Desert Toppings

No, I didn't misspell "dessert" in the subject line. This is a post about deserting (as in, "abandoning") most toppings on hamburgers.

The New York Times, when it isn't quietly retracting every story they ran about the Iraq War during its first year, has been covering some pretty important topics…like how to make a great hamburger. I like the part of this story where they say…

Finally, there are condiments. You pull your burgers off the skillet, place them on the buns and then offer them to guests to dress. Ripe tomatoes and cold lettuce should be offered ("Only bibb lettuce," Mr. Zakarian said, "for its crispness and ability to hold the juices of the meat") along with ketchup, mustard and, for a hardy few, mayonnaise or mayonnaise mixtures. Onions excite some. Pickles, others. But do not overdress. "People really overcomplicate hamburgers," Mr. Zakarian said. "They substitute complication for proper cooking technique."

Exactly. I find that the more someone aspires to reinvent the form and offer "gourmet" hamburgers, the more I'm likely to be served something inedible. Call me a peasant if you like but what I want is a properly-cooked piece of ground beef with a little fat content, served to me on a traditional white bun with some onions and an adjacent bottle of ketchup. I do not want cheese, lettuce, mustard, tomato, bacon, arugula, thousand island dressing, dressing of any kind, chili, a fried egg, an unfried egg, pineapple, sprouts, your sister's Barbie doll, teriyaki sauce, kale, truffle glaze, green chiles, oobleck, avocado, pickled ginger, secret sauce, non-secret sauce, flubber, wasabi flakes, frosted flakes, etc.

This is not a hamburger.  This is a bacon and cheese salad with a beef patty hidden somewhere inside.
This is not a hamburger. This is a bacon and cheese salad with a beef patty hidden somewhere inside.

I have no problem with all that stuff being available for those who like it. Fine. But if you can't make a great hamburger out of just meat and a bun, you have no right calling yourself a chef. And that's what I want: Meat on a bun. With some onions and ketchup.

And we're talking basic meat here. Last week, I found myself at a fancy restaurant where their "signature burger" (the only one they had) was a cheeseburger that was — and I quote right from the menu — "A delicious blend of Chopped Sirloin, Smoked Bacon and Sweet Onions." That description of items they mix into their meat says to me, first of all, "We're going to charge a lot for this." Secondly, it says they're using too good a grade of beef to make a hamburger so they have to add extra ingredients to give it flavor.

I'm fine with bacon and onions outside the burger…but those things inside plus unidentified seasonings made this hamburger, to me, not very good. One of the spices seems to have triggered one of my food allergies but, that aside, it was three times the price of a Five Guys burger and about a third as pleasing.  And I came to that conclusion before I began to get the unpleasant feeling that a mild reaction from one of my food allergies was kicking in.  (I'd asked, by the way.  They had no hamburger meat on the premises that wasn't mixed with all those extra components.)

A few years ago, a trend started. Restaurants began opening that not only served a hamburger with all sorts of special condiments but which also had a policy of not allowing modifications of their items. You couldn't not get it with the arugula on it, you couldn't have ketchup, etc. This, from my point of view, was a trend of opening restaurants I would never visit.

That's their right, of course. All I want to say here is that I think there's something to be said for hamburgers that don't need a lot of add-ons. I have eaten in places where to get what I wanted — meat, bun, ketchup and onions — I had to tell the waiter to give me a #1 and to leave off about eight toppings that come standard on it. There is, of course, no price reduction for declining about half of the product.

I've also learned in some pretty fancy places that when you leave off everything except the ketchup and onions, you discover that the burger itself — the meat patty that is, after all, the central component of what you're buying — just plain isn't very good.