Burgers

Wendy’s this year will introduce nationally the Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger that it has tested in a few markets, according to Janney Montgomery Scott Analyst Mark Kalinowski. The premium, pretzel-bun burger has enough upward sales potential that Kalinowski upgraded The Wendy’s Co. to Buy. “We do not know exactly when this product will go national; Wendy’s confirms ‘it will be part of our 2013 promotional calendar.’ Our best guess is for a Q3 launch, and as such, we raise our Q3 same-store sales forecasts for both North American company-owned and North American franchised outlets by three percentage points, to +5.0%,” Kalinowski wrote in a report today. Kalinowski says person with whom he has spoken say the Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger performed as well during in-store market testing as “any Wendy’s test items from the last 20 years.” Last June, Wendy’s culinary team said it was considering a pretzel roll for a Pub Club sandwich it was looking at. In January the chain began testing the Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger in Miami. The dense pretzel bun is the primary difference between this and other premium burgers on Wendy’s menu. But Wendy’s executives have said the chain intends to grow its share of the QSR business’s premium-price-burger category. Citing NPD/CREST data, Wendy’s has claimed an 18% share of that premium niche. Wendy’s share was already set to rise thanks to McDonald’s decision to drop its Angus Third Pounder line. Wendy’s has introduced premium products Son of Baconator and Bacon Portabella Melt in the past several months. The Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger is in line with CEO Emil Brolick’s plan to succeed by “playing a different game.” This means not only adding innovative products but also providing fast-casual-level quality at QSR pricing.

From A Hamburger Today [Photographs: Erin Jackson] Hubcap 3926 30th St, San Diego CA 92104 (map); 619-291-1859; hubcapsd.com Cooking method: Grilled Short Order: A tasty burger that, with a few minor tweaks, could easily be one of the best in the city Want Fries With That? Nah, skip 'em. Price: Hubcap burger, $9; fries with red eye gravy and fluffy cheese, $9 Notes: Pints and cocktails are $5 from 5 to 7 p.m., daily. Restaurant is closed on Mondays When farm-to-table taco spot El Take it Easy switched concepts to a "grass-fed burger, cocktail and craft beer shack" named Hubcap almost overnight, I was cautiously optimistic. Enthusiastically captioned Yelp photos showed promise, and owner Jay Porter's other venture, The Linkery, already puts out an excellent burger (or so says my San Diego AHT predecessor). If you want to know exactly what goes into the burger, simply flip over your menu, or click here and you'll be directed to a doodle that deconstructs the entire creation, noting the seven-ounce grass-fed beef patty, housemade pickles and mayo, and "fluffy cheese spread" (cream cheese mixed with cheddar and blue cheese). The final assembled burger is a beauty to behold, and within inches—millimeters, even—of perfection. Normally, I'd start off by speaking to the merits of the beef, but the bun was so delicious that it deserves top billing. It's buttered, then grilled on the plancha (aka flattop), until golden brown, giving it a crisp, crunchy texture (much like the buns at In-N-Out). All of the vegetable toppings, from the house-made bread and butter pickles and the tomato, to the iceberg and the white onion (which I nixed), were cut razor-thin. This treatment transformed the vegetable portion of the burger it into what tasted like a mayo-dressed salad on top of the beef. It worked for everything except the lettuce. Cut that thin, it registered as wet, not crunchy. Fettuccine-sized strips, as opposed to angel hair, would be better. That being said, the flavors were totally on point. The knockout combination of sweet and tangy pickles, fatty mayo, and salty, savory cheese was excellent. This is easily one of the best burgers I've had in months. Not being one to question the infinite wisdom of a burger doodle, I went along with the suggested temperature: rare. The loosely packed, lightly seasoned patty I received had a moist and juicy pink center and a barely-browned exterior with almost zero crust. If your personal preference is for a patty with more char, order yours medium-rare or even medium. There's plenty of mayo to make up for any moisture gap that might result from a longer cooking time. You can add a side of fries for $4, but I had to try the poutine-esque fries topped with fluffy cheese mixed into the red eye gravy, with sliced ham on top. The first few bites were great, but the high salt factor makes this a dish you'll want to split with four people (and drinking a beer with it is not negotiable). Next time, I'd skip the fries entirely. They're serviceable, but the burger outshines them and is more than enough to satisfy any appetite. Tweaking the lettuce and getting some more char on that top-quality beef would put Hubcap's burger squarely within "best in the city" territory, but as served, it's still going to blow your socks off. Might want to spare them the carnage and opt for flip-flops. About the author: Erin Jackson is a food writer and photographer who is obsessed with discovering the best eats in San Diego. You can find all of her discoveries on her food blog EJeats.com. On Twitter, she's @ErinJax Love hamburgers? Then you'll Like AHT on Facebook! And go follow us on Twitter while you're at it!

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers is about to learn how high it can price a burger before it loses customer acceptance. Next week the chain will begin in-store testing of new “premium” burgers in a select few restaurants near its Greenwood Village, Colo., headquarters. The company won’t say at what price it will begin gauging customer sensitivity but it will be above its current $11 ceiling on burgers. The 5 Alarm Burger is Red Robin’s current LTO. The premium line—which SVP-CMO Denny Marie Post said is intended to be permanent and not an LTO—balances the Tavern Double, introduced last year at a low entry price of $6.99. Additionally, a new summer menu that arrives at Red Robin on June 3 will include “an innovative and mouthwatering new burger, a new Tavern Double style and from the bar, some first-to-market cocktails and other refreshing beverages that you’ll only find at Red Robin,” CEO Steve Carley told analysts during this week’s first-quarter earnings call. This new burger is not expected to be either Honey Mustard Chicken Burger or the Santa Fe Burger, two former LTOs that the chain has pledged to return to the menu as a result  of its “Bring My Burger Back” promotion last year. The currently featured 5 Alarm Burger was thee winner of that promotion. Carley also said that three of a new mid-size, 4,000-square-foot Red Robin restaurant prototype have opened. “The smaller units have a number of advantages, including greater flexibility in site selection as we expand with a much lower construction cost while still providing operating capacity for very healthy volumes,” Carley said. Of the 20 new company units opening this year, seven will be mid-size locations. A rebounding economy is making Red Robin’s expansion of its Burger Works fast-casual concept more difficult than expected because of competition for good sites. “One of the things we’re learning in the real estate market, which is no news to those guys who also cover fast casual, is this 2,000-, 2,200-square-foot box in a great trade area as an end cap is the hottest piece of real estate in the country right now,” Carley said. “Everybody wants that exact piece. We find that we’re somewhere between 6 and 10 folks talking to a landlord on that particular piece of property. And so going after those is a little more problematic.”

From A Hamburger Today Inside the Pat LaFrieda facility. [Photograph: Nick Solares] To celebrate National Burger Month, we're teaming up with famed New York City meat purveyor Pat LaFrieda to give away a case of their burger patties (24 per case) each week this month. Patties will be shipped fresh anywhere in the U.S. (sorry, international readers!), perfect for throwing a giant burger party or for cooking burger-centric meals at home. To enter this week's contest, just describe your ideal burger party in the comments section below. Contest will end and comments will close at 5 p.m. ET, Monday, May 27, 2013. One entry per community member. One winner will be chosen at random. Winners are limited to U.S. residents. Standard Serious Eats contest rules apply.

What connects the dots of Burger King’s new summer menu is barbecue sauce. Its new Rib Sandwich is a “juicy boneless rib patty with a sweet and tangy BBQ sauce served with sweet pickles on a warm toasted artisan-style bun.” Barbecue sauce is on the menu’s Carolina Whopper, Memphis Pulled Pork and new BBQ Chicken Salad as well. Source: Mintel Menu Insights And it’s not just Burger King that has embraced barbecue sauce as a burger condiment: it has become a standard topping choice at many chains at independents. I’ll go so far as to say that barbecue sauce has supplanted salsa as the No. 3 burger sauce (after ketchup and mustard). It was in 2006 that a researcher declared that salsa had passed ketchup as top condiment (leading Jay Leno to quip, “You know it’s bad when even our vegetables are starting to lose their jobs to Mexico.”) I think ketchup and mustard still reign with burgers, and I don’t think barbecue sauce wasn’t on the list of condiments for that research. At the request of BurgerBusiness.com, researcher Mintel searched its Menu Insights database to determine the number of dishes that included barbecue sauce as an ingredient (including a burger topping) over the past five years. They looked at quick-service, fast-casual and casual dining restaurants and found a striking 34% increase in barbecue sauce use just since 2009. It should be noted that the numbers come the first quarter of each of the years. Since January and February aren’t the biggest barbecue months, use of barbecue sauce on menus may actually have accelerated even more. Blanc Burgers + Bottles’ Dark Truth BBQ Burger Occasionally, burger joints will use a branded barbecue sauce as Hook Burger in Oxnard, Calif., does with its Hickory Burger (topped with thick-cut bacon, Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce, house-made crispy onions, lettuce, tomato and mayo). But Mintel found that of the 975 dishes using barbecue sauce in Q1 2013, only 62—or 6.4%—were branded sauces. Most were unnamed or perhaps house-made like the barbecue sauce that Blanc Burgers + Bottles in Kansas City, Mo., makes in-house using local brewer Boulevard Brewing Co.’s Dark Truth Stout. That sauce goes on Blanc’s Dark Truth BBQ Burger, which also is topped with smoked Gouda, applewood-smoked bacon, onion ring, mayo and onion, all on a brioche bun. A BurgerBusiness.com compilation of “15 Great BBQ Burger Builds” from burger joints around the country can be seen here. In addition to developing barbecues-sauce topped burgers here, Burger King and McDonald’s have been actively exporting the idea globally. For example, there’s the new BBQ Classic at Burger King in Japan now. There’s also barbecue sauce on the Steakhouse burger that Burger King is selling in the UK, on its X-Tra Long Spring BBQ burger in Germany, on the Grilled Chicken Barbecue it’s currently menuing in The Netherlands and on the BBQ Bandit offered at Burger King in New Zealand. American-style barbecue sauce is key to the 1955 Burger (named for the year Ray Kroc’s first restaurant opened) that McDonald’s has been selling in Europe for several years. New barbecue burgers are arriving as well. One is the the new Louisiana BBQ Burger (a beef patty with bacon, barbecue sauce, slivered onions, shredded lettuce and cheese on a cheese-topped bun) that is part of McDonald’s “Great Tastes of America” promotion going on now in the UK. In Denmark it’s offering a Grilled Beef Barbecue burger and it has a new “Grill & BBQ” menu in Austria. Soon burgers with barbecue sauce could become a true global mainstay.

From A Hamburger Today VIEW SLIDESHOW: 32 Hamburger Recipes For Memorial Day [Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, unless otherwise noted] I don't know who it is that designated May as National Burger Month, but I'd like to give them a big, sloppy, greasy, onion-scented, cheese-covered kiss on the mouth. Or perhaps just a hug is fine. What better excuse to celebrate our national sandwich (national food?) and look back back at the dozens of well-tested burger recipes we have in our archives? Let's start with the basics. Here are my top ten tips for better burgers. With those under your belt, you should be well on your way to backyard burger nirvana. Got your notebooks filled? Great! Here are 32 recipes that run the gamut form simple to complex, with representation from around the country, breaking regional borders, and indeed inter-species relations. Perhaps burgers are the key to world peace. Check out the individual recipes below, or click through the slideshow above for a bigger look at the goods. Get The Recipes! Classic Burger Recipes These burgers are all inspired by classic American or regional American burger styles. Classic Smashed Burgers » Juicy Broiled Burgers » Barbecue Bacon Burgers » Sweet Barbecue Kim-cheese Burgers » Hot Hawaiian Burgers » Muffaletta Burgers » Real-Deal Steamed Sliders » The Ultimate Patty Melt » Ultra-Crispy Burgers (A.K.A. The Best Burger For A Single Man Or Woman) » Foolproof Jucy Lucys » Restaurant and Fast Food Burgers At Home Fake Shacks, In-N-Out Double Doubles, Big Macs, and the like. The Fake Shack » The Double Shack Stack » In-N-Out's Double-Double, Animal Style » The Spotted Pig's Chargrilled Burger At Home » A Better Big Mac » Non-Beef Options [Photograph: Joshua Bousel] Burgers that cross that species barrier, yet still retain all the juice and flavor of a real deal burger. No compromise! Turkey Burgers That Don't Suck » The Best Lamb Burgers » Sausage Burgers For Minimalists » Green Chili Turkey Burgers » Vegan Burgers That Don't Suck » Condiments and Sauces Chili, cheese, and other sauces. Chili Sauce For Chili Burgers » Ultimate Sriracha Burger » The Pueblo Slopper » Melty American-style Cheese Slices » Cheese Sauce for Burgers, Fries, and Chips » Over The Top [Photograph: Robyn Lee] Burgers that take it to the extreme. Bigger, bolder, and badder than any other beef on the block. The In-N-Out/Telway/White Manna Animal-Style Slider Mashup » Sous-vide Burgers » The Pastrami Burger Bomb » The Cheeseburger Eggslposion » The Flood Burger » The Hamburger Fatty Melt » The Double Bacon Fatty Melt » 60-Day Dry-Aged Home-Ground Prime Rib Burger » About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook. Love hamburgers? Then you'll Like AHT on Facebook! And go follow us on Twitter while you're at it!

Saturday’s burger is the Bell Beefer, aka Doritos Bell Beefer. That’s a 5-oz. beef patty with taco seasoning and a Doritos crust topped with shredded Cheddar, lettuce, pico de gallo, ranch dressing and Tapatío hot sauce on a burger bun. “Burger Week” promotions have become marketing staples for a lot of burger joints. Sometimes they’re part of citywide celebrations; often they’re independent, as is the case with the weeklong burger promo upcoming at The Oinkster in Los Angeles. Their  event—the third annual—is so well put together that it merits attention as a case study from which others can learn. Beginning June 3, 2013, The Oinkster will feature a different burger creation from Chef Andre Guerrero and the staff on each of the event’s seven days. Nothing so unusual there except that they’re kicking it off with their own version of Wendy’s Baconator and closing the week with a re-imagining of McDonald’s McRib. They had me at The Oinkonator, which is two 3-oz. square beef patties topped with American cheese, six strips of bacon, ketchup and mayo on a kaiser bun. Their McRib redo—which anchors the menu on Sunday, June 9—is called The McRibster (a name McDonald’s actually used last year in Austria). The Oinkster’s version has baby back ribs topped with BBQ sauce, pickles and onions on a French roll. On Thursday, the guys from Grill ‘em All in Alhambra, Calif., will be at The Oinkster serving their legendary Weedeater burger. A few weeks back, BurgerBusiness.com featured an interview with Ryan Harkins and Matt Chernus, operators of food-truck-turned-restaurant Grill ’em All in Alhambra, Calif. One of the great things about The Oinkster’s event is that they are smart and cool enough to invite Ryan and Matt to take over the Oinkster Burger Week kitchen on Thursday, June 6. Ryan and Matt will be cooking and serving one of the legendary builds from their trucker days, TheWeedeater. That’s a half-pound beef patty with jalape?o bacon, Cheddar, Funyuns, garlic aïoli and seared pulled pork in Mosh Pit BBQ sauce. Click here for the details on the remaining daily burger creations planned for the Week. But there’s more. During last year’s Burger Week, The Oinkster promised to honor as a BurgerLord anyone who could eat each of the seven featured burgers and 180 met the challenge. Those who do the same this year will receive an exclusive BurgerLord t-shirt as well as the world’s admiration. See how the rules and regulations are set here. No promotion is complete these days without a social-media component and The Oinkster has that covered, too. Beginning May 28, the restaurant will conduct a Scavenger Hunt with clues available through Twitter and Instagram. The hunt’s three winners will earn VIP passes that put them at the front of the line for each day’s special burger. If you think your joint’s Burger Week is more fun than all that, well I’d like to hear about it.

From A Hamburger Today [Photographs: RocketNews24] Behold the latest fast food burger tower monstrosity from Japanese blog RocketNews24: Lotteria's new Ramen Burger topped with 10 extra servings of ramen. (Previous towers include cheese tower, onion tower, and bacon tower.) Yup, it has no good reason to exist. But I've got to give props to Mr. Sato—RocketNews24's resident burger guinea pig—for eating the whole thing. You can watch him go at it in the video below (warning: loud music ahead): [Video: rocketnews24] For a more reasonable food stunt, RocketNews24 also transformed Lotteria's ramen burger into a bowl of ramen, which they beefed up with extra water and sliced green onion. About the author: Robyn Lee is the editor of A Hamburger Today and takes many of the photos for Serious Eats. She'll also doodle cute stuff when necessary. Read more from Robyn at her personal food blog, The Girl Who Ate Everything. Love hamburgers? Then you'll Like AHT on Facebook! And go follow us on Twitter while you're at it!

From A Hamburger Today [Photograph: Sutter Home] Congratulations to Erin Evenson from Brooklyn for winning the $100,000 grand prize awarded last weekend in Sutter Home's 2012 Build a Better Burger Contest. Her winning recipe for 7 Train Caramelized Green Curry Burgers features beef patties mixed with pancetta fat and basted in green curry glaze, crispy watercress salad, and fried pancetta, all sandwiched between toasted bun halves that get spread with minted basil aioli and dipped in chopped roasted cashews. The recipe's name is inspired by the 7 train—or in Evenson's words, "The Crispy Watercress Express"—that runs through Queens in New York City. I'll assume she's referring to SriPraPhai's crispy watercress salad, which is a damn tasty salad. Other winners are Mark Richardson's Indian Lamb Burger, which won $15,000 for Best Alternative Burger, and Mark Pyne's Grilled Green Tomato Burger and Kim Jones's Better than Breakfast in Bed Burger, which both won People's Choice Awards. You can take a shot at the $100,000 grand prize by entering the 2013 Build a Better Burger Contest at buildabetterburger.com until September 2, 2013. Love hamburgers? Then you'll Like AHT on Facebook! And go follow us on Twitter while you're at it! About the author: Robyn Lee is the editor of A Hamburger Today and takes many of the photos for Serious Eats. She'll also doodle cute stuff when necessary. Read more from Robyn at her personal food blog, The Girl Who Ate Everything.

From A Hamburger Today [Photographs: Noah Arenstein] Fritzl's Lunch Box 173 Irving Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11237 (map); 929-210-9531; fritzlslunchbox.com Cooking method: Griddled Short Order: A worthy pub-style burger in a neighborhood lacking in good burger options Want Fries With That? Absolutely Price: Hamburger, $8; cheeseburger, $9; fries, $3 with a sandwich In residential Bushwick, the steamroller of gentrification rolls forward, bringing rising rents and new amenities to a section of the neighborhood where even the whisper of a hip coffee shop or a cozy restaurant sprouting among blocks laden with nail salons, hopping barbershops, and laundromats would have been unbelievable only a few years earlier. Fritzl's Lunch Box opened this spring on one of these blocks, just around the corner from the Dekalb Avenue stop on the L train. Fritzl's is the creation of chef Dan Ross-Leutwyler, whose previous cooking experience includes Roberta's, The Breslin, and Resto, among others. Though its opening is yet another signal that gentrification will soon breach Ridgewood and Queens, its wayward location means that crowds are manageable and prices are still comfortably low. Fritzl's is narrow, seemingly squeezed between its neighbors. The walls are painted a pale yellow and a long wooden bench parallels the arched, white ceiling. A lone bookshelf holds an eclectic collection of cookbooks, but the restaurant is otherwise relatively plain, making it feel more spacious than its dimensions. The effect is pleasant, seemingly closer to a comfortable bungalow in Hilton Head than north Brooklyn. It's especially sunny during the day, when doctors and nurses clothed in scrubs from nearby Wyckoff Heights Hospital crowd in for lunch. The menu is divided into sections ranging from snacks to "pastas and plates," but the focus seems to be on sandwiches, including a fried chicken sandwich ($8) and fried bacalao ($9). But I'm here for one reason, laser-focused on my goal. Ross-Leutwyler makes a fine burger, setting a new standard in an under-served neighborhood. At only $8 ($9 with cheese), it's a bargain. Patties are close to six ounces and made of a combination of chuck and cheek, which Ross-Leutwyler estimates to be about 75/25 meat to fat. Ross-Leutwyler grinds it himself, throwing slightly more chuck in the mix. The cheek hails from Pineland Farms in Maine and is a leaner (but more flavorful) cut, so Ross-Leutwyler combines it with a fattier piece of chuck, which comes from grass-fed and grain-finished California vintage beef. Together, these bi-coastal cuts result in a beefy, tender patty whose rough grind holds a steak-like chew. Too-soft burger innards. Better innards. On my first visit, the beef was cooked correctly, but its texture was a little too soft. A return trip revealed tighter meat cooked to a rosy medium rare with a burnished brown sear. Both times the patty has been perfectly seasoned. (Before you hate in the comments over rare/medium rare, be aware that low lighting and a crappy camera mean that color correction makes the meat appear more magenta than IRL.) According to Ross-Leutwyler, he wanted to emulate the original Resto burger. Some similarities are apparent (they're closely sized and the Resto burger famously incorporated beef cheek), but Ross-Leutwyler has made version 2.0, Americanizing the original. Here, the patty is cooked on a griddle and topped with two slices of sharp, sufficiently melty, extra-sharp cheddar, then slipped between a toasted, sesame-studded "Big Marty" bun whose bottom is spread with a "Special Sauce" (but really a charred miso aioli) and finished with a housemade relish made up of finely chopped pickles and onions. The pickles are a little too sweet, but they can't detract from what is a well-balanced, extremely satisfying burger. The kitchen is also adept with the fryer. A seasonal appetizer of beer battered asparagus