Jeffrey Steingarten attached his obsessive, fertile food brain to the not-so-lowly hamburger in this month's Vogue magazine, and the results were mouthwateringly insane. Since the good folks at Vogue don't share well with others (the magazine doesn't put Steingarten's pieces online), I am going to do my best to summarize his findings. I also managed to talk to Steingarten for a few minutes about hamburgers, so stay tuned.
Steingarten on hamburger greatness:
What do we demand of the perfect hamburger? That the meat patty be profoundly beefy in flavor, mouthwateringly browned on the outside, and succulent (a combination of juicy and tender) on the inside. The bread or bun should not interfere with any of these virtues. It should be soft, mild, and unassertive; its job is to absorb every last drop of savory juice trickling from the meat while keeping the burger more or less in one piece and your hands dry. Mouthwatering, beefy, juicy, and tender—not too much to ask from life, but entirely elusive, at least to me. It's not as though I haven't tried. God knows, I've tried.
Where his hamburger exploration takes him after the jump.
We should all live in Jeffrey Steingarten's world. As food critic for Vogue, he's got one of the best food-related jobs out there, exploring the universe of very fine dining on his employer's dime. For the March issue of the tony fashion magazine, Steingarten was asked by his editor to hire a personal chef for two weeks and report on the experience.
Bonus material: The Great Bread Debate—"soft, squishy British bread" vs. "incinerated, burnt, crusty bread." And, the last of the outtakes from our video microseries.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, January 29, 2007 at 11:15 AM
Adam Kuban's recent curry rice feature prompted a few commenters to fret about MSG, a phenomenon that always reminds me of the essay from Jeffrey Steingarten's collection It Must've Been Something I Ate, in which he points out that a) the Chinese, who eat MSG every day, are not suffering from debilitating headaches en masse, and b) foods like Parmesan cheese and ketchup contain enough free glutamate to trigger headaches in people who say they're affected by MSG but no one ever complains about them.
The Guardian's Alex Renton wrote a great article two years ago about the mythology of MSG that goes from the discovery of umami, to the mass production of MSG, to the 1968 article that triggered the spurious conflation of MSG with Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. From the piece: "Science has still not found a convincing explanation for CRS: indeed, some researchers suggest it may well be to do with the other things diners have imbibed there - peanuts, shellfish, large amounts of lager. Others say that fear of MSG is a form of mass psychosis - you suffer the symptoms you've been told to worry about." Renton himself experiments with the stuff, to hilarious results.
Posted by Adam Kuban, December 13, 2006 at 11:00 AM
In this episode of Table for Two, Curb Your Enthusiasm's Susie Essman has lunch with Vogue food critic Jeffrey Steingarten. Essman reveals her cannot-eat-list, which Steingarten, when handed the menu, ignores.
I've been blown away by the quality of the entries for the Win A Dinner with Jeffrey Steingarten and Me contest. The breadth of candidates offered up by entrants (To enter you have to tell me in a hundred words or less who your favorite food critic is and why) has been impressive indeed: Frank Bruni, John T. Edge of Oxford, Mississippi, Robb Walsh of Houston, Texas, Calvin Trillin, the late R.W. Apple, Ruth Reichl, Peter Meehan (current $25 and under critic at the NY Times, Jonathan Kauffman (formerly of the East Bay Express), blogger Clotide Dusoulier, Roy Andries de Groot, A.A. Gill, Anthony Bourdain, and Jane and Michael Stern.
But we still need about 25 more entries before ending the entry process. Remember, this is not an election. You can write about one of the above-mentioned writers or someone brand new. So enter right here. Steingarten and I await the pleasure of your company.
My friend Tom is on his way to Barcelona, so of course he asked me where he should eat. I've never been to Barcelona (a shocking admission for a foodie), so I immediately called Jeff Steingarten, who's eaten everywhere. Alexander Lobrano has a pretty comprehensive take on Barcelona food on Epicurious. Generally I find Lobrano, who has lived in Paris for almost twenty years, to be pretty reliable if a little snooty. Time Out Barcelona also devotes a fair amount of space to food, but in general I find Time Out's writers all over the world to be inexperienced and not as knowledgeable as they should be. Steingarten just called, and as he doesn't have an assistant he can't find the piece in Vogue he wrote on Barcelona restaurants. But a lovely woman at Vogue named Phyllis Rifield graciously faxed me the article, which is from August of 2002. Steingarten told me on the phone that Cal Pep (Placa de las Olles 8 (93-310-79-61) is the one place you must go (get there early, he says, or be prepared to wait quite a while for a table). Other Tapas spots Steingarten likes are Estrella De Plata (Placa de Palau 13 (93-268-06-35), Cata 181, Valencia 181 (93-323-68-18), Santa Maria, Comerc 17, (93-315-12-27), and El Xampanyet, Montcada 22 (93-319-70-03). I'm jealous, Tom. I want a full report.
I'm in a Gael Greene groove today, maybe because she's my neighbor AND because her sexy memoir is about to come out (more about that later), so here's her late 2004 take on Parisian restaurants . I'm going to call Jeffrey Steingarten to get his latest take on Paris, and with any luck I will post it today sometime. Jeffrey is sometimes very difficult to get a hold of, but I'll do my best.
Jeffrey Steingarten attached his obsessive, fertile food brain to the not-so-lowly hamburger in this month's Vogue magazine, and the results were mouthwateringly insane. Since the good folks at Vogue don't share well with others (the magazine doesn't put Steingarten's pieces online), I am going to do my best to summarize his findings. I also managed to talk to Steingarten for a few minutes about hamburgers, so stay tuned.
