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Double Eagle, Cost and Taste

Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse (1221 6th ave, at 49th St., New York, NY) is where bankers and media moguls go for business lunches and where they take their clients for dinner. The menu is headlined by $50 steaks, lobsters and expensive wine. I was there for the burger. They just began selling it a few weeks ago and supposedly it’s some top-secret blend of magic cow parts.

When the waiter mentioned it, I had to try it, despite the totally outrageous price of $21. I’ll complain about the price more later, but first, let’s talk about hamburgers. The most important ingredient of hamburgers is the meat, no question. Sure the bun is critical and all, but without the meat you’re really eating a lettuce and tomato sandwich. What better place to order a fancy-meatburger than at a steakhouse, right? This was how I talked myself into spending $21 for a hamburger, or as they call it a “prime cheeseburger.” It comes with a gigantic side of fries, a few fried onions on top, cheese of your choice and the usually burger-toppin’ veggies. As you will see from the pictures below, the burger is gigantic too. I was afraid I’d be humiliated in front of all the suits, but thank god, the bun and toppings compress down nicely and it can be eaten as a normal burger (for me at least, you millage may vary).

All kvetching aside, the hamburger was fantastic. What their secret meat-blend does is make the burger kind of mushy, but keeps the flavor up. It’s a strange first few bites where you expect it to be a bit chewy, and then it just gives way. (I think we can all agree there’s something singularly revolting about overcooked hamburgers that turn grey and you have to chew and chew and chew). Bite after bite, it just gives way, like it’s totally happy to be eaten. The flavor was fantastic, the bun held up wonderfully, absorbing all the juices that flowed.

It’s a fantastic hamburger, if you can tolerate the business crowd.

Fries anyone?

It’s huge.

Keep Meatball Shopping

At The Meatball Shop (84 Stanton St. at Allen, NY, NY) you can get meatballs any way you like: on a salad, on top of Spaghetti, in a sandwich or just plain “naked balls” (I’m ready for the search traffic to be disappointed). I love places that are this focused, “do one thing and do it well”, that’s what I always say.

They have all different kinds of meatballs (veggie, pork, beef, etc.) and even have rotating daily specials. I tried the spicy pork, on a hero with tomato sauce and provolone cheese for $9. I had really high expectations, after all, with this kind of focus there is no excuse for blandness. The sandwich came out and there were a few things wrong. First, the meatballs are mushy. Tasty enough, but mushy. Every tasty meatball I’ve ever made was fried in oil until crispy. Crispy meatballs are delicious, the crusties keep the texture interesting and away from meatloaf. Apparently, after much research, some people bake them which leaves them mushy. How did they manage to dedicate a whole shop to them and forget to make them crispy? Second, there is hardly any cheese on these (see below)! Why bother letting people order cheese if you’re only going to sprinkle it on? Thirdly, these pork meatballs aren’t spicy at all. Oh, come on!
(Finally, how can they devote a third of their webpage to themselves. You’re very pretty, now get back in the kitchen and give me some damn cheese.)

After a whole hero I was pretty sickly full. I managed to cram down a half an ice cream sandwich ($4), which was pretty delicious. You pick each of the cookie sides and the filling and it comes out pretty much as you’d expect. The cookies were soft and delicious and the ice cream, was, well, ice creamy.

Skip the meatballs and just get a few ice cream sandwiches.

Uninspired Meatball Performance

Meatballs on Hero

3 balls per Hero

Brownie, chocolate chip and espresso filling.

Scoops!

Five Guys is Greasy Good

I usually shy away from chain joints, but everyone gets kind of giddy when they mention Five Guys (locations everywhere, FG6, 36 West 48th Street). They always flash a “should we split a Toblerone? OMG, should we do it?” glance if you even entertain their suggestion. It’s almost a dare, not quite, but almost. Anyhow, I figured I’d encourage the risk taking, and off we were.

I’m not sure if all Five Guys’ are like this, but the one I went to was an insane assembly line operation that looked something like this: register, deep fryers, grills, salting station, burger assembly, pickup. I ordered and before I could even walk to the other end, I saw my receipt pop up at the assembly station and get prepped. Damn, that’s operational excellence.

Five Guys trumpets the fact that they use peanut oil to fry their fries, as if that makes a difference. They have specialty branded bags of potatoes by the door, all dressed up in white and red corporate. I guess all this helps alleviate the guilt people have when they indulge. Which all seems kind of silly, because the fries are pretty damn good. The burger you ask, the burger! It was good too. One of the other things with five guys is that everyone gets two patties, all the toppings you want, and a huge serving of fries. Yeah, that’s why everyone looks sheepish to mention it, you get calories for the week.

I went a little overboard on the free toppings, stopping just green peppers short of ‘everything’ (they have a cute name for it, but I forget). The cheeseburger I got was an insane monstrosity (look below!). It fell apart while I was eating it. It was also pretty tasty. Totally greasy and a little disgusting, but pretty damn tasty. The jalapenos and swiss I got on mine made it pretty spicy and meaty, just like I love.

Just like they talk up their ‘fresh’ fries, they also talk up their fresh burgers. Sure, you can see them grill the burgers right behind the assembly line, so in that sense they’re fresh. But they still look and mostly taste like regular TGIF-applebees-chillis beef patties. Maybe a smidgen better (or is that how good their marketing is?).

Sure I’d go back eventually, but next time I’d sheepishly test my meal-mates to see if they’re ready for the coma and general kind of nasty feeling you’re left with.

Average ingredients, average strategy: not bad, not great

Presented in dreamy five-guys-o-vision

Dear Dave, Your pasta is good but your sandwiches are better

Dave’s Fresh Pasta (81 Holland Street Somerville, MA 02144) is a wonder of the jack-of-all trades neighborhood bodega/deli. They sell delicious fresh pasta and sauces, of course, but they also have a fresh produce section, beer and wine, cheese bar and most importantly, a sandwich counter. Now I was only hungry enough to try one, but it was amazing. I had the ‘cubano’ ($8.50) which stuck to traditions: roasted pork, black forest ham, swiss cheese, dill pickle and chipotle ailoi, on toasted bread. The bread was crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside. The meat was generously doled out (see all that delicious ham?!) and buttery. Like any good cubano, it was topped with delicious melty Swiss. My only real complaint about the ‘wich is that they used normal bread that was sharp and dangerous when they should’ve used a soft roll, cut in half.

Doesn’t this look cozy:

Also cozy:

Sittin’ Pretty

Yum

This Little Piggie is a Beefy Genius

“This Little Piggy Had Roast Beef” ( 149 First Ave., near 9th st, ) is a weird name for a sandwich joint that doesn’t even sell pork. I guess they want you to visualize a piggy eating beef, but much like chick-fil-a’s creepy ad campaigns, animals aware of us eating other animals just seems wrong. More specifically, it seems like a slippery slope towards animal cannibalism: if the little piggie loves his beef, how long until he tries actual pork? One day it’s beef, the next chicken, within a week he’ll be demanding pork belly! If he can cook chicken and pork belly this good, I say go to town little piggie!

This piggie’s beef is incredible. Really, fantastic. We’ve covered a few roast beefs in the last few years and while they’ve been tasty, this takes the crown, no questions asked. I had the “That Way” ($8.50) which is roast beef and mozzarella cheese drizzled with gravy on an Italian hero. It’s an incredible amount of beef and it goes down like soup. The beef is so soft and delicious. The worst of roast beef is when they’re stringy, dry and salty. This work of art makes none of these mistakes: the beef is without any stringy fat to catch your bites (it seems shredded), incredibly moist from all the gravy and perfectly seasoned. It’s an incredible punch of savory flavors that you get to taste over and over (Did I mention it’s huge?).

Trust the Piggie, go get some beefy genius.

The menu is simple enough

I was excited and my fingers were shaking. Look how big it is!

Mozzarella

Do you like gravy?

Chicken Salad is Leftover Love

I know it’s late, but I found these photos of a delicious Rosh Hashana leftover sandwich celebration. We were having some matzoh ball soup and realized our meal was horribly incomplete without a side of sandwich. We found some extra chicken in the fridge slapped it with some mayo, eggs, celery and lemon and viola impromptu chicken salad! Add some fluffy challah, lettuce and tomato and sandwich the whole thing and go to town. It was more incredible than expected and somewhere in the past year I’d forgotten how wonderfully comforting chicken salad and soup is. Now that it’s getting colder, head to the deli and cozy up.