The prize-winning bacon cheeseburger from Michael's Genuine in Miami.
There is no greater spectacle in the hamburger universe than the annual Rachael Ray Burger Bash, held at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival in Miami. At this year's gastronomic gathering, which took place on Feb. 25, I tried all the burgers and talked to all the chefs, and one thing became clear: the hamburger, though still the most pleasurable sandwich ever built, has reached a creative dead end.
Yes, there were a few exotic ones, like Michael Symon's pastrami-topped burger from his B Spot restaurant in Cleveland, which won the People's Choice prize. Daniel Boulud, of three-Michelin-stars fame, served what I thought was the night's most perfectly constructed burger--sprinkled with pulled pork and nestled under a featherlight cheddar bun. But for all their flash, none of the entries were really new; they were just hamburgers with unusual stuff on top. The judges weren't fooled. They awarded Michael Schwartz of Michael's Genuine in Miami their top prize for his classically constructed bacon cheeseburger.
Classic was the watchword of the night. Former Top Chef contestant Spike Mendelsohn of Washington's Good Stuff Eatery, who won last year's Bash with the help of fried Vidalia onions and chipotle barbecue sauce, stuck to the basics this year. "I just wanted to do a straight-up, classic burger," the defending champ said, while wearing a boxer's robe and title belt. "What can I say?" said Randy Garutti of New York City's Shake Shack, which won the first Burger Bash in 2007. "The Shack burger is a classic."
Those guys are right. The orthodox cheeseburger, with its pillowy, enriched white bun, its creamily melted square of tangerine-colored American cheese and its blissfully spice-free beef, is an invention that's virtually impossible to improve. Like sashimi or peaches and cream, it might be a gastronomic end point.
And what's wrong with that? Nothing, except that this is America. We're about competition and reinvention--not just at the Burger Bash, but also in the burger market, where fortunes rise and fall over the narrowest bits of brand differentiation. (Take away Ronald and the King, and only an expert can tell the basic McDonald's and Burger King hamburgers apart.)
Not that burger orthodoxy is hurting sales any. In Manhattan, the upstart Bill's Bar and Burger, a first-time entrant in the Bash, is about to open the largest independently owned hamburger restaurant in the world, a 500-plus-seat meat cathedral in Rockefeller Center. The Shake Shack is moving into Miami, Kuwait and, word has it, London. But the primary burger at these expanding enterprises would be easily recognizable to your great-grandfather. Their versions are examples of perfection, not innovation.