One Monday a month for the last four years, they have sampled a burger — bacon-cheddar whenever available — at a different New York restaurant.
They do not just eat the burgers, they rank them, compiling the averages on a Web site, burgerrankings.com, and competing through the year to see whose restaurant choice will wind up as the best-loved burger (winner gets ... nothing).
At first, each member rated each place -2 to +4 on each of 13 factors, including cheese, bun, manageability, fries, shake, service and décor. That got replaced by an A-F report card-style scale in eight categories, including taste, value and returnability. By the end of the first year, the group had scratched all that and just ranked each burger against all the other burgers, constantly refining their individual and collective lists, which Brett Weiss meticulously compiles.
“We came down to the point, why are we ranking service, why are we ranking décor, why are we ranking the bun and the fries when they really have nothing to do with the burger?” Mr. Weiss explained. “I think at this point if you put us on a picnic table in the middle of Central Park and brought us the burger, I think we’d all be happy.”
And the money quote:
“Vegetables are to be eaten by rabbits and liberals,” wrote Mr. Weiss, a lawyer who lives on the Upper West Side, “and the only form they should take is the fourth ingredient in a condiment.”
The club's top ten are listed at the end of the article. Their culinary focus is a bit too single-minded for my taste, but I admire the work they do.
2 comments:
You really owe it to yourself to go to Eagle's Deli in Brighton, voted number 2 (I think?) best place in America to pig out. The Godzilla Burger is a pound of meat with a pound of fries. In case you're really hungry, they do offer larger burgers (five lbs. and up). Don't bring Melanie. Go with your new lifting buddy, once you find him.
This is not gourmet eating, it's pure, unadulterated masculinity. Also check out their breakfast "messes". I cannot imagine better hangover food.
That's it. We should hit New York some weekend this summer and eat burgers. Train ride, anyone?
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