Grab Burger, the Diner Soho

When it comes to food, I think that I can be easily satisfied but not easily impressed.  I'm not averse to trying, well, just about anything; as long as it lives up to expectations, then I'm happy.  Pizza almost always falls into this category - I've been experimenting with different dough formulations for quite a number of years now, but even so, I love a dirty street slice at the proper time.  There's only one place near Leicester Square (shock) where I couldn't actually finish my slice, and this was post-many-a-tipple.  Shame on them, putting melted plastic on top of a sponge -- that's what it tasted like.

Can you digress before even starting?  Well it appears as though I have.  I was very lucky to be invited, along with other much more established burger enthusiasts, bloggers, etc. to sample a new limited run burger from The Diner, the grab burger.  In the invite, the burger was described as:

• 2 x 3oz USDA short rib patties heartily seasoned and cooked medium rare 
• Each topped with a melted slice of US cheese
• Served in a Harvey Rinkoff “big slider” bun http://www.rinkoffbakery.co.uk/ 
• With shredded lettuce, dill pickles and USA sauce
• Presented in your grab bag with fries and topper
• A no frills celebration of the good old American cheeseburger

Sounds good to me.  We tasters were ushered to a cluster of booths in the corner, and a bourbon sour was promptly placed in front of me.  Now, there is a fast lane to my heart (and liver), and it is via aged-in-charred-oak-barrels-American-corn-whiskey.  The night was already a success.  Not long after that, the very attentive staff started bringing out fistfuls of grab bags.

Inside was a massive cup of chips sitting alongside the main event.  First impressions were good: I saw meat and lots of oozing cheese.  So how did it taste?

Well, I was definitely satisfied.  Not blown out of the water, and there were obvious bits that could've been improved straight away, but it wasn't bad.  Immediate negative impressions: patties weren't heartily seasoned enough for my taste, resulting in no real crust on the meat, and they had hurtled passed medium rare a while ago.  As a result, there was a decided lack of juice to the patties, and I imagine that some of the short rib flavour was left on the flattop as well.

That said, I thought that the cut of beef still retained a good amount of meaty flavour, and the cheese, lettuce, pickles and sauce complemented each other quite well.  There was a good bit of sauciness from the ketchup and sauce, which was a clear Thousand Island derivative.  The bun was soft, yielded easily to my mastication efforts and had a light, open crumb.  It remains to be seen how it would stand up to a seriously juicy burger, but it fit the bill here very well indeed.


I lived in California for over 8 years, and as such was fortunate enough to eat a Mini Cooper's worth of In-N-Out (both in weight and cost, I imagine).  And this burger definitely was reminiscent of that -- not the same, and it certainly didn't reach that level, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.  Fries were crisp and plentiful - again, not mind-blowing, but I'm much more easily satisfied by most types of hot potato sides.

And so I had a few more drinks (also on the house!), chatted with the burger crème de la crème, and made my way home.  Great bourbon, great company, and a tasty burger.  That's me happy.  They're on the menu from 31/1 for 10 days; so a very limited run indeed.

The Diner

5 Locations

http://www.goodlifediner.com/

Grab burger available from 31/01 - 09/02

5 Napkin Burger, Boston, USAmerica

This mini-chain boasts quite the reputation.  Because I have what some might consider an unhealthy obsession with burgers (the aforementioned people now referred to as "ex-friends"), I read about these life-changing meat discs....a lot.  

And despite the incredibly strong competition in NYC, 5 Napkin Burgers has been fêted quite a bit, even in an article by Tom Byng, the founder of the highly enjoyable and always-tasty-if-not-mindblowing local chain Byron Hamburgers.  Alas, multiple forces have conspired to keep me away from NYC for the last couple of years, but I happened to find myself just up the Northeast Corridor in Boston last week.  When meeting up with friends for dinner, I stipulated a 'killer burger,' and the suggestion of 5 Napkin was proffered and promptly accepted.

The 5 of us showed up at around 8pm on a Tuesday evening; not exactly prime dining time in Boston. (the place was probably 25% full)  No worries, I hadn't seen everyone for at least a year, and we were eager to share a collective moan about our child-rearing troubles peppered with reminisces about when we thought we were cool.  Anyhow.

The space is open and semi-spare without feeling cold: picture white tiling, exposed bulbs dangling from the ceiling, booths with whitewashed wooden sides -- no, really, picture them, because I forgot my camera, and it was far too dark to take any interior shots with my phone.  One big plus in their favour was the 200+ bottles of Maker's Mark on the top shelf behind the bar -- my bourbon-flavoured Achilles' heel.  

Photo courtesy of Tina from Carrots 'n' Cake; her review is here.

We settled into our booth and perused the menu.  Apparently their signature burger is shockingly titled the 5 Napkin -- "10 oz. fresh ground beef, gruyere cheese, caramelized onions, rosemary aioli, soft white roll."  As it was my first visit, I wanted to keep it a bit more simple and see how they did the classic, which in my book is a cheeseburger. 

And much to my delight, when listing off the cheeses available, the waiter finally delivered that magic word (at least when imagining said dairy product atop a burger): "American."  And thus my mind was made up - 1 cheeseburger, with American, cooked medium rare.

We had a couple of starters to kick things off.  The Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip was pleasant.  I've intentionally kept that short and sweet, as I feel it sums it up quite well.  But just in case it doesn't, I'll add that there was plenty of the titled vegetables, the artichoke chunks were just a bit firm (in a good way), and it was held together by a blandish cream cheese concoction.  Pleasant.  

I would imagine that the Hell's Kitchen Wings are named thus solely because the recipe originated from that region of Manhattan (?).  I'm hopeful that there isn't an implication of spice or kick in the name.  These followed the previous dish in the Pleasant Starters category: the slightly undersized flappers were juicy and well cooked with what was a fairly bog standard Buffalo wing sauce atop them.  Blue cheese dip on the side was, well, you get the idea.

And finally the main event.  When the burger was placed in front of me, I felt a slight twinge of apprehension.  First off, observe the size of that lettuce leaf.  Comical.  It and its tomato partner were unceremoniously flung aside.  Second issue was the charred American cheese betraying its time under the salamander.  Sigh.  I know that there are success stories of melting the cheese this way -- Fred Smith at the Admiral Codrington springs to mind -- but I definitely have a bias toward cloche + steam.

On to the meat.  As you might be able to discern from the horribly blurred cut through, the burger was cooked precisely to order, and the texture of the meat was fantastic.  It was loosely packed, peppered with pockets of juicy goodness.  I believe it was 100% chuck and would hazard a guess that the fat content was closer to 20% than 15%.  The top and bottom of the patty both had a decent char on them as well.  The meat itself tasted as though it had aged a bit, and whilst not mind-blowing, it was fairly - yep, you guessed it - pleasant.

Can you hear my disappointment?  Surely I've just described a pretty good burger, right?  Well, here's the thing:  I couldn't taste a speck of seasoning.  None.  

I'm sure I don't have to tell you that a burger needs a shit ton of salt on its top & bottom, added just before cooking, to create that unmistakable, dizzying, life-affirming crust.  This had none of that;  in fact, the taste buds on the tip of my tongue went home unfulfilled and sad.  What a shame.  At least this pushed the disintegrating bottom bun into the shadowy recesses of my already disappointed soul.

So what could've been a pretty damn good burger just left me with a lingering sense of sodium-free disappointment.  Part of me is tempted to give one of the NYC branches a try - or perhaps someone wants to send me to Miami to test theirs - but until then, I'd rather read about other burgers than try another one of theirs*.

5 Napkin Burger

105 Huntington Avenue (Prudential Center)

Boston, MA 02199 (map)

USA

http://5napkinburger.com/back-bay-boston

Monday through Thursday from 11:30AM – 11PM
Friday 11:30AM – Midnight

Saturday 11AM – Midnight
Sunday 11AM – 11PM

*This is 100% untrue.  I will eat almost any burger put in front of me.  I have issues.