San Francisco: The Burger City.
Monday, February 22, 2010 at 09:59PM
When I imagine a burger, I know exactly how I want it. I can feel the weight of it in my hand; I can see the beautiful colors stacked and juicy. For a moment, my burger has the power to block out any distractions; it’s just me and the burger for that first perfect bite. Burgers are tasty, and even though they are considered to be unhealthy, their Savory taste has a wholesome goodness that leaves us feeling satisfied, and grounded.
I was a transplant to the San Francisco Bay Area, but it didn’t take me long to recognize that San Francisco is the Burger City. The weather, a 100 mile radius of fresh ingredients, and a city of chefs (chefs love good, simple food), all contribute to the Bay Area's successful burger enterprise. From street food to the some of the best restaurants, you can always find a great burger on the menu. There are a number of wonderful places to choose from in the Bay Area, and many of them will have a “best burger” award hanging on the wall. Some spots are foodies, some are food snobs, and some are food geeks, but I have a different approach to finding the best burger: I want it to truly satisfy my craving. It’s not in my dietary budget to eat a bunk burger, because when I want one, I’ll keep eating burgers until I have found the one that scratches my itch. I want my burger to count. Whether I’m in the mood for a bistro burger, a diner burger, an In–N-Out style burger, or a backyard burger, they all need to deliver that burger satisfaction.
Tasting my way through the city has had its delicious moments, over-the-top moments, and the “it looks good, it smells good, but where’s the taste?” moments. Some common burger malfunctions occur when the patty is too big and the bun too soggy; it ends up being a condiment sandwich; the bun is too hard, the burger is thin, dry and dinky; the overcooked hockey puck; the lean meat that has no taste; and then there is the classic burger gut bomb. A satisfying burger has to have a proper balance of flavor, texture, freshness, and proportions.
Photo by Diana Sanchez After my over exposure to burgers and nearly becoming a food snob, I finally found Christopher Lee at Eccolo. He makes the best burger in the Bay Area. Why? He epitomized what we want when we crave a burger, the Savory burger taste. All of his ingredients sang through without getting smothered. It was the perfect amount of full, no brick in the belly, and it is so good that even staunch vegetarians would be willing to indulge. But the most important thing is that he had totally satisfied my burger craving.
I actually got the opportunity to ask Christopher about his burger. Before eating at Eccolo, I had no idea that Christopher had studied meats in Italy, or ran the kitchen at Chez Panisse for 16 years. I just knew this man made the best burger I have ever had. We met at Crixa Cakes with my friend, Diana.
JR: Eccolo is a northern Italian restaurant, why did you put a burger on your menu?
CL: “My restaurant was on Fourth Street in Berkeley and we had a lot of what I called opportunistic eaters in our lunch crowd. I said (to his crew) ‘I know nobody wants to make a burger; I don’t want to make a burger, but we have to do this so we’re going to make the best burger in town. ‘ That is the attitude I came with“.
JR: Judging by your background of studying in northern Italy and your years at Chez Panisse, you brought your dedication to high quality meats to Eccolo. Where did your passion for meats come from?
CL: “I think my interest in meat came from when I was a kid. My father was a hunter and a fisherman, and so we had stuff around that was good, wild. We had pheasants (Midwest, in Chicago, until I was almost a teenager, then we moved out to the country). There was wild game around, and there was fresh fish. My dad was a really good fisherman and taught me a lot about that, and that leads into family… and cousins sitting around the table, and aunties cooking fried chicken and fried fish. My grandfather had a summerhouse out in Michigan, in an area called Idlewild, a couple hours from Chicago. He had enlarged this little farmhouse, made it big enough for all the cousins. We would go there in the summer time. Grandma, who was from the south, she was the matriarch, she would get up at 4:30 in the morning and start. My dad and I would go to the river to catch catfish and bring it back. But it was one of those tables with everything, pancakes, and chicken, and fish, eggs and everything. But I think that is where my interest in the meats came from“.
JR: Well, it clearly has benefitted the burger you make. I find that the hardest thing for people with meat, is being connected to where it comes from. You were a hunter, so you were already connected to that.
CL: “Cleaning the game was my job. 12-16 yrs old”.
JR: There seems to be a certain taste composition that needs to happen for our bodies to hit that point of satisfaction. I have had so many burgers that miss that “burger” taste, even when the patty is big or the meat is supposed to be top notch. What is it that gives it that “burgery” taste?
CL: “You get the taste from the genetics of the meat. Bill Niman redirected our interest in quality meat because he felt it was the genetics that determine the quality of the muscle and the fat content to a large degree. After that, the aging is important. We found that for our uses, three weeks of dry aging… wet aging is when they butcher the animal and put the parts in Cryovac, something that a lot of the industry uses because it has a longer shelf life, so it’s a cheat. It means that you can keep it for longer than you really should. Dry aging puts the meat through enzymatic changes that tenderize the meat and develop flavor. Without that, I feel strongly that you would find it very hard to produce a good steak (or burger). I have also found for the most part, grass-fed beef is relatively low in marbling fat and the fat structure is different than what you get from corn – fed beef, and generally you can’t age it for the length of time that you can of corn-fed beef. It doesn’t have the fat cover, it doesn’t have the intramuscular fat content, and that’s where you get a lot of the flavor. There is another aspect of it, and that is the age of the animal. The industry has pushed the slaughter age of the animal to be younger and younger because obviously you can get it on the market quicker and get your money back sooner. But a younger animal hasn’t matured and it hasn’t developed it’s full flavor until it’s well over 3 years old and the industry standard it 15-18 mo. So it is a big difference. The best grass-fed I’ve had was 3 ½ yrs old and it was superb, raised by Bill Niman as well”.
JR: Ok, so how do you do it? How do you make your burger?
CL: I use a con-fed finished beef trimmed with 20% added fat (kidney, suet, or from the flap meat). I found that a 6 oz burger was too small and an 8oz. burger was too big, so a 7 oz. burger ended up being perfect. We used an (3 oz) old-fashioned bun that was soft and squishy made by a mom and pop bakery in Walnut Creek. Burgers are deceptively hard to cook it takes a lot of practice. It’s all about the shape of the burger you need to get a good dimple in the center so that it cooks to just about medium rare. Actually, Judy Rodgers of Zuni wrote a great piece about this in her cookbook.* We tried adding salt to the mix, we tried adding seasoning to it, and none of them worked I; it always changed the texture- ours were salted to order just before cooking and grilled like that. You need to get the heat right or else the outside gets too burnt. We used a wood burning grill (oak and almond) and got it to a medium high heat. The buns should be toasted on a flat surface or in the oven, not on the grill so that you can capture the sweet taste of the sugars without burning them.
JR: When you are in the mood for a burger, how do you make it for yourself? What is your ritual, what do you listen to?
CL: “ Ha, good question (big smile). I like to come home and put one Stevie Wonder’s Fulfillingness First Finale Lettuce, tomato (if they are in season), and raw red onion cut ¼ inch thick and they have to be whole rings, that’s important. No condiments, cheese is ok but sometimes it’s too fatty. Sesame seed bun, slightly sweet, but firm and toasted. I don’t need French fries, but if my son wants some I will make them. And a bottle of Saint Joseph Cotes du Rhone, or other Syrah, that’s the hamburger wine.”
JR: Why do you think people crave burgers?
CL: “Everybody seems to come back to that simple craving that we grew up on, and if you can get someone to taste something once, they can immediately taste that it is good”
I loved Christopher Lee’s burger ritual so much I had to re-create it at home (including the album). It is such a perfect example of how burgers are associated with having some good quality downtime. He also gave me some in depth culinary science behind getting the taste of something right, which in my opinion, is the most important part about satisfying our cravings, and is the key to what Mood Food is.
Burgers are considered a Mood Food because they are both a food we intensely crave and a food that invokes memories and nostalgia. Everyone has their own idea of the perfect burger, and that emotional association is the strongest attribute to our craving them. As soon as the smell of a burger hits our olfactory, our brain recognizes the taste of it and the memory that goes along with it. Our brain traces the patterns of our behavior. It remembers how the burger satisfied the body’s need for protein and fat, which is heavy on the digestion. It remembers when we were good and full from eating a burger and how we seem to slow down for a bit. It remembers that we had a satisfying feeling, and we became calm and grounded.
Craving burgers is not the same as craving other favorite foods like cookies, which are sweet, or salty chips, because each taste category has its own emotional patterning. Burgers have a Savory taste, and we crave Savory foods when we need grounding. Most Savory foods are protein rich, and proteins and amino acids affect the brain chemistry by producing more of the neurotrasmitters dopamine and norepinephrine, which are responsible for alertness, moods, learning, and positive reinforcement. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the taste of Savory foods belong to the Stomach Meridian, which represents the emotion of grounding. The stomach is also the first site of amino acid digestion. We will crave Savory foods in times of high stress when we are trying to stay focused on getting things done. Think about when you crave that burger; it is usually when you need a treat, like a “time out” on your overcommitted days. The more hectic our lives become, the more Savory foods we will crave.
We have all witnessed how craving Savory foods plays out in our everyday lives. For example, notice most of the people you know who are Savory food cravers. They are the humble- strong type, juggling way too much, putting out too many fires, making no time for themselves and probably lacking self care. Their behavioral pattern is to take on too much and power through. Their food pattern becomes a dependency on their diet to give them the boost they need to stay focused instead of stopping to take a break. This pattern is of course out of balance.
As a Chef and member of the Slow Food Movement, Christopher Lee brought up the point that people are really concerned over the origins of their food. When it comes to eating fresh, local, organic, and in-season produce, this is a win-win situation for everyone. But what happens when we are talking about meat? There is a current debate over whether or not we should be eating grass-fed meat or corn-fed (or finished) meat. According to Christopher, “ This is where ideology can override one’s palate,” and I agree with him. Since our cravings speak to us through our sense of taste, which is healthier? One well-prepared, proportional serving of high quality food that is going to satisfy our cravings, or one which may not make the grade? We should not have a meat-heavy diet; it will keep our bodies out of balance, which will perpetuate constant cravings for high fat, salt, and sugary foods. So isn’t better to intentionally enjoying your food, and skillfully indulge cravings rather than settling or substituting them? Satisfaction can lead to a healthy lifestyle, in balance.
Whether you are in the Burger City or eating your own favorite burger, make sure that it truly satisfies the craving that brought you there in the first place. I would rather eat the best of the best, than mindlessly eat a burger that could perpetuate my cravings. But most importantly, take the time to truly enjoy it, make your burger count.
Recommended butchers:
Avedanos http://www.avedanos.com (415) 285-MEAT
235 Cortland Ave. San Francisco, CA 94110
Star Meats http://www.yelp.com/biz/star-meats-berkeley (510) 652-7712
3068 Claremont Ave. Berkeley, CA 94705
