The early bird gets the burger.
Restaurants across the city are increasingly offering off-menu hamburgers only available to those in the know — and often in limited quantities and only during a specified time slot. While restaurateurs want to satisfy customers’ hunger for burgers — and be seen as neighborhood spots — they’re loath to be defined by them.
“We keep it as a verbal addition only available to the first few tables each night until they sell out,” Ed Szymanski, the chef and owner of Lord’s, said of the restaurant’s popular Welsh rarebit cheeseburger. “We don’t want to be known as only a burger restaurant.”
Just 12 of the burgers are available each night, so those that want one must snag an early reservation.
Crane Club, the buzzy, new, upscale West Chelsea restaurant and member’s club, started offering an off-menu burger in June with strict rules.
Twelve burgers are on offer each night, and they’re only served for thirty minutes, from 5:30 to 6 p.m. They feature dry-aged prime beef, white cheddar, and preserved tomato, and no substitutions are allowed.
New Yorkers, always looking for insider cred, enjoy sussing out the city’s secret burgers.
Caroline Maggs, 27 and an MBA student, said the rules and lore around Gramercy Tavern’s famous burger are “a huge green flag.”
The hamburger is featured on the restaurant’s casual tavern menu, at lunch and in limited quantities. Maggs prefers to dine in the upscale dining room, which features a haute set menu, but she’s found a work around.
“The trick is that you can indeed order the burger to the dining room side of the restaurant,” she said. “This way you can enjoy the white table cloth, civilized meal without skipping out a classic that the establishment is famous for.”
She and her family were recently thrilled and surprised to discover Caviar Russe, an upscale Midtown seafood restaurant, served a mean burger.
“My mom expressed she was really craving a burger to my dad, and not even to the server directly,” she explained. “The captain, and now good friend, John, must have overheard us because about 25 minutes later, there was a small off-menu burger on a plate in front of her. She said it was one of the tastiest things she has ever devoured.”
Society Cafe, a restaurant inside Walker Hotel Greenwich Village, started offering a backdoor burger in February, but it’s so complicated, only four to six are available each night.
It’s made from 30-day-dry-aged Black angus brisket and topped with a butter-infused with Raclette cheese, bone marrow, and black shallots. It comes with gem lettuce and a half-inch slice of applewood-smoked bacon that has been sous vide for 18 hours and then pan-seared. The rye brioche bun is handmade and the side of Belgian-style fries are cooked in beef tallow.
“It’s truly a labor of love,” Executive Chef Nicholas McCann said. “It’s not something we can produce in larger numbers without compromising the quality.”
Brass, an upscale brasserie in the Evelyn Hotel in Nomad, used to only serve its burger, which is slow cooked for an hour and then prepared with beef bacon, butter lettuce, tomato, caramelized onions, and a secret sauce, at the bar to those who asked.
But, the restaurant recently relented and put it on its aperitif menu. Still, it’s only on offer from 5 to 6 p.m.
“As much as Brass is a destination restaurant, it’s also a neighborhood restaurant,” explained owner/operator Nick Hatsatouris. “As we continue to see more regulars coming in, we wanted to offer something for those in the know.”
The Upper East Side stalwart Quatorze has also made some beefy concessions.
When the original owners, Mark DiGiulio and Peter Meltzer, opened the French restaurant in 1984, they consciously decided not to put a burger on the menu.
“They never wanted Quatorze to turn into a burger shack, and overshadow so many of the great traditional bistro dishes on our menu,” said managing partner Alex McNeice.
When the restaurant moved to 82nd Street in 2021, he and DiGiulio debated for months about serving a burger to “attract the next generation of Upper East Siders.”
DiGiulio “begrudgingly” agreed to put one on the menu, McNeice said, but only at the bar.
The team spent months recipe tasting before settling on a chuck, brisket, and short rib blend with brie, shallot jam, and green peppercorn aioli.
“We wanted to do something different than the classic [cheeseburger], and wanted to do something with a french flair,” said McNeice.
They have 10 of the burgers available nightly, and sometimes they’re enjoyed beyond the bar.
“If a customer at a table asks nicely, we will allow it!” McNeice said.
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