Best Burger in NYC Search: Beauty & Essex

Beauty & Essex 

146 Essex St. 

(212) 614-0146 

Burger: Beauty & Essex Burger ($17)

The Lower East Side – don't be fooled, this ain't your grandparent’s LES. Gone are the days of the full-blown working class community, replaced by trendy shops, indie rock clubs and upscale fine dining establishments. Gentrified and glamorized, the neighborhood has become a destination for what’s cool in cuisine and clubbing. With help from developers and real estate agents, the former ‘hood encompassed what’s now known as the East Village and a post-2005 split provided Generation Y with its current understanding of the Lower East Side. Historically a lower-class worker and immigrant neighborhood, the LES is now home to a hip restaurant row on Clinton Street and scores of food trucks lined up near the relatively fresh Hester Street Fair. Predictably, it has also become a common area to post up a best burger in NYC contender – bringing us such gems as Beauty & Essex. Gaudy signage, a faux pawn shop storefront and an epically detailed glitzy 10,000 square foot interior make up what’s home to one of our favorite entries from the 2011 Wine & Food Festival Burger Bash care of Chef Chris Santos. Drawing praise from far and wide, we visited recently for a bit of sustenance and subterfuge.

Our Expectations: An eight ounce patty of lamb and brisket topped with spicy roasted garlic aioli, goat’s milk feta cheese, lettuce, onions and a beefsteak vine ripened tomato all on a ciabatta bun. The same burger we encountered in sample size at the 2011 Burger Bash, this time in full form, still sounds delightful.

The Burger

Meat: Cooking a larger patty comes with risks - that of overcooking the outside and undercooking the inside. Frankly, getting it right is an art form. Our burgers came out just a tad overdone to our always medium rare request. That said, it was the only misstep. Still juicy and slightly salted, bearing a unique balance of fresh texture and beautiful crusty char, bite after bite was consistently savory – Umami at its finest.

Toppings: Feta was a fine touch, not too powerful but packing a combination of both tangy and salt while also providing a creamy texture. Garlic roasted aioli yielded another dash of tang and it’s placement on the top bun helped spread an even distribution per bite. Onions were sweet and slightly crunchy, another texture boost. Though, failure came in the form of the poorly placed lettuce. With juices flowing, eaters should expect the bottom half of the bun to catch the remains. Yet, lettuce acted as a barrier to entry and said juices ended up on our hands or sadly, our plates.

Bun: Ciabatta isn’t a terrible choice, but it won't be mistaken for our favorite. The wheat flour based bun is a popular option with rather large and gourmet burgers such as Chef Santos’. While a bit dry, the taste is spot on, but the ratio of bun to patty is off. The bottom half needs to be cut thicker in order to handle the remnant juices, much like it was at our recent review of The Breslin. At Beauty & Essex we were left with a top heavy bun halfway through eating our entrée.

Bedlam’s Beauty & Essex Judgment

Meat (47): Slightly overcooked, so a few points off there, but supreme Umami - tender, fresh, scrumptious and bearing a delicate char.

Toppings (22): Finely tuned feta provided a creaminess to savor while combining with the aioli to give a kick of tang. The lettuce, while not normally a hindrance and more of an afterthought on most burgers, was the detractor. 

Bun (19): Somewhat dry and an uneven cut provided the disappointment along with a questionable choice for maximum juice retention. Nice taste, just too topsy turvy.

Ranking: 88 out of 100

Best Burger in NYC Search: The Breslin Bar & Dining Room

The Breslin Bar & Dining Room 

16 W. 29th St. (Between Broadway & 5th Ave.) 

(212) 679-1939 

Burger: The Chargrilled Lamb Burger ($17) 

Consider the scene: A dimly lit British pub with rustic charm and medieval chandeliers dangling from the ceiling. Scenesters, foodies and gastrotourists sprinkled about with more filing in from an adjacent and equally trendy lobby bar. Indie rock and hip-hop beats spinning, bouncing off the walls and echoing through the dining room. All the while, diners attempt to focus on a mouth-watering menu packed with an epic array of indulgences. Can you picture it? Because that, in a nutshell, is The Breslin - April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman’s boisterous barroom attached to the uber-hip Ace Hotel. Since it’s illustrious opening in late 2009, crowds have flocked to the gastro-pub, obsessed with it’s meats, cheeses, puddings and, importantly, a best burger in nyc candidate. We’ve had the pleasure of devouring one of Bloomfield’s creations previously at her West Village joint, The Spotted Pig. Highly ranked on our list, and engrained in our minds and pasted on our palates forever, would we be wrong to expect a commensurate burger at The Breslin?

Our Expectations: The Chargrilled Lamb Burger. An eight ounce lamb patty, topped with feta cheese, homemade cumin-infused mayo and placed on a ciabatta roll. Our first true foray into another meat blend outside of beef (minus Resto’s pork and beef blend), Bloomfield’s offering is not necessarily for the conservative, casual eater. Lamb can be gamey at times, though we visited The Breslin with open minds and clear palates.

The Burger 

Meat: Lamb, as a burger patty, is a different animal altogether…pun intended. While it can often be gamey, it does provide a silky texture and enough fat to render it tasty. Such is the case with The Breslin’s burger. While formidable in size at a heavy eight ounces, the patty is loosely packed, which allows for optimum flavor enhancement in all it’s nooks and crannies. With great balance in seasoning and cooking temperature, the lamb provided rich flavor through and through. A delicate crust made our first bite delectable yet, unfortunately, quite salty. Nevertheless, the salt was easy to overcome care of the supreme texture and tenderness and wasn’t extremely overbearing.

Toppings: As with Chef Bloomfield’s Spotted Pig offering which uses Roquefort, this came with a pungent cheese in the form of feta. While not too cumbersome, the creaminess made way for the lamb to shine, albeit adding a bit more salt to the equation. In similar fashion to the aforementioned Pig’s burger, the feta required some spreading to even out each bite but still provided an excellent contrast to the lamb and in effect, created a pleasant synergy. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the cumin-infused mayo. Innovative? Yes. Delicious? Not so much. We avoided the mayo after a few bites, choosing to enjoy the burger without it.

Bun: Ciabatta is always a pleasant option, proving to be soft, flavorful and an admirable component to the burger’s overall composition. Sweet and fluffy, it was a structural ally to all eight ounces of lamb as ratio-wise it played an effortless role. Still, as with other similarly scaled patties, chewing fatigue was an issue. Finishing the grand patty is a feat in itself and having to chow down on equal parts of bun can be challenging.

Bedlam’s The Breslin Bar & Dining Room Judgment 

Meat (47): Tender, silky and rich, lamb proved to be a spectacular choice for our – ahem – refined palates. Though, a few points off for heavy-handed saltiness and a cumbersome size.

Toppings (20): Creamy and smooth but slightly too salty, the feta was a welcome addition for the most part. The same cannot be said for the cumin-infused mayo, which lacked appeal.

Bun (21): A well-tailored suitor for such a substantial patty, deemed worthy via a fitting burger-to-bun ratio. Tasty and soft, but still a challenge to devour without feeling like a chore.

Ranking: 88 out of 100