Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

80/20 lean/fat, a combination of Ground Round and Ground Chuck...but what percentage?. Good black pepper and sea salt...you don't need anything else.

In this economy, will people trek to the lower level of Macy's for a $15 burger, even in Manhattan?

@ Robyn

Yay! Glad you tried it and it worked out for you. Last night I received a cheeseburger medium well I had ordered medium rare--I really did not enjoy it and gave the restaurant low marks. Perhaps I'll go there one more time and see if it's any better when cooked correctly.

@ Drakmyth

You have absolutely got to be a troll, or did not read any pages on this site.

@HamburgerAmerica

George, that's a pretty thin burger--what it's crunch vs. juiciness?

Chris W. / STL MO

The autopsy shot of the Black Label burger looks
SO. GOOD.

Chris W.

In general--yes, I will ABSOLUTELY send a hamburger (or steak!) back, if they have solicited or accepted my request for degree of doneness. When I'm eating a thick, tavern style burger, I like them medium-rare at the most, otherwise the advantage to this style, the juicy beefiness, is gone.

@zEli173--you do have to request it a little more underdone, sometimes, particularly if, as you said, a little bloody is preferred to lifeless and bland.

This provides the opprotunity for a timely segue on the topic of "do I send it back..."

Last Tuesday I was at Blueberry Hill here in St. Louis, in the fun and trendy Loop area. Blueberry Hill is often cited when you ask people for the Best Burger in St. Louis (I don't really agree with this). I was there for the purpose of "checking in" and seeing if the burger was as I remembered.

The waiter seemed cool, so when I ordered the burger medium rare, I asked him if I should really be ordering rare. He said he knew what I was talking about, and while they would sometimes overcook the burgers (!), the "good grill guy" was working that night, and I "should be good".

45 minutes later (!) the burger came out WELL DONE. I POLITELY beckoned the waiter, and when he came over I said "I don't mean to be a bother, but do you remember the conversation we had?" he did, and cheerfully brought one within minutes that was right-on medium rare.

Not cooking a burger right, to me, is a strike against a restaurant akin to using frozen patties.

If you're paying $7 or $10 or $12 for a burger and they don't cook it right...send it back.

Chris W., St. Louis

re: juicy burger shots

Thanks a lot; my new LCD screen now has bitemarks in it.

Chris W / St Louis

After the reviews on AHT and elsewhere, I made Burger Joint one of my must-do Manhattan stops during a brief NYC jaunt last month. It was cool finding the hidden restaurant--and the difference between it's interior and that of Le Parker Meridien is surreal--but the burger did not live up to the hype. It wasn't a bad hamburger, it just wasn't...stellar. Specifically, I ordered it medium rare and it came out medium to medium well (only the slightest pink); it was a little on the small side for a restaurant burger (at least most places I eat at.) Pros: it was juicy and the cheese was melted just so. As the previous poster said, perfunctory.

To be fair, I was a little under the weather and not in peak palate, but still...medium well vs. medium rare is a big gaffe for a place that called "Burger Joint".

I suspect either the staff is paying less attention to quality, or the people that raved about it and put it in their top ten lists may have been swayed by the cool interior.