Another Worthy Burger in Strasbourg (France)

Every once in a while, fate smiles upon you. As most of you already know, my wife and I founded the "Share-A-Burger" initiative in December 2004 in a genuine attempt to change the world one burger at a time. If you're not already a fan by the way, please like our facebook page immediately.

As of today, we have 479 fans sharing the love of burgers and even better, a restaurant in Strasbourg that serves burgers using our GNU General Public License Burger recipe with only minor modifications. So, do not hesitate to go try it for yourself at Le Catsy's Chez Frieda!

And of course: May The Burger Be With You All!

Summer 2012 Burger Awards

Following up on last year's Burger Awards, here is this summer's list of the best Burgers I've had.

Starting with this beautiful Bacon & Cheddar Burger with Jalapenos and Red Onion from Bill's Bar and  Burger in New York: I loved the generous amount of Jalapenos as well as the overall texture and taste of this one!

Bacon cheeseburger at The Corner Bistro: Although this burger was good, I must admit it didn't live up to the hype of being The best burger in New York City. I, later, learned that the chef that used to prepare this rumored excellent burger doesn't work at The Corner Bistro anymore which might explain my relatively disappointing experience:

The Best Burger Blogs

I have a passion for burgers and I love to take pictures of them. There are, however, dedicated blogs that do a much better job than me. So here's my list of not-to-be-missed burger blogs:

- Burgerac: http://www.burgerac.com/

- Hamburger America: http://hamburgeramerica.blogspot.com/

- Burger Junkies: http://burgerjunkies.com/

Drool more after the break:

Le Camion Qui Fume - Food Truck - Paris

Making a close to perfect burger requires two major skills: humility and method. Kristin Frederick (pictured above), the chef behind "Le Camion Qui Fume" (The Smoking Truck), is gifted with both.

Humility is essential when it comes to burgers because no matter how talented a chef you are, you have to recognize that the best burger can only be a classic burger. It is thus essential to feature it in your menu no matter how fancy, smart or inventive you think you are.

La Cantoche de Paname - Paris

As many scientific breakthroughs are the results of random acts, it only seems logical to conclude that the same rule must apply to the Art of Burger. In their almighty Cheddarness, it seems that the Burger Gods deemed me worthy of witnessing such an occurrence. Or maybe they wanted to balance the forces of Cheddarness for the better as my lunch at Blend Hamburger on the same day had been a bit disappointing.

Speed Burger Strasbourg Review

Now that Speed Burger has a joint in Strasbourg, I had to try it out. I can't believe they opened shop two weeks ago and I didn't know! So, here comes my relatively late review.

First of all, you need to know that Speed Burger has many locations in France and specializes in home deliveries, an unexplained rarity in France and particularly in Strasbourg. Doesn't it feel great to know you can pick up the phone and just order a burger that will be delivered to your home in less than thirty minutes?

So, how was the service and food?

Oops! The Burger Gods Did It Again At 231 East St. In Strasbourg (France)

Distinguishing reality from our imagination may be a concern for some philosophers. In fact, I am yet to be proven wrong in my assumption that the entire universe and all beings and things in it are just a product of my imagination. In that same line of thinking, my recent (read: two decade old) but unconditional passion for burgers seems to have led to a spike in Burger Joint creations in my hometown.

As I was almost ready to embrace the fact that the world may not be a holographic projection after all, two great Burger Joints opened up in Strasbourg. Someone please explain me how could that be a coincidence?

The first Burger Joint to open was "Le Pied de Mammouth" and I must say my city really lacked such a place. Its opening seems to have been closely followed by the opening of a second, yet different Burger Joint named: "231 East Street" and located 3 Place Saint Etienne (Tel: +33388169613). The former establishment features huge and original burgers whereas the latter sports classic burgers in a perfect bun with juicy melted cheese. I can't say which one is the best but both places definitely deserve a visit!

The number obsessed in you (and is there any Burger lover who isn't it?) will ask how these burgers rate on the Shake Schackedness scale. So, let me answer this utmost important question: I would grant "Le Pied de Mammouth" a solid 6.65 out of 7 and "231 East St." a 6.66. And for those of you more familiar with the In-N-Out Burger Awesomeness scale, this would translate into 42 for the former and 42.42 for the latter.

As a special bonus to my faithful readers, here is the menu at 231 East St. (courtesy of @DrGGT):

Granted, it is short and reduced to its bare essentials but you have to admit: who wants to hesitate for hours between 20 different Burgers when they crave for melted cheddar, perfectly cooked patties, lettuce, tomato and mayo in a bun? In this day and increasingly complicated age, do we really need more options than these classic three: Hamburger, Cheeseburger and Bacon Cheeseburger? Although this menu features a salad which might scare some of you away (and frankly shocked me when I saw it), I think they did a great job at simplifying things.


Enjoy it!

The (Update: Former) Best Hamburger In Strasbourg (France)

Without any doubt the best hamburger in Strasbourg can be found in the picture above and IRL (well, almost) at the location disclosed below:

Soul Meat
(For some unknown reason, you will only find their contact information in the yellow pages if you look for "Diable Bleu")

Update as of July 8, 2011: this place doesn't serve the best hamburgers in town anymore. For the best hamburgers, go to "Le Pied de Mammouth" or "231 East St."

Sunday Burger Sunday Holiday Season Edition: The Best Of Two Worlds

To celebrate the coming Holiday Season, I made a special burger tonight featuring the best of two worlds: the beauty of the Burger from the New World & Gourmet ingredients from the Old World. I must say that this simple looking burger was fabulous. The combination of Pepper Mustard, Foie Gras, Truffles and Meat was just perfect! YOU SHOULD ALL TRY IT.

Of course, I had to have a regular burger to establish a baseline for my comparison. So here's a closer look at my meal:

I wish to thank all my friends that joined the Sunday Burger Challenge tonight. Many thanks to Steph & Typedown in particular!

More to come next week! Stay iTuned!

If Hamburgers Were Drinks They Would be Martinis

Homer's (I'm not talking about Homer Simpson!) poems refer to the food and drinks of gods as Ambrosia and Nectar. For us mere mortals & meat lovers, hamburgers might be the next best thing to Ambrosia. In the same line of thinking, Martinis might be the latest human attempt at competing with Nectar. Though very different, Hamburgers and Martinis have a lot in common. They both seem very easy to prepare and some people might be reluctant to consider them as "serious" food and drinks for the connoisseur. I, however, believe that they both are a lot more complex than meets the eye. There are probably millions of ways to prepare a good hamburger and the same goes for Martinis.

Originally, the Dry Martini Cocktail was named Martinez but its evolution over the years led to the advent of the now famous (dry) Martini. Though not popular everywhere in the world (try ordering one in France and you'll be stuck with vermouth on the rocks), it is becoming increasingly known. It looks very easy to prepare but the amount of possibilities make every single Martini a unique piece of art.

There are six basic ingredients to a perfect Martini: Extra Dry Vermouth, Gin or Vodka, Olives, Ice Cubes, a shaker or lack of it and a Martini Glass:

1) Extra Dry Vermouth: you can use half a spoon of it, or just wash the ice cubes with it or just pour it in the glass and get rid of it. Most American bartenders will actually not use it at all.

2) Gin or Vodka: that's up to you. The Original Martini is made with Gin. I like Vodka better though. Keep in mind that there are so many brands of high-end Vodkas nowadays that choosing the Vodka alone can be mind-boggling. As for me, I recommend to use Grey Goose Vodka.

3) Olives: stuffed or not stuffed? That is the question! My preference goes to blue cheese stuffed olives but, once again, it really is up to you.

4) Ice Cubes: Some say that the water used to make the ice cubes or even their shape can change the taste of the drink.

5) To shake or to stir? Once again, there is no definite answer to this question. A shaken Martini will be colder but will have less flavor. And don't forget that some people also argue about which shaker to use! My preference goes to the Boston Shaker!

6) Martini Glass: Make no mistake about it: if you don't have a real Martini Glass then you shouldn't waste your time preparing this cocktail. You can't serve a Martini in anything else than a Martini Glass.

That's it for this Martini 101 class! More to come soon! Stay tuned!

Sunday Bagel Sunday

Should I ever be transported to an alternate universe where Hamburgers are replaced by Bagels and Bagels by Hamburgers or vice-versa or the opposite, this is what I would have on Sunday evenings!

More info on how to get your hands on the bagels pictured above here.

SETI Reboot: Project Dorothy & Watching Outer Space TV Broadcasts

Everyone has heard of SETI. This project aimed at scanning distant stars for radio signals that could be held as evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligent life. Today, I learned that Project Dorothy will start re-scanning distant stars that have already been scanned by project SETI as a renewed effort to try and find intelligent life outside of our planet. I can't help but wonder how fascinating and at the same time odd it would be if we were to find evidence that we are not alone in the universe.
Let's be optimistic and imagine we were to receive and decode radio-signals such as audio-video signals emanating from a distant planet. Assuming intelligent life and the tendency to become a couch potato are related, let's go even one step further and imagine these observed intelligent beings had some kind of TV equivalent and that we were able to watch their TV broadcasts coming directly from outer space. Wouldn't it be cool to flip channels and watch soap operas from the other side of the galaxy featuring 4-legged aliens and being able to understand them thanks to instant YouTube/Google translations? Outer space channels would surely be a hit! Discovering an alien world through its TV broadcasts would change everything in our world and in the way we perceive the universe.
If the broadcast came from a a very distant star, direct communication wouldn't be possible due to the limitations of our current understanding of physics and namely the speed of light barrier. We would, however, be able to watch a time-projected broadcast of their maybe-extinct culture, learning something new on a daily-basis or looking forward to the release of the next outer space blockbuster.
My main concern would be: how frustrated would it be not to be able to buy whatever would be featured in outer space commercials such as Double Space Burgers?
If we look at things the other way around, imagine if aliens were to receive and watch our current TV broadcasts? Shouldn't we be ashamed of the image of our world that we are sending everywhere in the Universe?

A Day Trip To Germany

Yesterday, I went on a day trip to Germany in quest of the perfect sausage (as well as a Double Whopper with cheese at the closest Burger King to where I live). Well, I must say Edeka (a supermarket chain in Germany) did not disappoint me! I had originally planned to shop at the Edeka supermarket in Kehl. But my great sense of direction, car navigation system and iPhones (plurial form since I had brought along an old jailbroken iPhone 3G equipped with a prepaid German Blau sim card to serve as a MiFi router) were of no help when it came to locating this venue. I would, however, realize later on, while driving back home, that there are signs all over the road pointing to its location. It seems my excitement and low I.Q. made me oblivious to these clues at the time.

As you might have guessed, this was not going to prevent me from fulfilling my destiny so I decided to head to Offenburg where my car navigation system could locate an Edeka supermarket. Believe me, it was worth the drive! My eyes were mesmerized by the variety of sausages on display, their cheddar cheese, hot cheese dip for Doritos, hot dog buns, hamburger buns and so forth.

This is the place to shop!

And to make it an even more perfect day, I stopped at Burger King on my way home!

The Day Work Is Abolished

If we consider that an average of 2 bank holidays are added to the calendar every century and that there are roughly 300 working days left in our calendar today, then it makes sense to think that one day there won't be a single day left for work per year.
So, according to my newly discovered theory and my calculations on my HP-28S: in 150 centuries, that is 15.000 years, humanity will be freed from the torture of work and will be able to Burgerify itself. That certainly makes a case for environmentalists to carry on their efforts to save the planet until then.

We Want You To Have A Pot-Au-Feu Burger

This burger was awesome and consisted of Pot-Au-Feu meat with Foie Gras!

It can be had at The Masked Pickle Restaurant in Strasbourg!

If you go there, don't forget to mention you read this blog and you will NOT get any special treatment or discount.

If I Had A Hammer And A Stargate

I could have chosen "Monday Burger Monday"as the title of this post but decided otherwise as I'm attempting to possibly write the worst blog post ever in the entire history of the Internet and while at it, probably the worst piece of writing altogether in the history of mankind, the Universe and whatever preceded the latter.

You might be tempted to ask, provided you had the guts to comment this post and therefore risk being traced back and associated with this blog, why I would change my perfect habits and make a burger on a Monday. Well, I know I have used my readers to the Sunday burger challenge but I had good reasons to try and reach Burger Xanadu on a Monday. As a matter of fact, we are hosting friends next week-end and will probably go out for dinner next Sunday evening, hence denying ourselves from another attempt at the perfect burger. It, consequently, only seemed logical to anticipate our  Sunday routine as a precaution in case anything would happen to us until the following Sunday.

I must say I was quite happy with tonight's burger. It was tasty, juicy and spicy. I used Louisiana Gold Green sauce, two beef patties, lettuce, two slices of cheese with Buffalo Mozzarella in-between the slices (an idea of a Michelin Star Chef friend of mine). This made for a perfectly melted cheese and juicy burger. It was kind of like applying the recipe for a Juicy Lucy to the cheese itself.

So, what's up with the Hammer, Stargate and possibly worst blog post ever?

Well, here it comes: while I was tasting my burger, I had this stroke of genius (well, actually quite the opposite): If I had a Stargate, I would probably use it to go the most isolated planet in the galaxy (where, of course, the entire population of the planet speaks English, just like in the TV series) and I would introduce to this unspoiled civilization the holy Burger. I would persuade them to believe that hamburgers are representations of the essence of the universe, that they should be revered to and that  followers should strive to try and perfect their recipe. This amazing idea would make generations and generations work on my Sunday burger challenge. They would innovate in the field of Hamburgers (disregarding any other field such as physics, mathematics, biology, art etc... as Hamburgers unify all fields) and the result of all this would be the advent of a new Universe filled with wisdom and melted cheddar.

What about the Hammer? Well, isn't it obvious? The Hammer would be used to show the people from this faraway planet at the edge of the universe how to beat the sh*t out of a beef patty in order to make it flat and large. I would teach this people how to frantically scream, like a serial killer for his first kill, and flatten all patties ever destined to be used in a burger.

And when this whole process is over and in millions of years, Burger Xanadu is reached, I will prove Bergson wrong when he stated that the essential function of the universe was to be a machine for the making of Gods for in fact, the essential function of the universe is to be a machine for the making of Burgers.

Sunday Burger Sunday

In my ongoing Sunday challenge to achieve Burger Nirvana, I am 100% sure (though still in doubt) that I took the best Hamburger pictures ever today! I, of course, decided to post them on my blog right away in order to share them with the world. Indeed, what better way to start off a new week than by having burger dreams the night before? So, here are the pictures for you to behold and have wet dreams (I'm referring to drooling)!

Unfortunately, my attempt at Burger Xanadu only completed one of my goals: form. Sadly, content was not on par with the way the burgers looked today. A classic tale of form vs. content! However, If I manage, next week, to combine last week's burger taste with this week's appearance, I believe that I will have reached Burger Heaven and through this compassionate act, bliss will be spread amongst all human beings as Rupert Sheldrake accurately predicted in his Morphic Resonance Theory. For those of you not yet familiar with this very popular, yet totally unknown and controversial, theory, it suggests, as Douglas Rushkoff presented it in his hard-to-be-taken-seriously book Cyberia, that acquired competence in one individual of a species can be passed on to all other individuals of the same species through a Morphogenetic Field Of Consciousness! For better understanding of this theory, do not confuse the words consciousness and couscousness (the latter referring to a mental state reached after having eaten way too much North African food).

Burger King Might Be Coming Back To France

Rumor has it that Burger King might be coming back to France! Their last restaurant in France had closed down in 1997. This Second Coming of the King in France might fulfill my wildest dreams!

If this were to come true, I wouldn't have to use the wormhole that I discovered many years ago. This anomaly in the fabric of the space-time continuum allows me to be at a Burger King in the USA after a 40 mn car drive from France (granted, it's weird that they don't speak English there and that everything is written down in German).

Let's all hail the King when he comes back to France!

Update: this rumor was unfortunately fake.

The Case For Food Perversion

I am surprised to see that the concept of Food Perversion is not widely accepted for it is a growing concern for health authorities worldwide. Originating in the structural disavowal of health and nutrition concepts, people suffering from this condition (referred to food perverts in this post) are unable to experience satisfactory gustative pleasure in the absence of their fetish. The most common fetish associated with food perversion is hamburger or melted cheddar cheese. Food perverts will typically only eat meals consisting of hamburgers or anything associated with a melted cheddar cheese sauce. They need to be treated because their condition is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic complications. So let's all raise our voices for food perversion awareness!

101010 - 42 - The Ultimate Answer To All Questions

It is no coincidence that today's date (10/10/10) happens to be a Sunday. It probably holds the answer to all questions. As 101010 converted in binary is 42 and 42 being the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, if you add to this equation the fact that Sunday is Burger Day for me, I can only conclude, as French humanist Rabelais failed to do so in his Quint Livre that ended with the word "Trinch" in an invitation to find the answer to all questions in wine, that the real answer to all questions and particularly the meaning of life lies within hamburgers!

Can there be anything more beautiful in this world than hamburgers? I don't think so! So, let me introduce you to my latest attempt at Burger Heaven: The Big Awesome Burger (B.A.B.) with the works: designed today and hence holding the answer to all questions.

Note: The answer to all questions is currently in my stomach.