fancy. (I should clarify that we dined in the downstairs “bar room”; there is a more formal upstairs dining room that I have not seen.)

Prices are at nosebleed levels, with appetizers $15–24 and entrées $30–42. Prices are the same at dinner, but a few extra (more expensive) entrées are available. The website touts a lunch prix fixe at $30, but it was not offered to us.

My friend recommended the burger—famous enough that the Times has printed the recipe twice (here, here). It was a large, beefy mass, slightly over-cooked but still very good. The shoestring fries that came with it were perfect. But it’s $30, and I’ve had better ones at half the price.

The kitchen accommodated our request to share a Caesar Salad ($18); even after it was divided, there was plenty for each of us. A plate of cookies afterwards was free. Sodas were served in the bottle ($6 apiece), but there was no charge for a refill.

Still, $90 before tax and tip is an awful lot for salads and burgers. I won’t be rushing back.

21 Club (21 W. 52nd Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

The Burger at Gansevoort 69

Note: Gansevoort 69 closed in August 2010. (As often happens, a “temporary closure” for renovations turned out to be permanent.) The owners told the Times that “the diner thing has to go,” apparently oblivious to the fact that the previous restaurant in the space, Florent, had a long and successful run as a diner and would still be in business, but for an economically unsustainable rent hike.

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Gansevoort 69 would be utterly unremarkable, if not for the reputation of the establishment it replaced, the sainted Florent, which closed last year.

The new place seeks to fill the gap left by Florent’s demise—essentially, a cafeteria to sop up the alcohol after a long night of boozing. It’s open to 6:00 a.m. Thursdays to Saturdays, midnight the rest of the week.

I never dined at Florent, which perhaps says more about my drinking habits than anything else. From all I can tell, Florent was basically a diner serving French and American bistro standards, but it had a cult following. The cult was none too please when the chef, Florent Morellet, was forced out by a rent hike.

The décor has been smartly updated, while retaining the feel of a diner. The old “R & L” signage remains outside—a reminder of what the place was four tenants ago. Reservations are taken on OpenTable, but I’d be surprised if they get much traffic that way. The whole point of Florent was that you could just drop in if you happened to be nearby.

The menu, described as American comfort food, has appetizers and soups ($6–10), salads ($7–16), sandwiches ($12–15), entrées ($8–26), and side dishes ($3–5). In the true diner spirit, breakfast is served anytime. So are cocktails.

There’s an amuse-bouche of tater tots (above right), served with three dipping sauces, to munch on while you wait for your food.

My son and I both had the burger ($12 plus $2 for cheese). I liked the thickness and juiciness, medium rare as we had requested. The beef had a slightly metallic tang, which will keep it out of the pantheon. The fries were just fine.

Gansevoort 69 (69 Gansevoort Street btwn. Greenwich & Washington Streets, Meatpacking District)

The Burger at Lure Fishbar

Lure Fishbar is best known as a seafood restaurant (click here for our review), but chef Josh Capon cooks a surprisingly good burger. His entry won the People’s Choice award at the recent Rachel Ray Burger Bash, part of the New York Food & Wine Festival.

The burger he serves at Lure regularly appears on various “best burger” lists, so I was eager to give it a try. It sells for $15, which seems to be the going rate for burgers at upscale restaurants (not counting the crazy Black Label Burger $26 at Minetta Tavern).

Sure enough, he nails it. It’s not a match for the Minetta Burger (the $16 cheap option at the Tavern), but still plenty good—and unlike Minetta, you have a shot at getting a bar stool here at meal times. Capon doesn’t complicate matters. He just serves a simple burger, with enough heft that you can ask for medium rare and see red. It comes with a blizzard of condiments, but I didn’t need any.

Lure Fishbar (142 Mercer Street at Prince Street, SoHo)

The Burger at Bar Blanc Bistro

Note: Bar Blanc Bistro has closed. The space is now the Southern-themed restaurant Lowcountry.

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When we last visited Bar Blanc, we found a washed-out all-blanc space helmed by a former Bouley chef, with a $75 tasting menu and a $32 suckling pig entrée. At those prices, Bar Blanc needed to be more than just a neighborhood place.

Frank Bruni drank the kool-aid, awarding two stars in early 2008. We found it uneven (that pig was stringy and bitter) and over-priced, awarding just one. It seems the customers agreed with us.

Bar Blanc wisely re-tooled. The severe all-blanc space was toned down and made more welcoming. The original chef departed, and was replaced by Sebastiaan Zijp (ironically also a former Bouley employee), who dialed down the menu to a level the West Village could support. To signal the revised ambitions, the space was renamed Bar Blanc Bistro.

Except for a strip steak, all of the entrées are now under $30. Pork appears in several dishes; the chef breaks down whole animals himself. You can order the full menu at the bar, though there is a separate menu of bar snacks, including the obligatory signature burger for $15. On Mondays, you can get a dinner of moules frites with beer for just $18. On Sundays, there’s a $35 prix fixe. Wines are half-price during happy hour.

In other words, there’s a sincere attempt to make this a neighborhood go-to place, but the cuisine is thoughtful enough, and the space welcoming enough, for a low-key date or a business dinner.

Josh Ozersky’s final act as editor of the Feedbag (other than navel-gazing) was a visit to Bar Blanc Bistro, where he sampled the whole menu, liking all of it except the beef. Ozersky has it out for the Piedmontese Beef the restaurant features: “as I expected, the hamburger is awful.”

Being the perverse soul I am, I thought I’d try the one thing Ozersky hated—that burger. No, it is not awful—you knew that, right?

Piedmontese Beef has a luscious taste, remarkable given that it doesn’t rely on high fat content. But I suppose when you’re eating a burger doused in melted Vermont cheddar and bone marrow–bordelaise mayo, who cares how fatty the beef is?

A more serious complaint is the height–width ratio. If this baby were any taller, it would be a meatball. At these proportions, it was difficult to handle. When I was finished, half the bun was still in my hand.

I wouldn’t order that burger again, but I came away much more inclined to return to the restaurant than when Bar Blanc was serving $30 entrées. There’s still much more fun to be had here.

Bar Blanc Bistro (142 W. 10th St. between Sixth & Seventh Avenues, West Village)

Bill's Bar and Burger

Bill’s Bar and Burger is restauranteur Stephen Hanson’s burger joint in the old Hogpit Barbecue space in the Meatpacking District. Burgers are the centerpiece of the menu, which also features hot dogs, wings, fries, and milk shakes. The most expensive item is a Grouper Sandwich ($9.95).

Hanson is the king of low-brow food. Except for the shuttered Fiamma, his restaurants have never been at the vanguard of culinary ingenuity. He sees a trend and figures out how to down-brand it for popular appeal.

So you figured that a Hanson burger joint would at least be competent. The alleged hamburger experts are officially impressed. Mr. Cutlets, A Hamburger Today, Hamburger America, and the BLD Project are all smitten. We’ll let Cutlets’ comments stand as a proxy for all of them:

The Bill’s burger, at least the one I tasted, is the next step in the evolution of mainstream hamburgers. It takes the aggressive “smashing” technique from Steak n Shake and Smashburger, and applies it even more aggressively, and using LaFrieda beef — a rich blend I couldn’t exactly put my finger in, but lush and sweet in a way that suggested lots of brisket. It’s flatter and wider and browner that the Shake Shack, so much so that it hangs outside of the bun. It’s just luscious and enveloping and compuslively edible. And beneath that crust, which is complemented by a butter crisp toasted Arnold’s roll and a slice of deliciously viscous American cheese, is a torrent of juicy, salty, beef flavor that really lets you know you’ve eaten real meat, not just gray burger tissue. The thing is just fantastic, and there is not one weird topping or middlebrow trope anywhere to be seen. Is it too soon for me to say that this is the best hamburger in New York? I don’t think it is. Certainly it’s the best cheap hamburger in New York, if not the world. Daniel Boulud, Josh Capon, Nick Solares from Serious Eats…we all tried it and were knocked out. But better still than the taste was the fact that it was a blow for orthodoxy, and proof that our national sandwich is still best presented unadorned, in all its rude glory.

I don’t get it.

I dropped into Bill’s Bar & Burger the other night and ordered the so-called “Fat Cat” ($6.95) basically a burger topped with caramelized onions, with tomato and pickles on the side. The burger was over-cooked, and what little flavor it had was overwhelmed by the onions. It’s absurd that this is touted as one of the city’s better burgers. It ain’t in the top 50.

It’s not just a question of taste. The photo (above) doesn’t even look attractive. Those on sites like A Hamburger Today aren’t much better.

This tolerable burger was nothing compared to the awful fries ($3.50), which were over-salted and too greasy. What was worse, it appeared I was served a basket made in two separate batches, as some were burnt and others hadn’t been in the fryer long enough.

The beer was pretty good, and so was the service. There were plenty of empty tables at around 6pm, and there were still a few when I left, around 45 minutes later. By 9pm, I understand there was an hour wait. Don’t waste your time.

As I was getting ready to pay the bill, Mr. Cutlets sauntered in. Acted like he owned the place.

Addendum: It took a while, but finally there’s a pro reviewer who agrees with me: Alan Richman in GQ. I was about 90% certain that I spotted Richman there, but I only caught a brief glimpse of him, and wasn’t positive. He actually looked happy, smiling and waving to the staff. They’ll probably be surprised to learn he hated the place.

Bill’s Bar and Burger (22 Ninth Avenue at 13th Street, Meatpacking District)

The Lamb Burger at Bar Artisanal

Note: Bar Artisanal closed in mid-2010 after a brief, ill-fated Spanish-themed do-over. After a re-vamp, it is now the Mexican restaurant Pelea.

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I don’t usually post so many times about the same restaurant, but Bar Artisanal is right next to the subway station I use every day, so I have an excuse to keep exploring the menu there.

The lamb burger ($16) has a terrific goat cheese center. I’d probably rate it a tie with the Classic Burger (reviewed previously), except that I wasn’t at all fond of the chickpea fries that come with it. I give Chef Brennan credit for trying something different: no one would have considered themselves cheated if it came with regular fries. But the regular fries are indeed better.

Bar Artisanal (268 West Broadway at Sixth Avenue, TriBeCa)

The Burger at Bar Artisanal

Note: Bar Artisanal closed in mid-2010 after a brief, ill-fated Spanish-themed do-over.

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There are three burgers at Bar Artisanal: Classic ($13), Lamb ($16), and Tuna ($18). We dropped in the other day for the Classic. The black angus beef had a nice beefy taste. The accompanying fries were perfect too.

The meal was a carb overload, as the also came with excellent bread service, and a bucket (yeah, a bucket) of gougères were comped.

The lamb burger comes with a got cheese center. That’s the next thing to try.

Bar Artisanal (268 West Broadway at Sixth Avenue, TriBeCa)