Game of Burgers: Gastropub Gentry, First Round
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| ProfessorSalt.com |
| The Playground's off-menu burger |
A standard sesame-seed bun? Oh, no. What you'll find at the restaurants I sampled are tall, soft egg buns. Or buttery brioche buns. Perhaps an herbed whole-wheat, or fresh pretzel, or Hawiian sweet roll bun. A slice of processed yellow cheese food product will not do. A carefully thought-out pallete of cheeses await in the kitchen to add ooey-gooey melty fat, and so too a selection of condiments and greens like arugula that you'll never see in a diner's larder.
The wide range of ingredients chefs use in a gastropub burger colored the approach I took in assessing this category. Where Edwin ordered a stripped-down basic burger at his diners to keep contestants on a level playing field, I ordered my burgers exactly as the chefs intended them to be served, with no changes to their visions of how a burger's components come together on the plate. The only consistent request? Make mine medium-rare. Other than that, I ordered up the best-sounding burger on the menu, and judged how well they balanced all their fancy ingredients into a cohesive whole.
The Playground vs. The Crosby
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| ProfessorSalt.com |
| The Playground's burger, cooked medium-rare |
The meat here was delivered medium-rare, as ordered, the blend of beef wasn't too fatty, and the outside of the patty was caramelized but not charred. I wasn't a fan of meek shreds of iceberg lettuce, which doesn't have the crunch of hand-leafed lettuce, nor do I love yellow mustard on my burger. Other than those personal nitpicks, it's a fine burger. Too bad it had to face the Smoked Angus Burger from The Crosby.
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| ProfessorSalt.com |
| The Crosby's Smoked Wagyu Beef Burger |
The downside to the flavor boost is a slightly overcooked patty that's well past medium rare. Good thing it's made with the richly marbled wagyu beef, which still retained enough juice. If you prefer yours cooked medium-well, the massive premium-meat tower combines all those other assertive flavors and blends their juices with the oozing yolk of a sunny-side-up egg.
Side note: a fried egg option is also found at 320 Main, a gastropub that should have been in this bracket, but somehow slipped past all of usWeeklings as a candidate. I guess we needed to venture up to Seal Beach more often in recompense. Sorry about that oversight, 320 Main, you coulda been a contender...
Anyhow, the winner of this joust? The Crosby! The tall stack of super-ingredients elevated the superstar smoked beef patty to the win.
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Crosby burger is quite good, but The Playground burger is better. The patty is superior and it is amazing in it's simplicity in an era where kitchen sink burgers are the norm. It's not just yellow mustard, but a yellow mustard vinaigrette that does a fantastic job of cutting into the richness of the beef.
Yes! Crosby has my favorite burger ever. However I think it needs more description of its greatness. The Playground got half a page and the (winning) Crosby a few laconic sentences! I want a sutra about it, dammit!
thats not Wagyu Beef. American Wagyu Beef is a hybrid of Angus and Wagyu...much like when places sale Kobe Beef, its not real Kobe beef. good list though...
