BRGR is a burger joint that has been popping up all around NYC. I just happen to work near BRGR and one day for lunch I headed out to fill my hunger. BRGR has the open viewable grill. That means when you go into BRGR you leave smelling like BRGR. All grass fed meat with a choice of bun, I went whole wheat, but they even have the Iceberg lettuce bun for you carb watchers or gluten free eaters.

Ok the burger itself was pretty good and really hit the spot. It was a good size burger. I added onion hay on the side for a couple bucks but for a burger joint it’s not the cheapest burger. It did fill me up however, there are many times I go to burger joints and need to buy 2 burgers because 1 is just too small. I liked it enough to go back.

A very good choice for a burger would be at Clarke Standard. One of the things that makes them a little different is the grilled buttered bun. I’m a huge fan of that and it is starting to catch on at other burger shops. The other great thing about Clarke Standard is around the block from my job. I have a feeling this will be on my list whenever I head out for lunch. This burger is in the same burger class as a Shake Shack burger. Clarke Standard use only 100% USDA verified, hormone and antibiotic free Natural Angus ground every day using a wide-gauge plate for a loose-textured patty and a juicier, more flavorful burger. Check out the juices for yourself.

A few years ago I fell in love with the Bistro Burger at Big Nicks. Its been a few years and many burgers in between, and the Bistro Burger is still a ridiculously good burger. I’m not going to get into what makes it so go because we covered it in the “Ant’s Last Supper” post. Here is my recent Bistro Burger

Still as delicious as always. The waitress was really nice and gave us a couple balaclava’s for dessert on the house.

Now lets talk about a new burger that has hit the city and is making a statement and a push for BEST BURGER IN THE CITY. It’s at the Brindle Room in the East Village. A little birdie told me about this burger and made the statement that it is his favorite burger in the city right now and may be the best in the city overall. That little birdie was non other that Jay.

Friday night I was deciding to either get on a packed subway and take it home to queens or I could solve my starvation and see what the fuss is about at the Brindle Room. It was an easy choice even though it was a cold and wet night out. When I sat down at the bar in the back I got the menu and started to panic. I walked all the way there in the cold rain and the burger was not on the menu. I almost walked out but I asked the bartender if it was possible to get it. She said it was not on the menu because so many people love this burger and they want to get people to order other things that are on the menu. She still hooked me up.

Let me tell you what makes this burger so special. All I told the bartender was I wanted a medium burger with american cheese. It comes with caramelized onion on it automatically and when you bite into it there is so much burger juice that pours out of it. I also liked that each bit had a crunch to it. They grill the bun so it is perfectly toasted almost like how a grill cheese sandwich is toasted with butter. Delicious! Next time I need to go with Jay.

I also got a desert on the house. Funny how this weekend I got 2 burgers and 2 complementary deserts.

Many small towns have festivals throughout the year. When you think of fair foods you think of sausage, gyros, hotdogs, burgers, popcorn, fried chicken, zeppolies, candied apples, etc. This year I went to my hometown’s Oyster Feast in Oyster Bay Long Island. They have a HUGE food section that seems to grow every year and they go a little beyond the typical fair food. After all it is the Oyster fest, there is a ton of sea food, raw and cooked, and contests for eating the most oysters. There was so much good food and I usually will eat something then go to the next booth and then to the next booth. I usually eat the same thing each year. The past two years I have discovered something. Combining two stands could make something glorious.

The next time you go to a fair take these steps and enjoy. Find the sausage pepper and onion guy and get one. It will probably run you about 8-10 bucks. Dig out the bread and make some room. The bread they use at fairs is usually really thick and the bread takes up so much space of your sandwich. If they have cheese sprinkle some on the sausage with the peppers and onions. Oh, and tell them light on the pepper and onions or they will load it on. Next, find the pulled pork guy. Ask them if they can slap some pulled pork on top of the sausage filling the dug out bread. Top it with their crunchy cole slaw. If your lucky they may charge you half price for the pulled pork because you didn’t get a full sandwich.

Then, enjoy. One day I want to recreate this at home and bring it to a tailgate. This is the ultimate tailgating cuisine. However, I need to learn how to make pulled pork first.

I have been working a lot of long hours lately promoting the New Windows 8 in Times Square and toward the end of the event the southerner and I found some time to go to an Italian restaurant in Astoria called Via Trenta. We have passed by it a hundred times and always say “We need to go there”. We finally did it. I was starving, I mean starving. I think I had a bowel of cheerios that morning and it was about 8pm when we sat in the restaurant. After looking over the menu I wanted 2 mains. The Gnocchi di BarBaBietola al GorGonzola which is handmade potato-beet gnocchi, in a gorgonzola- walnut sauce (I’m a sucker for walnut sauce) and the Veal in a a truffle cream sauce. On a typical day I’d get both and over eat myself into a food coma but something told me to just get one so I ordered the Veal.

Before the Veal we had a a lobster salad with hearts of palm and avocado. It was really good and looked cool in the lobster half shell. The southerner got the p.e.i. Mussels steamed in a tomato, white wine and garlic broth and the blue point oysters baked with spinach and four cheese béchamel. I am not an oyster guy even though I grew up in Oyster Bay but these were delicious.

So earlier I mentioned I was starving and I ended up settling on the Veal. Well, here is the Veal:

It was so thin it felt like I ate nothing, but it tasted good. It is a good thing they kept bringing bread to the table because what made up for not ordering the Gnocchi earlier was the sauces from the Veal and the Mussels. By the end of the meal there was no more sauce on the plates.

I love sauce

Two days ago the Giants lost their season opener to the Dallas Cowboys. An unfortunate start to the season and a topic I know little about. The fortunate part of the day was the play by play meat fest that came across my iPhone as the two fools below tailgated them selves into a protein and bacon maple beer stupor. I’ve know Dave and Ian for a solid 20 years now. Of the many adventures we’ve had, this is one I am sad I missed.

Tailgating for these two Giants fanatics is serious business. It starts at 8am and doesn’t end until game time, 5 hours later. For the occasion, Ian decided to craft this sausage stuffed pork loin. But, that wasn’t enough. He felt it needed more pig and the lattice bacon stocking provided the perfect smokey fix to the naked loin. Obviously I didn’t taste it but with the internal sausage and external bacon in play he created a fat infusing sandwich. That pork loin could have been cooked to hell and still be juicy as lucy with all that melted lard around it. Of course, that’s not what happened. The loin was cooked to perfection and the sliced medallions were scarfed up like candy. PIG candy! Hopefully, for me, next time I am present for this Meatopia. Hopefully, for them, next time the Giants win.

This past weekend turned into a full on assault of the market, the kitchen and the stomach. The highlight was definitely the pig. Knowing I had 20ish people stopping by on Saturday afternoon I spent Friday afternoon procuring one of the finest and most delicately butchered pieces of meat you can buy.

In Italian porchetta refers to a whole pig that is deboned, stuffed with herbs, rolled and tied and then slow roasted for hours. Street vendors slice off sections of it and put it in panini. Restaurants cut thick cross sections and serve it as an entree. In Rome you can’t walk two blocks without seeing a vendor.

We were not going to roast a whole stuffed pig BUT believe me, I thought about it.

Instead, we purchased this pricey gem from Fleisher’s butcher in Park Slope Brooklyn. The cut is a pork belly with loin attached. It started out at $170 but I had them cut it back to kiss the $100 mark. Afterall, this was just a test. I know a cheaper way to create a porchetta is to buy the loin and belly seperate and roll them. I was just hell bent on this being one cut of meat straight from the pig. In the end the guys at Fleisher’s sliced the porchetta down to $100 and threw in a frer rotisserie chicken for good measure. It was delicious btw.

Back in my kitchen I started, what I now realize, is a simple 4 step process.

Step 1: Spice prep

You can put almost anything in your spice rub but I opted for the more traditional ingredients. In my research I noted several recipies that had a dry and wet spice rub. For the dry I used salt, fresh ground pepper, dried rosemary and fennel seeds. For the wet I used fresh rosemary, fennel fronds and parsley. I blended the fresh stuff up with a little sweet red wine to muddle it all together a bit and add some sweet. As a final spice I prepared some red pepper flakes.

Step 2: The lipstick

As I mentioned my mini porchetta consists of a loin and the front one foot of the pork belly (better known as bacon). The belly cut technically extends all the way up to the back which is where the loin mussel is found. Here you can see the loin on the left (thats the back mussel) and then the long belly laid out off the loin. The ribs have been butchered out but the loin has been left attached to the belly. For more on how this is broken down check out my pig butchering experience.

In this position sprinkle on the dry spice. Once lightly coated (Don’t go crazy like with a bbq rib dry rub) repeat with the wet spices. This time you can be more liberal. Try and coat the meat competely with a thin layer of the wet spice mixture.

Finally the roll. Starting with the loin end, roll tightly towards the belly. When you reach the end tie tightly with butcher twine.

Step 3: Rack and roast

From here its a cake walk. Find a large high walled roasting pan. Lots of fat will render out of the roast so make sure it’s a solid vessel. Set up a cooking grate for the porchetta to sit on. Insert a thermometer probe dead center of the loin so that the point of it sits dead center in the roast.

Place into your 275 degree preheated over (mine was set on convection). Go have some wine for about 4 hours. When your temperature alarm goes off indicating 145 degrees, remove the roast and turn the oven up to 475 degrees.

When the oven is at temperature place the roast back into the oven for 10 minutes. This crisps up the skin and finished the roast with a delicios and dramatic crust. You can go longer or shorter on this step based on how crispy you like your skin.

Step 4: Carve and eat

After letting the roast rest for about 10 minutes its ready for slicing. Make sandwiches or plates. Whatever you do make sure you get the juices that run from the slices into your belly. My porchetta was a big hit with my guess on both taste and drama making this test a sucess. Looks like this one officially makes it into the Forking Tasty supper roster. Look for it at an upcoming dinner very soon.

It is not that easy to find BBQ in Astoria but there is one place that I know of that serves only BBQ in this area, Butcher Bar. This BBQ restaurant is not only a good place to get your BBQ but it also sells meat like a butcher. They have a display case showing all there organic grass fed meats, sausage, and beef patties that are raised locally.

It’s a cozy atmosphere at butcher bar and they even have a back patio. Although the day the southerner and I decided to try them out it was super hot and the AC inside was much nicer. Everything we saw for the BBQ was all ketchup based. So if your from the south your going to notice no mustard or vinegar based BBQ. I’m from the north so ketchup is what I’m used to.

I had the Philly Cheese Brisket Sandwich. It was the perfect combo of a philly cheese steak and brisket sandwich. Loads of melted cheese, now who doesn’t like that??

The southerner had a pulled pork sandwich. Great bun and a good mix of pork and sauce.

They have a nice menu at Butcher Bar. Things are a little pricy for Astoria but the meat is organic so you get what you pay for.

The other day I headed to Long Island for an over night stay at the parents house. I had a few things to do and I had not been to their house in a while. Whenever I go home during the summer my mother and I take the day to run some errands and go to lunch, a little mom and Ant time. We went to Fanatico for a couple salads. We were thinking of keeping it light and healthy and their salads are really good and filling. However, the healthy thing went out the window when my mother brought up the Chicken Marsala Roll. Mom said it was great but I wanted to keep it healthy….. I caved very easily.
It was really good and I could not finish it all because of the big salad. I should have started with the Chicken Marsala Roll. The taste was delicious and had the right amount of chicken and sauce. Pizzeria’s should make these. They make chicken parm rolls.

The Southerner and I had a tough morning trying to figure out the perfect place for a Brunch/Lunch. The first place we thought of was to far away, the next place was BYOB, the next place was cash only, ugh! We decided to head to Il Bambino which you may remember from our Wich Hunt episode 2. We finally both agreed and were off and we were starving. Then all of a sudden on our way to lunch we hit a street fair. Shopping is to tempting for the southerner to not go. This takes us way off track to Il Bambino. However,there is a restaurant I have wanted to go to and it was at the end of the street fair. What a perfect opportunity to go to the Burger Club. As my hunger pains grew it seemed the southerner took forever to look at each and every booth to see what they were selling. Finally we arrive and there is tribal indian music blasting at the street fair and I think the speakers were aimed directly into the Burger Club. Not that there is anything wrong with the music, it’s actually kinda soothing but it was not what I wanted to listen to while I eat a burger and try to enjoy the restaurant. It was just way way way to loud. I felt bad for the staff because they had to listen to it all day. It was hard to even hear and talk to the staff because it was so loud but there was nothing the Burger Club could do.

The Burger Shop had a good variety of burgers on their menu along with a beer and wine selection. The southerner got her signature blue cheese burger with shoe string onions as seen above. I went southern and got the Carolina Burger topped with pulled pork.

Both were good burgers and I really like how they serve things. The burgers came on wooden plates and our side of shoe string onion rings came in a small frier. I like when places are a little creative.

I liked the garage doors, the chalk boards, and the staff. My only complaint was the menu said all burgers are cooked medium unless otherwise noted however they were cooked through. Although the burgers were good when I think medium I’m thinking pink in the middle.

Burger Club
32-02 30th Ave, Astoria