Maybe this technique has been around for a while and I just missed it, but I swear I've seen it cropping up in half a dozen restaurants in just the last few months. (The picture here is from Pawley's Porch, a brand new gourmet burger joint in Mt. Pleasant, a town which already has far more gourmet burger joints than it could possibly need.)
So, this goes right up there with the other big burger trend I've been monitoring: eye-catching burger names. The Liberty Tap room has its Freedom Burger, which demonstrates that in America we are free to order our burgers with bacon, a fried egg, and fried onion straws if we damn well please. Poe's on Sullivan's Island has a similar concoction dubbed the Tell-Tale Heart (fried egg, bacon, and cheddar), while Triangle Char Bar ups the ante with the Hot Sh** (their emendation, not mine) which of course has a fried egg on it but also adds chorizo, jalapenos, and pepper jack cheese just in case you thought you could make it through the night without Tums.
But, the leading burger name contender in Charleston right now is the W.T.F. Burger from Boone's Bar & Grill downtown on King Street. It features a big ground beef patty with pepper jack and cheddar cheese, fried onions, and a bunch of fries--yes, french fries--sandwiched between not a bun but rather two grilled cheese sandwiches.
W.T.F. indeed.
3 comments:
Maybe that explains why, the other day, when I got a perfectly good lunch burger at City Grocery here in Oxford, they brought out a steak knife (fortunately putting it where you'd want them to place a knife), making me think, "what do I need with a steak knife?"
Personally, my taste in the fancy burger trend runs toward the ones (like Company Burger in New Orleans) that just simply do a really excellent elemental burger at a reasonable price.
I agree with you on the elemental burger approach: a good patty of meat and a nicely toasted and not too bready bun. I prefer my burgers wider than they are tall, and find the more crazy stuff you pile on top (like avocados or fried onion rings) the more in distracts from the basic merging of beef, cheese, and bun.
Nice tip, about steak knife)))
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