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Hamburgers: the culinary blank slate..
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Enlarge textA few weeks ago the New York Times ran an article which was a little disturbed at the new, growing French passion for that seemingly most American of foods, the hamburger:
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“It has the taste of the forbidden, the illicit — the subversive, even,” said Hélène Samuel, a restaurant consultant here. “Eating with your hands, it’s pure regression. Naturally, everyone wants it.”
It is a startling turnaround in a country where a chef once sued McDonald’s for $2.7 million in damages over a poster that suggested he was dreaming of a Big Mac. Hamburgers were everything that French dining is not: informal, messy, fast and foreign.
But as French chefs have embraced the quintessentially American food, they have also made it their own, incorporating Gallic flourishes like cornichons, fleur de sel and fresh thyme. These attempts to translate the burger, or maybe even improve it, strongly suggest that it is here to stay.
It certainly wasn't the first article to notice the incipient lust of Parisians for their own rarefied style of a patty of ground beef between two sesame buns.
A year earlier, travel guide Gridskipper surveyed the Paris burger scene and ran the gamut of traditional American-style hamburgers into more French territory, with one restaurant, Les Etoiles, offering mince, béchamel sauce and tomatoes wrapped in a buckwheat crepe. Others offer translations of the hamburger that combined tuna, fennel, anchovy mousse and olives into something scarcely recognisable as a hamburger.
Both articles ignore the downmarket and mass market burger innovations that are emerging from the burger chains around France. This Spiderman Burger from Toulouse, for example, contains a 100% stringy cheese filling that simulates the Spiderman's web.
I'm not sure that I want to eat something that is exuded from Spiderman even if he is a fictional character. But then again, some people find beetroot on burgers abhorrent.
As you may have noticed earlier, I'm suspicious of food trends, but I often think that the mass market and urban street food is more telling about a culture than attempting to hunt down rare regional specialties in the countryside. Hamburgers offer a culinary blank slate, the boundaries of which are the burger requiring ground protein of any kind between two slices of something starchy. On top of this can be piled literally anything which means that whoever is cooking the hamburger translates the recipe however they choose. They're the perfect dish upon which to improvise and combine with something local.
Because hamburgers are a recent introduction to most of the world, hamburger recipes are not weighed down by their own history. Unlike many regional foods, there is no canonical recipe that must be followed to guarantee an authentic burger; no specific appellation from where to source your ground beef or cheese or gherkins.
Anyone spotted great regional variations?
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05 Sep 2008 18:34 AEST
From: St Kilda
Hamburger question
so has anyone invented a delicious hamburger with a difference?
04 Sep 2008 23:56 AEST
From: Melbourne
Spiderman
That spiderman burger is creepy.
03 Sep 2008 20:36 AEST
From: Adelaide
Hamburgers:the culinary blank slate..
K-Jam-The Dutch have frikadellen too. It's all really meatloaf, but shaped into patties or little balls. Make them small, stick toothpicks in them and serve them with cocktails (Happy Hour). The most important thing is the quality of the meat. Must Go! I'll be checking in a couple of days. Maybe we'll be talking about something else to eat.
03 Sep 2008 20:26 AEST
From: Adelaide
Hamburgers: the culinary blank slate
Jam-ez - The reason I don't like pickles from a jar (McDonalds pickles are from a jar) is that it's too sour. I have made pickles using Kylie Kwong's recipe. At least it's SWEET and sour.
03 Sep 2008 20:21 AEST
From: Adelaide
Hamburgers:the culinary blank slate
Gezza When you remove the pickles, ketchup and cottonwoolie tomato slices, what's left of a McDonalds hamburger is an unappetizing flat pat of I-don't-know-what-meat. I don't like snails either. They belong in the garden, to be stomped on. K-Jam Beetroot on you hamburger? Yuck! It's as bad as pineapple in your pizza!!! imo. I've never had a Kiwi burger, but I like eggs. A sunny side up egg in in a burger sounds good to me.
02 Sep 2008 0:29 AEST
From: Fitzroy
burger mutations
..... I guess Japan has got these meatball things that mums cook, called burgers, that are sauced with a demiglace and served very simply, no bun, to let the meat shine (literally). Then there are the famous rice-patty burgers at Mos Burger (but their kimpira burger with burdock & carrot shreds kicks ass). Germany has frikadellen meat ball things - but no local variations on the American burger here that I've seen. what i want to know is.... why does a 'kiwi burger' have egg in it?
02 Sep 2008 0:23 AEST
From: Belgischesviertel
re.re:Hamburgers
the quality of burgers in Nth America seems to be EITHER based on the expensiveness of the chuck (in fancy upmarket 'diners') or the 'authentically' greasy fatness (like in&Out burger). I know someone who flies a small light plane to LA from Detroit to eat at In&Out burger, but I haven't had an amazing burger in Nth America yet (for my tastes). I LOVE pickles. And to me, beetroot on a burger is one of god's gifts to mankind. Maybe I should stay in the Antipodes and never ever leave.
01 Sep 2008 9:02 AEST
From: Sydney
That's deep Sherra
It is entirely reasonable to suggest that all hamburgers in a country of 300 million people and probably more than a million eating establishments are boring. I don't find that a mindless exaggeration at all. I do, however, like pickles.
30 Aug 2008 20:52 AEST
From: Melbourne
RE:Hamburgers
I agree the american hamburger is boring especially when you base this on McDonalds.. On a recent trip to The US i was quite surprised by the Quality and Variety available. Even the higher class restaraunts have some interesting twists on the "Boring Hamburger" . I choose not to eat them that often either although i'm sure just about every home has ago at making them ( they are liked ), Just like Frogs legs , snails. Right ? :) , PS don't eat pickles then
29 Aug 2008 19:53 AEST
From: Adelaide
Hamburgers
The American hamburger is boring, in my opinion, and I don't like pickles. Why on earth would anyone eat a hamburger in France, even if it's French-style? I'd never order a hamburger in a restaurant because you don't know the quality of the meat. If we want hamburgers, which isn't often, I make them at home. Then I can use sirloin steak that I have chosen myself and cut off the fat, leaving enough for taste, and put chopped chillies in them. Why do you have three BBQs? Bye
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About this Blog
A blog about what the world eats, when and where it eats it, and why it matters to us all. Only much less ambitious than that sounds and with more excruciating puns.
Phil Lees grew up in rural Victoria, the first generation in his family to not have lived on the farm and thereby not slaughter their own meat.
In 2005 he moved to Cambodia and started the nation’s first food blog, Phnomenon.com, named after the best pun that he has ever made. It turns out that Cambodian food is delicious and unlike the warnings in most guidebooks, is not likely to kill you with any immediacy. Gridskipper called him a “national treasure”. Lonely Planet’s Greater Mekong guide called him “the unofficial pimp of Cambodian cuisine”. The New York Times laughed at a funny hotdog he saw.
Phil makes a mean sausage, a hoppy pale ale, a modest laksa. He owns three barbecues and is in the market for a fourth. He’s never eaten at a Michelin-starred restaurant. There is more important food in the world to be eaten.
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