Medium Raw

This is indeed one king-hell, motherfucker of a burger—one that would be seriously difficult to top in a blind taste-off of “experts.” Arguably, it’s worth the bucks, if you have that kind of money—and, face it, if you’re eating at the Minetta Tavern, you probably do.

But the speed with which accomplished and forward-thinking high-end chefs like Laurent Tourondel, Daniel Boulud, Tom Colicchio, Hubert Keller, Bobby Flay—and even Emeril—made their moves to exploit the new frontiers of the “hamburger concept” has been breathtaking. And all of them, let it be pointed out, indeed serve a damn good burger. It’s already the Next Big Thing—and is likely to stay the big thing for the conceivable future. If anything, it’s only the beginning—a trend that fits perfectly with the times, a relatively affordable (still) luxury item for a difficult economic environment, something that plays neatly into the national mood: the desire for comforting, reassuring food, the backlash against “fancy,” “silly,” or “hoity-toity”–sounding dishes, a growing sense of discomfort with the traditional food supply, and the reverse snobbery of foodie elites who enjoy nothing more than arguing over what might be the most “authentic” version of quotidian classics.

But what of the burger of lore? The adequate, presumably safe (we thought so, anyway) utility burger, draped and leaking clear grease across the bottom of an open bun, accompanied by an unripe tomato slice, a drying onion slice, and a leaf of iceberg that no one will ever eat…a limp wedge of obligatory dill pickle, a single slice of Kraft “cheese food,” half-melted and congealing even now, kitty-corner across the top? Will it disappear like the vivid, brightly colored Americana on Howard Johnson’s menus past? The ham steaks checkerboarded with grill marks and garnished with pineapple rings, and the thick-crusted chicken potpies of earlier decades?

Will more assurances be necessary to future customers before slightly more expensive patties can be sold?

“Now serving our Chaste Quaker Farms mélange of grain-fed Angus beef—minimally dosed with antibiotics and made only slightly uncomfortable during its final days in a dark, shit-smeared shed.”

Or will the default-quality burger—the classic “mystery meat” patty—continue to survive and flourish indefinitely? Simply more expensive by two dollars or so?

Surely the message for the Greek couple at the luncheonette down the road, sizzling up the same frozen patties on a Mel Fry–smeared griddle, like they always have, is that for some reason or another, the ass-hats down the street are paying eighteen bucks for a burger. We can definitely get away with jacking up our price by a dollar or two.

Maybe this whole burger thing is part of a larger shift—where all the everyday foods of everyday Americans are being slowly, one after the other, co-opted, upgraded, reinvented, and finally marked up.

Look around.

In the hottest restaurants of New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, it’s the rich who are lining up to eagerly pay top dollar for the hooves, snouts, shanks, and tripe the poor used to have to eat.

You’d have to go to Mario Batali and slap down twenty dollars to find an order of chitterlings these days. You can look far and wide in Harlem without finding pig’s feet. But Daniel Boulud has them on the menu.

Regular pizza may be on the endangered list, “artisanal” pizza having already ghettoized the utility slice. Even the cupcake has become a boutique item…and the humble sausage is now the hottest single food item in New York City. Order a Heineken in Portland or San Francisco—or just about anywhere, these days—and be prepared to be sneered at by some locavore beer-nerd, all too happy to tell you about some hoppy, malty, microbrewed concoction, redolent of strawberries and patchouli, that they’re making in a cellar nearby. Unless, of course, you opt for post-ironic retro—in which case, that “silo” of PBR will come with a cover charge and an asphyxiating miasma of hipness.

David Chang sells “cereal milk” in sixteen-ounce bottles for five bucks. An infusion, as I understand it, of the metabolized essence of cereal, the extracted flavors of Captain Crunch with Crunchberries perhaps, the sweet, vaguely pinkish milk left in the bottom of the bowl after you’ve drunkenly spooned and chawed your way through the solids. Maybe this is the high-water mark of the phenomenon. And then again, maybe not.

When and if the good guys win, will we—after terrifying consumers about our food supply, fetishizing expensive ingredients, exploiting the hopes, aspirations, and insecurities of the middle class—have simply made it more expensive to eat the same old crap? More to the point, have I?

Am I helping, once again, to kill the things I love?

10 Lower Education

My wife and I are speaking in hushed tones directly outside our daughter’s bedroom door, where we’re sure she’s pretending to be asleep.