Are Gourmet Burgers UnAmerican?

Vanity Fair - Photographs by Marina F. Senra for BizBash.

A fun, and Adam suspects somewhat tongue in cheek article, or maybe not on reflection, by Josh Ozersky at Vanity Fair on the annual Rachael Ray Burger Bash in NYC. Ms Ray will be familar to watchers of the Food and Living channels on Sky.

This brief extract sets the tone:-

The burgers tended to be grotesquely tarted up, like the contestants in a child beauty pageant. Over there was Spike Mendelsohn, the season four Top Chef contestant who has proved himself a master of both hamburgers (the Obamas have eaten at his Washington, D.C., joint Good Stuff Eatery) and self-promotion (at the Burger Bash, he had cheerleaders dancing in front of his booth and “Vote for Spike” buttons handed out). He also took a perfectly good hamburger and dropped both an unmelted lump of blue cheese and horseradish mayonnaise onto it. Really, Spike? Bobby Flay, looking as aggressive and cocky as he did on TV, gave out samples of one of his concoctions from his new East Coast chain, Bobby’s Burger Palace. He even included a bourbon-spiked milkshake in a little shot glass. Next to Bobby, Polo Dobkin, of Brooklyn’s DuMont Burger, whose burger buns were invariably untoasted and unwarmed (and almost stale from sitting outside), included fried pickles. Who cares about fried pickles?

Then of course there is the concluding paragraph setting the burger as a metaphor for America, or maybe it was just a potential entry for Pseud’s Corner in Private Eye.

The next day, back to my regular rounds, I stopped into a new Meatpacking District bar named Bill’s that is scheduled to open soon. The owners wanted me to try their five-ounce hamburger. It was pressed flat on a griddle, simultaneously crusty and juicy, and perfectly supported by a simple white Arnold bun. The sides peeked out from around the bun, and a slight pinkness peeped out through the inside. There was a melted square of tangerine-colored American cheese on top, contrasting with the even mahogany sear. It was magnificent. It restored my faith in hamburgers, and the country that produced them. America is so fruitful, and the hamburger such an infinite resource, that there is room for both the freak shows of the night before and Bill’s haiku in a thicket of free verse. Josh Capon, who won the crowd prize the night before, said it best when he stopped in to Bill’s: “I did my thing last night, but these guys are playing straight pool.” I ordered another one to confirm my pleasure and my prejudices, and thanked God for granting the hamburger its rare power to be constantly changed and yet always stay essentially the same. Like America, it can’t ever be corrupted entirely.

Haiku!

Enjoy, already!