The Big Burger Trek

They say if you went to a different restaurant for every meal of the day, you could never exhaust the list of possible eateries in New York City. My question is, if you tried six restaurants each day, and peaked in a couple more for good measure, could you then say you've been to every eating establishment in the Metro area? I'm thinking you'd get close if not all the way there.

Yesterday, I spent the day eating my way through the meatiest parts of Manhattan with five chefs who support the menu pipeline for my company.

Gabby. Our tour guide and Filipino burger fanatic.
Jess. The model of the culinary world.
Eric. The Green Bay cheese man, but Minnesota Vikings fan.
Michael. The flavor expert.
And Chris. The tattooed meat grinder.

Together, we trekked through the city to identify trends in the burger industry and explore what consumers are looking for in an indulgent dining experience. Over the course of six hours, we visited five burger establishments that could easily boast best burger in town and several other concept restaurants that further proved just how many options consumers have.

I ate my way from Umami Burger, to Shake Shack, to Ramen Co., to Jeepney's and finally to Whitman's, from midtown, to downtown, to the East Village, and along with a very full belly, I came across some consistent themes.

First, New Yorkers are willing to pay a hefty price for a good burger.

Second, although my company invented branding, these new fast casual competitors have reinvented it in unique, artistic ways. 

Apparently, there are a whole lot of unemployed Millennials in New York City - or at least quite a few who have enough time to wait for a made to order burger at Shake Shack at 3:30 in the afternoon.

Service with a smile goes a long way. 

Deliciously messy burgers are not so much stacked up with ingredients, as melting together with fresh flavors. The delineation between cheese, sauce, and glaze is absorbed into the enhanced juices of proprietary beef blends, ground and molded in-house. And when you bite into something that looks a lot like a shard of bone, you are willing to forgive it because the rest of the bites thereafter were so scrumptious. 

Burgers with noodle buns are weird and not craveable / one bite was enough. 

Filipino gastronomy is delicious. And according to New Yorkers enables the best burger in the city. Ingredients like banana ketchup, kamote fries, kewpie mayonnaise, sugarcane vinegar, and longaniza sausage were heavenly discoveries. 

Service by stoners is a less desirable. But we decided to give the folks at Whitmans a break because of their proximity to a rather odd herbal shop who was shuttering its doors for a 'class' right around the time we peaked in. 

Noodle shops can be the perfect palette cleanser for someone who has red meat pulsing through their veins. And Momofuko was packed with clean eaters. 

 
I also learned that dining with chefs is awesome; their knowledge of the ingredients, preparation, and history that contribute to a good dish enlightens the whole meal.  I quickly came to the conclusion that tattoo removal is really painful; that burger patties made up of sirloin and longaniza sausage are incredible; that New Yorkers are spoiled rotten when it comes to food; that I will be fasting for the rest of the week; that baby Bobby is going to love red meat; and that I could always use more time in Manhattan.

Lo.