Well, we finally did it. The core members of the Boston Cheeseburger Society walked the .4 miles down Main Street from our general residence in order to try what we hoped to be the classy burger to end all classy burgers: the delicious, gooey and barbecue-y cheeseburger from Craigie on Main that you see pictured to the left. I am not sure what you call exactly what they did with those onions you can see peaking out from underneath the toasted bun, but whatever it was, it was exactly the right thing to do to those onions you can see peaking out from underneath the toasted bun. You have to order the burger at the bar, but that's not so bad because the bartenders are friendly and will make you fantastic drinks while you wait (the Improper Bostonian recently named Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli as best mixologist in the Boston area).
And that pile of crunchiness next to the burger? Sweet potato fries. Superb.
Other members of the BCS: please discuss.
Um, this post needs a reference to this article going into all the juicy details of why this thing is so ridiculously tasty:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.goodeater.org/2/post/2009/04/cheffing-with-tony-maws-not-just-a-cheeseburger.html
I was a little behind in eating the Craigie burger, but dear god, that thing was life-changingly good. Two days after the experience, the burger is still haunting my days and nights. I don't think the above post does it justice at all.
ReplyDeleteThe Craigie burger must come with an important caveat: every other burger you ever eat in your life will be inferior, if it doesn't already feel like you're eating raw leather. The Craigie burger is so flavorful, so tender, so PERFECT, that other burgers can only hope to emulate, not surpass. This, then, begs the important question: why are there not more burgers like the Craigie burger? It’s not as though the process of its creation is a secret (see previous post). And it’s not like, as with art, imitation diminishes the quality of the finished product. Unless you’re cheffing at ElBulli, you probably stole your recipe from someone else. So why hasn’t word gotten out that while making the best burger possible is not cheap, it’s a perfectly attainable goal for anyone with the desire to do so?
If I were in the burger-making business, I would either quit my job or step up my game. It's like everyone else was strumming power chords, and the Craigie burger walked in the room, plugged into a Marshall stack, and started playing "Eruption" in double-time. You can be damn sure those strummers are gonna go home and cry, then start practicing their fingers off if they ever wanna be seen in public with a guitar again.
I take mild offense at the choice to label this a “fancy” burger. “Fancy” implies ostentation, flamboyance, and showiness. The Craigie burger is the opposite: it doesn’t look much different than a normal burger because the quality is all behind-the-scenes, in the ingredients and the process of creation. Tony Maws set out to create the perfect burger, and this is what he achieved. There’s nothing superfluous here; I can’t imagine anything that could be added or subtracted to augment its deliciousness. What’s even better is that the burger is not at all the focus of the menu. It’s only available at the bar, and is overshadowed by the $75 prix fixe selections. All burger-centric eateries should feel ashamed.
Moral of the story: try this burger for yourself as soon as possible. Then try it again a week later (if your budget allows) to see if your first experience was maybe a hallucination. And if you make burgers for a living, please: set your standards a little higher.