Talking with Nicholas Gilman Mexico City Food Writer and Critic

Today i'm talking with Nicholas Gilman about the food culture in Mexico City. He gave me some recommendations on where to go and what to eat. We also talked about tips and tricks for people that are planning to visit Mexico City. Nicholas is the author of the book, Good Food In Mexico City.

The number of restaurants are increasing so fast that he said he can, "barely keep up" with them. Mexico City is really making a name for itself with it's food scene; it's one of the great reasons for tourists to visit. There is a large variety of restaurants and price ranges. Nicholas compared the Mexico City food culture to New York City's, in both cities you can pick from a wide variety of food from cheap eats to super star restaurants with rock star chefs. 

Nicholas gave me some really useful suggestions for my January 2015 trip to Mexico City. We had a really wonderful conversation about food; even if you are not planning on traveling to Mexico City you should listen. Also, stay tuned, because after i land in Mexico City i'll definitely record some new episodes with Nicholas. Who knows what we will discover together. 

Nicholas notes, "it's highly recommended to take safe precautions when you visit a new country." But says Mexico City is as safe as NYC. He also recommended taking advantage of technology; he suggests in Mexico City you use the Uber app rather than hailing or calling a taxi. Nicholas says, "it as the safest way to get around." 

Links:
Nicholas's Book (Amazon): Good Food in Mexico City: Food Stalls, Fondas & Fine Dining (Kindle edition)

Restaurants mentioned in this episode: Nico's, Pujol, Kaah Siis, Limosneros, Fonda Fina, Fonda Maiora, Cauro, La Docena, Conchita, El Bajio and El Hidalguense.

Jim Johnston's book (Amazon): Mexico City: An Opinionated Guide for the Curious Traveler

Carmen's book (Amazon): Alquimias y Atmosferas del Sabor (Spanish Edition)

The Essential Guide to Modern Mexican Dining in Mexico City

Download this episode!

Transcript:

(00:00:00)
Harry Hawk:

Hello. This is Harry Hawk and this is Talking About Everything and we are here with my new friend, Nicholas Gilman. Nicholas is based in Mexico City and is a food writer, a food critic, and author. Nick, welcome to the show.

(00:00:16)
Nicholas Gilman:

Well thank you for having me. I would like to let you know that I am the author of only guidebook to eating out in Mexico City, which is called Good Food in Mexico City: Food Stalls, Fondas, and Fine Dining. I’m originally from New York and I’ve been here in Mexico for almost twenty years, and I love living here.

(00:00:37)
Harry Hawk:

It’s awesome and I think what’s really happened here is that Mexico and particularly Mexico City has started to gain the awareness of foodies from all over the world, perhaps, and hopefully your book has been a big and growing part of that.

(00:00:54)
Nicholas Gilman:

Well, it really has. I think I was a little ahead of my time. I published the book first in 2007 and in the last three or four years we’ve been in the middle of a renaissance, restaurants, and chefs, and food scenes, and all kinds of amazing festivals and expos, and we’re really at the peak of it right now. There’s just new places opening all the time. I can barely keep up with it, and we’ve really become an amazing destination, a world class destination for eating. Mexico City is…dining and eating is something that we’re trying to push as a reason for tourism here.

(00:01:41)
Harry Hawk:

That’s fantastic. I spoke to my friend, Chef Ong here in New York, he was jealous. He said that I was going back, I spoke to my friend, Mitchell Davis over at the James Beard Foundation, and he said he hadn’t been down in a while and wanted to know what I learned because well yes, as I have mentioned to you, Nick, on a prior call, I’m getting ready to head down there on January 2. So it’s going to be an interesting trip, and that’s really why I wanted to have this conversation, to kind of get some professional advice on where to go and what to do.

(00:02:18)
Nicholas Gilman:

Well, believe me, there will probably be about twenty new places open by the time you get here because it seems to be every day there’s something new and exciting happening from small, creative, what we call fondas, which is like a trattoria or a bistro to fancy new places to old fashioned places that I discover like taco stands in the middle of the market. I mean it’s an enormous city and I don’t think I’ll ever be finished searching for new hidden spots. On every level it’s really exciting for me and for somebody to visit, but you might need help because it’s an enormous place.

(00:03:01)
Harry Hawk:

That’s the idea and we’ve talked before, when I come down there we’re going to do some interviews together, and I got myself a nice hotel room where I can, you know, with a couch and I can interview people, I have a mobile…

(00:03:17)
Harry Hawk:

I do have a mobile studio as well with me, it fits into my backpack. So we can go wherever and record in vitro.

(00:03:30)
Nicholas Gilman:

Okay. Great. I can help you with that. There are a lot of chefs coming here from all over the country, even from all over the world, and opening their versions of what…there’s something I like to call modern Mexico cuisine, it’s the new Mexican cuisine. It’s people who are using…taking advantage of the phenomenal ingredients we have here and products we have, artisanal products, also utilizing traditions, Mexican traditions, recipes, ideas that comes from the classic Mexican cooking. So it’s a combination, it’s post-modern, and it’s really exciting, and it’s all influenced by what’s happened in Spain and what’s happened in the US, but chefs down here have their own take on it. And also regional restaurants are starting to become more popular here in Mexico City, places from the coast, from Baja California, from the southern states, from the northern states, it’s all happening here.

(00:04:36)
Harry Hawk:

Well I love it. I love that there really isn’t an authentic Mexican food in the same way that there isn’t one kind of hamburger in America or one kind of pizza, you know, that it is a large country and each little region, each part of the country has its own ingredients, its own methods, its own perspective. But then like a large city like New York, you know, sort of everything sort of finds its way here, everything is finding its way to Mexico City. I actually have a question because I sent an email, I tried to get a reservation at one of the more famous places and they told me they’re going to be closed the first two weeks of January. I’m wondering, is that something that I’m going to find more and more as I start looking around or is that just that particular restaurant?

(00:05:21)
Nicholas Gilman:

In terms of being closed at that time of year or in terms of just not being able to get a reservation?

(00:05:27)
Harry Hawk:

Being closed at that time of the year.

(00:05:30)
Nicholas Gilman:

No. That is not a time when places close as a rule around here. There isn’t really any particular…places close Christmas, New Year’s, they close during Holy Week which we call Semana Santa, many places are closed then, that’s in April. But January, that’s just bad luck. I don’t know which place you said, but most places should be open then. The city is very quiet until January 6 which is Three Kings’ Day, and then it comes back to life, but there’s still people around.

(00:06:05)
Harry Hawk:

Okay. Great. So I was a little bit nervous about that, but you’ve ______ (6:10).

(00:06:11)
Nicholas Gilman:

Yeah. No. I wouldn’t worry about that.

(00:06:13)
Harry Hawk:

Excellent. I’m going to continue then to start making some more reservations and really trying to get in at night to some of the hot spots, but from your book or from your recent experience, myself or anybody who is headed there, I was wondering if you wanted to quickly mention any particular places across the range from the fine to the…you know, my own personal taste, just so you know, I love street food, simple, you know, what I would call peasant food, and I love the high end in general. I often don’t eat in the middle when it’s something that I can make myself. When I travel I’m a little bit more often because, well, I don’t travel with a kitchen.

(00:06:58)
Nicholas Gilman:

And what’s the question?

(00:07:01)
Harry Hawk:

The question is did you have a few places that you might recommend to me or anybody else who is traveling from the different categories, so to speak?

(00:07:10)
Nicholas Gilman:

I do. I mean, it’s a little difficult to name them offhand. I’m always finding new places. There are a few mainstream, I don’t want to say mainstream, that’s not the right word, but well-known restaurants that are always recommendable such as Nicos. I mean, this is a sort of a middle to upper range type of restaurant. There’s Pujol which is the most famous of all for creative, modern Mexican cuisine, but that’s an institution. I think it’s very interesting. You can take it or leave it. It’s expensive. It’s become kind of a tourist place but it’s still good and it’s still, if you haven’t been there you might want to go there. That’s like the top, the most famous of all. But there are others in that category such as one called Kaah Siis that I like a lot, another one called Limosneros that are very, very good and less known, and I think worth checking out.

(00:08:11)
Harry Hawk:

That’s what I’m looking for, Nick, is your advice, we mentioned here in the podcast, if you send me links, or I’ll find them, I’ll put them in the show notes, and I know you’re writing on an ongoing basis about these, and we’ll have links to any of your writing as well, of course a link to Amazon where people can find your book.

(00:08:29)
Nicholas Gilman:

Sure. Sure.

(00:08:31)
Harry Hawk:

What else comes to mind? And again, price doesn’t matter to me, but I would rather eat at an up and coming place that hasn’t quite gotten the training wheels off than eat at the most fancy place that’s become robotic and in decline, you know what I mean? If that…

(00:08:49)
Nicholas Gilman:

Absolutely. Yeah. I understand that. That’s the whole point. I mean, there are places that are on the cutting edge but have not sort of settled into that institutional malaise, and there’s also new, hip places. You know, what’s exciting here is that there are these small places that are…

(00:09:09)
Harry Hawk:

Can you name some of them just so that people have this as a reference?

(00:09:13)
Nicholas Gilman:

A new place called Fonda Fina, there’s a new place called Fonda Mayora which is just opening this week, there’s a place called Cauro, C-A-U-R-O, there’s a place called Huset that’s kind of a hot spot already. What else? There’s a place called La Docena that is a young chef from Guadelajara who has opened a branch of it here. Another one called Conchita which is a chef from Baja California. These are just the sort of hip, hot places.

(00:09:47)

There’s also the old fashioned ones that have always been great and always will be great. There’s a restaurant called El Hidalguense which does barbacoa and it’s only open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday because barbacoa is something that you have on weekends, and it’s probably been there for 40 years. There’s El Bajío which is famous for kind of all around Mexican food, but particularly for carnitas and for mole. The owner of it, Carmen “Titita,” has written cookbooks and become famous, but this place is just a popular, families, it’s only open during the day, not at night. So these are a couple of the older instituions that are still fantastic and still worth going to.

(00:10:30)

And then there are smaller places like that that are just neighborhood places. There’s the Casa del Toño, which does pozole, and you spend, you will go in there and spend all of five dollars and have an incredible meal.

(00:10:45)
Harry Hawk:

I love the variety. Again, we see it in New York when you can go for the one dollar dumplings and you can go for the five hundred dollar sushi. There’s the range.

(00:10:54)
Nicholas Gilman:

Yeah. Exactly.

(00:10:56)
Harry Hawk:

I’m going to have a transcript of this made and it will be part of the show notes, it will come a few days after probably this gets out on the podcast.

(00:11:07)
Nicholas Gilman:

Okay.

(00:11:09)
Harry Hawk:

I will go in and I will also, as we edit that transcript and put everything in, I will try to put in links to these places if they have websites or there’s an article, if you’ve blogged about them.

(00:11:19)
Nicholas Gilman:

Yes.

(00:11:20)
Harry Hawk:

I will link to your blog. This is, obviously I’m speaking to you, we’re on a podcast, other folks can hear us eventually when they listen in, but this is sort of the plan that I hope, when I get down there, again I’ll be there from the second to ninth, as much time as you have available we’ll schedule some interviews, and it’ll be you, myself, and whomever we’re speaking with, and we’ll just, again, we can have just a conversation about food or about technique, about food sources, about anything. It’s just a conversation. It doesn’t really have to be a hard nose interview, but when we’re done we can pull these transcripts and we’ll be able to have kind of a rich documentation of what’s been done. You’ll have obviously access to all of that if that helps in anything that you’re doing.

(00:12:14)
Nicholas Gilman:

Okay.

(00:12:15)
Harry Hawk:

I’m just excited that you’re open to trying that out with me.

(00:12:19)
Nicholas Gilman:

Sure. Yeah. Sounds fun.

(00:12:21)
Harry Hawk:

I think you’re going to be traveling between now and then.

(00:12:24)
Nicholas Gilman:

Yes.

(00:12:25)
Harry Hawk:

That’s why we’re trying to squeeze this in. But is there anything else that I should think about? I’m going to be staying there for essentially seven or eight nights. I know I can easily fill up the schedule. Is there anything that I should know as a tourist, where to go, where not to go, or even something to avoid in terms of food, or do I need to drink bottled water? The typical tourist questions I think that anybody would have.

(00:12:53)
Nicholas Gilman:

I address those questions in my book about where to eat, what not to eat. The thing about Mexico is it’s much cleaner than it used to be. They will serve water that’s been treated, bottled water, and you really don’t have to worry too much about that. Some people still get sick anyway because there’s just different bacteria in the air here, but people have learned a lot about cleanliness and hygiene and it’s really improved in the last 20 years, 25 years that I’ve been here, but I think you might want to, as far as street food goes, stick to places that I recommend because they’re tried and true places that I know and that I haven’t gotten sick in myself.

(00:13:33)
Harry Hawk:

And I do have a copy of your book. I’m starting to go through it and I will be bringing it with me. So.

(00:13:38)
Nicholas Gilman:

And I think you have to take precautions that you would take in any city in the world. I don’t think Mexico City is particularly dangerous for people who are…for tourists as long as you don’t do silly things that you wouldn’t do in New York or Paris or in any other city where you’re not going to be walking four in the morning and hopping into any old taxi, and we have Uber here, and I highly recommend that visitors use it because it’s safer, and certain neighborhoods you won’t go to at night that I wouldn’t go to at night. That’s like in the city, the worst thing that happens to people usually here is pickpocketing here. They’re real expert pickpocketers, but you have to be careful of that. Sitting in a café and leaving your iPhone out on the table is not a good idea for example outside. Somebody will come by and steal it, but that could happen anywhere. I feel safer than I used to feel when I lived in New York back in the eighties and nineties.

(00:14:39)
Harry Hawk:

Tell me where you used to live. I used to live right around that area as well and that area and many others have so improved and I love that this renaissance that has taken place in Brooklyn and in Queens is also taking place south of the border in ______ (14:56) and in Mexico City.

(00:14:59)
Nicholas Gilman:

We are like New York was twenty years ago. We are in a time when younger people can still afford to live here, to open businesses. It reminds me of how they were doing that back in New York in the nineties. They were opening small restaurants on the Lower East Side and then later in Brooklyn, and I think it’s gotten kind of out of hand, real estate wise in New York. I don’t know if there’s any place left where anybody could do that anymore.

(00:15:30)
Harry Hawk:

Chefs who live in New York, my friend, _____ (15:32), Alan Harding and Jim Mamary opened up a _____ (15:36), the original rent that they paid was eight hundred a month, and that was in the nineties. You can’t touch anything like that anywhere that you would actually want to open a place. You’ve given me a bunch of recommendations in the podcast, I’ve got your book, we’re going to talk more close to that event. Is there anything else that you might want to suggest to me in terms of as I’m doing my planning beyond your book, what I might look for online, should I be using Open Table to make reservations? I was certainly planning on using Uber and I’m really glad that you’ve confirmed that that’s the way to go.

(00:16:18)
Nicholas Gilman:

I think there is the book that my partner did, Jim Johnston, and it’s called A Guide for the Curious Traveler, and it’s an excellent personal guide. It’s actually the book that I started working on writing the food section. He just did a new edition of it and I highly recommend that you read that because it has all the information you really need. It doesn’t have everything that Lonely Planet does, but it’s personal, and it’s better, and it has walking tours, and it’s really kind of a book that’s by somebody who lives here as opposed to a book that most of the mainstream guidebooks send somebody down to just do the research and slap them together. But this is really somebody who lives here and knows the city. So that’s what I recommend as far as reading goes.

(00:17:06)
Harry Hawk:

I’ll certainly put a link to Jim’s book in the show notes as well.

(00:17:10)
Nicholas Gilman:

Other than that I think you just have to come and experience it. This is a crazy city, like any crazy city. I love it. It has a lot of energy. As I say, it reminds me of the energy that New York used to have that it doesn’t quite have for me anymore. It’s become much more stayed and moneyed. There’s exciting stuff happening in all kinds of levels of society and culture.

(00:17:35)
Harry Hawk:

Well I’m excited. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I certainly even thought about renting an Airbnb so I could cook while I was down there, but I decided at least for this trip I’m going to be in a hotel. I’m sure I’ll be back and I probably will be jealous of all the local chefs as they’re working with all this amazing produce and all of that. I guess that would be, if I had one last question on my mind, I know in New York that we’ve really built up this artisanal community both within New York City, the stereotypical _____ (18:09) who is making pickles, to just all the farms in Jersey and Westchester and up into the Hudson River Valley and three hundred miles around this area takes us quite far afield, but we have all of that amazing produce and product coming into the city. Has the same thing been happening around Mexico City in the last twenty years?

(00:18:32))
Nicholas Gilman:

Absolutely. There are people…I would say most of the new, more fine dining type restaurants are using local produce, organic produce, they have producers who are growing things right within the limits of Mexico City itself, in Xochimilco, that are small producers of artisanal and organic produce and artisanal products like cheeses and chocolate and corn products and all kinds of stuff. It’s amazing what’s going on here, and the craft beer, and craft, if that’s the right word, mescal, and tequilas, that is very much happening here. Absolutely. And there are organic markets. It’s amazing how that has exploded as well because it wasn’t really a thing even three or four years ago.

(00:19:22)
Harry Hawk:

Wow. Well you’re going to convince me to come back sooner than later just from the description, Nick, and I am so excited and just looking forward to it. I just want to thank you again for taking the time out of your schedule today to record this, and just planning ahead, thanking you for hanging out when I do get to the city, and Mexico City. So one city to another, it’s going to be a lot of fun, and I just want to give you the opportunity right now, if there’s anything I haven’t asked that you want to mention as well as websites and plugs, if you just want to take a moment and go ahead and let everybody know once again where to find you and everything.

(00:20:05)
Nicholas Gilman:

Well you can find me at goodfoodmexicocity.com. I’ve written for the press all over the world in English so if you Google me you’ll find me. But I think the best advice I can say is to come to Mexico City. When you’re coming in January is a great time. The weather is really always good here. There’s never a bad time. I’d just say, besides food there’s a lot more going on than that. There’s music, there’s culture, there’s art, there’s fantastic museums, and I just recommend that people come.

(00:20:39)
Harry Hawk:

I know there’s a big EDM scene there which is exciting to me.

(00:20:42)
Nicholas Gilman:

Absolutely. So I’m looking forward to your coming and I think we’re going to have some fun.

(00:20:48)
Harry Hawk:

I’m going to get this episode out as soon as I can, and anything you want to send me, any notes or anything to include in the show or something to link to, just shoot me an email in the next couple of days, or if there’s a head shot or anything, and I’m just going to wrap up the show right now by saying this is Harry Hawk and you have been listening to Talking About Everything. I hope that everybody has a great week. This is Harry Hawk saying bye-bye.

Download this episode!

Read more>>>

The best NYC Burgers with Sam Lynas from FoodieHub

I love burgers, I love talking about them, I've sold more than 100k of them and I even won an award for the best burger in NYC (in 2008).

I was really excited to talk with FoodieHub Channel Director Sam Lynas about their hunt to find the best burger in NYC. Sam and I spoke with two of their local experts; two guys who also happen to be friends: Joe DiStefano (Queens) and Dave Cook (The Bronx).

We talked about burger culture, the rise of the burger within the food industry and how the burger has influenced both top chefs and cooks from many cultures to start creating their own burgers and burger "like dishes." Sam noted that they have been trying burgers in NYC for months including a special burger at Gramercy Tavern, the NYC WFF's Burger Bash and during the NYC stop of Meatopita. 

We also talked about McDonalds and their new Create Your Taste "store within a store" concept that has food runners bringing fresh off the grill burgers direct to your table. It seems unlikely this burger will be part of the hunt but you have to stay tuned to fine out.

FoodieHub pays for all their own meals and uses local experts to help find the best food in the world. FoodieHub, "searches for, discovers, celebrates and shares the world's most Essential Eats" using their "network of local food experts from over 275 cities." Read more from Dave Cook at Eating In Translation and read more from Joe DiStefano at Chopsticks and Marrow. Other experts contributing to the NYC burger hunt are: Noah Arenstein (Brooklyn) and Yvo Sin (Manhattan).

Download this episode!



Transcript:

(00:00:01)
Chuck Fresh:

Conversations, interviews, rants, and discussions about society, technology, food, art, culture, games, music, education, business, community, building and marketing, communications, board games, old science, new cars, body piercing, body painting, competitive eaters, zombies and vampires, and more. You’re listening to Talking About Everything with Harry Hawk.

(00:00:28)
Harry Hawk:

Hello. This is Harry Hawk, and this is Talking About Everything and I am here with my new buddy, Sam Lynas. We’re going to be talking about hamburgers and Sam has brought in a bunch of friends, a bunch of guys that I actually know a bit, but hey, Sam, why don’t you introduce yourself and everybody else?

(00:00:45)
Sam Lynas:

Great, so yeah, hi, Harry. Thanks for having us, great to be here today. Yeah, I said I’m Sam Lynas and I’m one of the Channel Directors at FoodieHub. FoodieHub is the world’s largest global network of local food experts and we celebrate essential things to eat all over the world, 275 regions and cities all over the world. We decided we have a fantastic network of food experts who you’ll meet in a minute or some of them anyway from within New York City and we decided what we really want to do is answer one of the age-old questions, where can you find the best burgers and the best hamburgers in New York, so that’s the project that we’re very much enjoying currently working on and researching, so I’m going to introduce you, yeah, two of our food experts. First of all, we have Joe DiStefano. Joe is our food expert for Queens, so Joe, over to you. I’ll let you talk more.

(00:01:39)
Joe DiStefano:

Good morning, Sam. Good morning, Harry. I’ve never been so hungry for a hamburger at this time of day ever, but it’s an exciting project. You know, everybody in New York state kind of…if you were to ask people about pizza, they really sort of know but hamburgers, it’s been an interesting on-going project to suss out what the best hamburger is in New York City are and I’m really learning a lot about my individual tastes from this project.

(00:02:06)
Sam Lynas:

Joe, tell me about your website.

(00:02:07)
Joe DiStefano:

My website is called Chopsticks and Marrow, so chopsticksandmarrow.com as you might guess from the name there is not a lot of hamburger content on it. It’s a website that sort of focused on my, for one of the better word, ethnic dining adventures in the wonderful borough of Queens, New York City, which is one of the most diverse and delicious places on Earth.

(00:02:36)
Harry Hawk:

It’s great to have you on the show. Joe and I know each other for a long time and I know he certainly loves a good burger.

(00:02:43)
Sam Lynas:

Great, and Dave, over to you.

(00:02:46)
Dave Cook:

Good morning. I’m Dave Cook and I write a website called Eating in Translation that in spirit is quite a lot like Joe’s website. My focus is on food that generally I didn’t grow up with, so I might report on West Indian ____ (3:06) or North East Chinese ____ (3:09) or some South American ____ (3:12) but in conjunction with FoodieHub where I’m the expert for the Bronx, I’ve been looking at burgers, something I know very well from growing up and after traipsing all over the world within the confines of New York City, sometimes it’s just great to find a good ol’burger just as a, if you will, a palate cleanser.

(00:03:34)
Sam Lynas:

So Harry, do you want us to tell you a little bit, about how we’re going about this, and what the process is, and what we’ve been doing, and what the next steps are?

(00:03:41)
Harry Hawk:

All of that, Sam. I mean I’m absolutely fascinated that burgers are being covered not from the city perspective but that you’ve got guys covering sort of the zone defense of what’s best around the city. I mean that is your methodology so to speak, looking at the world obviously, but it’s great that it’s being applied sort of in vitro right in New York City.

(00:04:05)
Sam Lynas:

Sure. So obviously, you know, we couldn’t possibly and I don’t think anybody would expect us to try every single burger in New York City. I mean you could eat one probably for every single day for the rest of your life I imagine. What we’ve been doing instead is that we’ve considered kind of thousands and we spent a long time researching and we built kind of spreadsheet that we all have access to and unfortunately, he couldn’t be with us on the phone today but we have a fantastic blogger, The Feisty Foodie, Yvo Sin and Yvo covers Manhattan for us and he’s our food expert for Manhattan sharing all the essential eats the island has to offer. Obviously, Dave, we know about who looks after the Bronx for us. We have Joe focusing on Queens and then we have Noah Arenstein and he looks after Brooklyn for us, so we kind of have most of the different boroughs covered. We’re still on the hunt for a Staten Island burger expert, so if there is a Staten Island burger expert that listens to your show, we’d love to absolutely love to hear from them just so we can tie off the final area that we’re missing at the moment and so yeah, we’ve considered thousands of burgers, we’ve tasted hundreds, and now, we’re definitely pulling together kind of our top 20, and we’re really hoping that this guide to New York’s best burgers is going to be a digital guide across many different platforms, so we’re hoping to launch the first week in January.

(00:05:38)

We want to be the opposite really. Normally, everybody comes around to January and everybody’s focusing on health, and we’re like burgers are for life. They should be enjoyed every single moment as part of a healthy balanced diet. So we want to start celebrating really in January and what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to announce our list of 20 down to ten. We’re going to have a Top 20 Burgers. They’re going to go into our guide and then from one every week, we’re going to be doing a short video on our YouTube channel, FoodieHub, which is YouTube.com/FoodieHub and we’ll be releasing our ten down to one, one burger at a time, and that will take us through January, February, and into March at which point we will kind of name our number one burger in New York.

(00:06:26)

We’ve have some incredible tasting sessions. I was in New York a few weeks ago, had a fantastic time with the guys. I think during the weekends, I was in New York for about four nights, and we tried to count them up. We lost track of a few somewhere in there but it was over the week of the New York Food and Drink Festival. So obviously, we went to the Burger Bash, did fantastically well there. I think enjoy at least ten burgers and actually squeezed in and we went to some just really tasty ____ (6:57) and we also went to Meatopia, tried the burgers. We had an amazing night at Gramercy Tavern where the team there put on an incredible spread for us, which actually included the Gramercy Tavern burger, which I know is very unusual for that to be served in the dining room, if not unheard of, so that was a really amazing thing and a special request to Mr. Meyers himself who very happily came through for us.

(00:07:29)

I don’t want to talk too much about the other burgers we tried because I really want to keep everybody guessing. I don’t want to give anything away. I think by the end of this, we may not want to see a burger again for at least a few days.

(00:07:45)
Harry Hawk:

Well, Sam, this is fascinating. I know I have a little static in my voice, so I’m going to try to speak as little as possible but when we do research, we always want to consider the bias of the researcher. So I think it would be interesting to sort of go around the room so to speak and let everyone talk about what they like in a burger. I think burgers are like people, we all our attracted to different kinds, ages, shapes of people and I think we all have perhaps a bias towards particular burgers and since I have the mike at this exact moment, I will say that my own personal preference and my award-winning burger is a pure burger, a bun, a burger, a slice of tomato, and a little bit of secret sauce and that’s it. Thin, crunchy, moist, juicy, but I’m really curious what everybody else’s burger bias is.

(00:08:38)
Sam Lynas:

Joe. Do you want to kick off?

(00:08:40)
Joe DiStefano:

Sure. Yeah. You know, Dave was talking about your ____ (8:43) and I grew up with really kind of the very basic burger. Not too thin, although, I have to say thin patties I like but I prefer the double format and really don’t like a lot of greenery on my burgers. I prefer a nice char. Temperature should be ____ (9:06) medium to medium rare. Juiciness is very ____ (9:09) for me and the bun for me, it’s a mere vehicle that should only serve to contain that juiciness. I really like to keep my hands relatively clean. I really don’t want to be thinking too much about the bun. All that said, that is my bias, that is my preference, but as we’ve been going on with this project, there have been some novelty burgers that have really turned my head but the most important thing about these novelty burgers is that they all sort of paint together as a piece. The burger might have Filipino pickles or fig jam on it but none of those or combination of those, but none of those notes come from the top and kind of wind up being jarring. The burger just has to hang together.

(00:10:05)
Sam Lynas:

Cool. And Dave?

(00:10:07)
Dave Cook:

I think I’m with the two of you guys, the kind of burger I grew up with. Maybe I like a little fatter patty than you guys. I like it medium rare and drippy on the inside but nicely crusted on the outside, but very basic, maybe some ____ (10:25), some pickle, maybe lettuce and tomato. We’ve tried a lot of what we’re calling their gourmet burgers or novelty burgers or what have you in our testing and I appreciate the way a lot of those are pulled together. Those are a little less than my taste only because as I was saying I treat burgers as a return to something familiar and basic compared to a lot of the other food that I’ve tried, so I just like a good basic hamburger. I have found though just by having so many burgers over the course of this project that my tastes have changed a bit since childhood.

(00:11:07)

I used to be a strict hamburger, never a cheeseburger guy, but I’m finding that a nice slice of cheese and maybe even something a little more upscale than your basic slice of luminescent, orange American cheese, or maybe something a little nicer, a little fancier than that, adds a little extra to the burger and I never wanted my buns toasted back when I was growing up. I just wanted a plain, soft, squishy bun. Now, I’m beginning to appreciate it especially with slightly fattier, juicy burger with little drippy cheese, beginning to appreciate not only a toasted bun but a bun that actually has some body that will hold together over the course of the three to four minutes that it takes me to go through a hamburger.

(00:11:57)
Harry Hawk:

That’s awesome. Sam. What about yourself?

(00:12:01)
Sam Lynas:

I think I’m so different because I grew up…I didn’t grow up in New York. I didn’t grow up surrounded by incredible burgers, so I kind of grew up I think craving McDonalds like most kids. That was the only burger. There wasn’t a big, you know, I didn’t live in London. There wasn’t burger scene, so it was kind of like fast food places and McDonalds was the dream burger and then obviously, it was only until a few years ago when I was lucky enough to go to New York ____ (12:31) burgers that you realize there’s this whole other world out there, which is great fun ____ (12:36) things.

(00:12:37)

So mine is more really on taste and flavor as everybody else’s is but I don’t have any historic kind of notions of what a burger is, a classical, or a modern. Yeah. I’m just really does this taste good, is there meat between two slices of bread, and would I eat another one or do I want to another one after I finish the first one, but I will say is that I feel like there was a phase a few years ago, particularly in London, which I think has developed since the real kind of burger centers around the world and there was definitely a phase where people were just trying to make outrageously big burgers and I feel like a burger definitely has to be something that you can pick up and eat easily without it falling out everywhere and I also feel like a burger should be the sum of its parts. Each individual item within that should be able to be enjoyable on its own and I feel that if it’s not, you should just get rid of it and take it out. It’s not adding anything whether that’s flavor or texture, it doesn’t need to be there. A burger is good as it is without any kind of superfluous ingredients.

(00:13:48)
Harry Hawk:

All right. I have a real controversial question and it definitely relates to what you just said Sam. A quick note about, one of the things I appreciate about the fast food burger is that combination of mustard and mayonnaise that they put on there. There’s something about that together that works. I go to several fast food places for a client of mine to track them and monitor them but one of the things, one of the burgers that you can get in New York City is what McDonalds calls CYT or Create Your Taste and this is a burger you can only buy it from a kiosk then they go in the back and they cook it, it comes fresh off the grill, a runner brings it to your table, and it’s a lot more expensive. A burger, drink, and fries is going to cost you 11, 12, 13 dollars. You put guacamole, all kinds of crazy things on it. What do you guys think about that? I know you guys don’t want to reveal exactly what burgers you’re eating but is that within the realm of possibility in terms of what you’re trying.

(00:14:58)
Sam Lynas:

Yeah. I mean so let me have a go answering this one first and I’ll pass it over to the guys. So I think obviously, all burgers are great. I mean I like to be tested on this but I feel like even a really bad burger is still a burger. It’s still going to have something about it, which is kind of hopefully, enjoyable in the fact that it’s a piece of meat between two slices of bread. I think from that kind of burger place where it’s kind of create your own, obviously, anybody’s combination is going to be something that they’ve chosen and each to their own and that’s going to be something that they’ve enjoyed and whether or not I think that would be created. I mean what we would do is we would say a traditional burger for example, what we’re looking for is we’re looking to add something new to this story. We’re certainly not the first persons to create a guide to New York’s best burgers but what we feel like we’re doing is different.

(00:15:53)

We have food experts covering each area. Nobody has done what we’ve done before I think for two reasons, one because they didn’t have the network in place, and two, because we pay for every single meal that we eat. So if anybody wants, if there are any kind of, you know the restaurant that you talk about, if they’re looking to sell a burger or if anybody in New York is looking to sell a burger, get in touch with us, FoodieHub on Twitter and we’ll come and buy one and we will taste one, and I think that anybody who has done a guide, they haven’t redone it before, the main reason is really it’s expensive to do and we’re absolutely crazy to do it, but we want to, so we’re really trying to create a guide which is definitive but also completely objective in its purpose.

(00:16:36)
Harry Hawk:

Do you think you will try that, the CYT burger from McDonalds?

(00:16:42)
Sam Lynas:

If someone recommends it to us and they say I think this is the best burger in New York then absolutely, one of us will go and try it.

(00:16:51)
Harry Hawk:

I don’t know that it’s the best burger in New York. It is, without a doubt, the best fast food burger.

(00:16:57)
Dave Cook:

Harry, if I may chime in here. It is not a burger. It is like a template for many different kinds of burgers. Is there one particular CYT burger that you like, one particular formulation, one particular combination of ingredients?

(00:17:12)
Harry Hawk:

Well, again, for me, I just got it with a tomato, but it’s the fact that it’s something that most people have never had in their whole life, which is a McDonald’s burger fresh off the grill. We’ve all had them from the holding oven from the holding plate. It pales in comparison to most of all of the other burgers that are out there but if you are looking for what we would call in the industry a quick-serve restaurant, McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s, just in that weight class so to speak. It’s just very interesting. They’re putting 150 to 200,000 dollars worth of equipment into the restaurants to do this and I just mention it because it is a burger that many of us had as a child and it’s interesting to see as we’re talking about burgers and a ten-dollar burger is not a cheap burger.

(00:18:04)
Sam Lynas:

Harry. Can I just make a quick clarification there because I know I’ll put the phone down and everyone will say what did he say that for? That’s not what we’re doing but the CYT, is that the name of a burger or you mentioned that is a burger at McDonalds, or is it a group itself?

(00:18:19)
Harry Hawk:

It is part of McDonalds. You can think of it as a store within the store.

(00:18:24)
Sam Lynas:

Okay. Sorry. Yeah. I’ve never heard of CYT before. So what I must say and one of the, and maybe I could talk about some of the rules of what we’re looking at with the burgers is that we are looking for kind of independently owned restaurants, so a McDonald’s burger wouldn’t fit into our guide as such.

(00:18:45)
Harry Hawk:

Well that makes a lot of sense and I just thought it lent to an interesting part of this conversation but let’s move pass this and on to whatever else we might want to ask about burgers.

(00:18:58)
Joe DiStefano:

I just want to chime in one second here. Harry, as someone who eats McDonalds and I eat it about twice a year because it’s always a huge disconnect like I always think it’s going to be great and then I taste it and say well, that’s not at all like I remember it. That’s nothing like it. This is terrible. Independently, I’m curious to try it but I do think it kind of falls outside the scope of the guide.

(00:19:29)
Harry Hawk:

Well, I think that’s great to explain that part of it. McDonalds is not at all a place that I like to eat, but I have been following them. They’ve been making a lot of changes and it’s just really interesting because it is a reflection of what we’re talking about, the burger scene in New York that has grown in the last ten or fifteen years. The burger scene in London, I mean, a place that jumped the pond, Burger & Lobster, I mean a restaurant that I have not yet. My friends have.

(00:20:03)
Sam Lynas:

What do they think about the burger?

(00:20:04)
Harry Hawk:

They liked it quite a bit.

(00:20:06)
Sam Lynas:

Really. I mean that is such an interesting concept. Obviously, huge over here ______ (20:10). I’m guessing that the burger in ____ (20:14) is the same price in New York.

(00:20:16)
Harry Hawk:

Yes.

(00:20:17)
Sam Lynas:

And how much is it? Over here, it’s 20 pounds. What’s that, 30 dollars? 

(00:20:20)
Harry Hawk:

I’d have to look at the price. I don’t have it in front of me but yes, I get involved in helping folks design restaurants, the menus, the things, and I just love the simplicity of the menu, the pricing, and say here are these two things, which do you want, and let’s not talk about price really.

(00:20:39)
Sam Lynas:

Yeah. I really enjoyed during my kind of trips to New York and going on this quest. We kind of here at FoodieHub, we’ve seen that there are free burger centers in the world really who are kind of doing, you know, from speaking to our network and doing a fair amount of tasting ourselves. You have, obviously, New York. We feel like London has just gone crazy and a lot of people have tried the burgers doing our FoodieHub Global Awards. We actually named Bleeker Black from Bleeker Street Burger during our global awards this year the best burger in the world and you can check out the video to that. I’ll send it to you. It’s on our YouTube channel.

(00:21:21)

So yeah, London, New York and LA, we really feel are kind of doing it better than anybody else _____ (21:29), but what’s been really interesting is that in New York they have the kind of off-menu burger, the secret burger, and it’s from restaurants, which traditionally...you know a lot of the best burger places in London, they focus purely on a burger and I think for me, this is where New York slightly edges it is that you have a lot of the places known for their burgers, your shake shacks, for example, but a lot of places that we’ve been to and tried, again, without trying to give anything away, are kind of like the off-menu burgers or the places where they’re only a certain amount of burgers a night or you have to get there early because I feel like that all adds to the flavor. You know the q, and the hun, and the planning required. I really enjoyed that aspect to it during this trip.

(00:22:15)
Harry Hawk:

I may have had something to do with that in a sense. Back in 2006, 2007, when I was selling the most burger at Water Taxi Beach. We would only grind a certain amount of meat and when it was gone, it was gone. I’d love to hear some more from Joey and Dave and some of their thoughts about how the scene has evolved.

(00:22:36)
Dave Cook:

Well, I’ll pick it up here then. Again, without trying to identify any particular burgers, it does seem that in the last few years, there’ve been a lot of restaurants that were not then and are not now burger restaurants that have decided well, we need to add a burger to the menu because sometimes a group will come in and there’s someone at the table who just wants to have something very simple, just wants to have a burger, but at the same time, they don’t want to add a burger as what people will call a slot killer, something that’s added to the menu as an afterthought. A lot of the chefs at these restaurants have a great deal of pride in what they do and they say well, yes, you need to add a burger to the menu but it’s going to be the best damn burger we can add. It’s going to be our kind of burger. No one else will have this burger. This is the only place you’re going to be able to get it, and again, maybe they will do it in a limited number or only at the bar or only between nine and eleven p.m. on alternate Saturdays and that kind of specialization of saying we’re going to have something you cannot get anywhere else ____ (23:48) to, you know, from way of satisfying the customer who just wants a burger to an additional marketing tool for these companies.

(00:23:58)
Harry Hawk:

That’s awesome, and I agree.

(00:24:00)
Joe DiStefano:

Yeah. So I’ll jump in. Before I got involved in this project, the one thing that I noticed that changed is that all of a sudden at one point, and I don’t know if it was because of Pat Lafrieda’s black-labeled blend, but everyone started talking about what kind of beef was being used in the burgers, the fat content, how much chuck, how much this. If I’m not mistaken, there’s someone out there using neck meat in their burger and that’s sort of like a very kind of basic development and then as we went on with the project, what I noticed is that people are trying to create high-end versions of that backyard burger, almost like a bespoke version of a burger with a Martin’s potato roll. So the burger at Gramercy, he’s making his own potato rolls. Everything there is made in-house. He’s using really, really good cheddar.

(00:24:59)

At the end of the day, yeah, it’s just a cheeseburger but it’s the best cheeseburger you’re going to have in your hands at that time, in that setting and then as far as like novelty, gourmet burgers, I think a lot of people kind of like anything with food and restaurants, they jump on the bandwagon and they just say oh, more is more. If I put mac and cheese and this on the burger that makes it better and not necessarily so all the time, and from perspective, here in Queens, it’s interesting to see ethnic restaurants for one of their word, put their own spin on hamburgers whether that’s a Dominican Chimi sandwich, you know certain things that aren’t necessarily burgers but like a Chinese flatbread sandwiches like you have at Xi’an’s Famous Foods, they kind of latch on to the hamburger language, if you will.

(00:25:55)
Dave Cook:

Or at least the hamburger visual, Joe. You’ll get a bread thing on the top and bottom and some meaty thing in the middle. Even if it doesn’t look like a hamburger, you can tell what they were thinking.

(00:26:05)
Joe DiStefano:

Yes.

(00:26:05)
Harry Hawk:

Love it, and one of my favorite burgers doesn’t come on a bun, which the late __ (26:11) might not refer to it as a hamburger then but obviously, Louis’ Lunch in Connecticut but also, in Greenwich, Connecticut a place called Burger, Shake, & Fries. They go on toasted bread. Have you seen in New York City anything that’s sort of off the bun but still a burger?

(00:26:30)
Sam Lynas:

I guess it depends what you class as a bun, right. There are lots of different types of buns out there. I mean Louis’ Lunch was a winner of one of ours. We made that the best burger in the world 2013, so yeah, we know the burger very, very well and a lot of people think that’s the original burger. Yeah. We kind of work on the basis that are kind of like, Josh, that a burger has to be between bread but we still have gourmet pedigrees, classic, kind of a final one, which is either novelty or gimmicky. We haven’t quite decided on the final clarification yet but that’s certainly something that’s nontraditional. I can ____ (27:11) New York. We don’t have any burgers outside the bun.

(00:27:15)
Harry Hawk:

Anything from Dave or Joe?

(00:27:18)
Joe DiStefano:

I mean I see things like casual Japanese restaurants will offer what they call a hamburg-steak but that’s not really, you know, it’s sort of like when you go to a fancy restaurant and you used to see whatever they were calling the chopped sirloins, just essentially like a largish, irregular hamburger patty with a sweet kind of bulldog sauce like the same thing you would use on a fried pork cutlet and then I see things like there are Tibetan restaurants where they’re taking the meat from momo dumplings and forming that into a patty and putting it on a steamed Tibetan roll what you would call a tingmo and that’s pretty unique. I wouldn’t necessarily call that a bun.

(00:28:04)
Harry Hawk:

That’s interesting. I like that. ____ (28:05).

(00:28:06)
Joe DiStefano:

It’s taste…

(00:28:06)
Harry Hawk:

I’m going to have to eat one of those.

(00:28:08)
Dave Cook:

Up in the Washington Heights especially, there’s a category of sandwiches called for short patacon but patacon specifically really refers to fried, flattened plantain. Patacon, ____ (28:22) being Latin is the umbrella category. Originally, this is a Venezuelan sandwich but Dominicans have really embraced it in New York. I’ve seen a lot of different things put between two discs of refried, flattened plantain, the plantain taking the place of the bread. I’ve never seen a burger patty put between them however. There is such a thing you guys may have heard of called a Ramen burger in New York.

(00:28:49)
Joe DiStefano:

Oh, that’s right.

(00:28:50)
Harry Hawk:

Yes. _____ (28:50) is a friend and it’s certainly an interesting approach.

(00:28:55)
Dave Cook:

It’s been picked up by a few other people. It’s not terribly hard to shape a bun out of the Ramen noodles. Obviously, the original Ramen burger is still the standard there.

(00:29:08)
Harry Hawk:

Sam, is there anything else that we should cover? I kind of feel like we’ve had a really interesting conversation about burgers and like a good burger, we want to maybe leave part of it for another day, but I want to make sure that we’ve covered everything that you imagined we might talk about.

(00:29:25)
Sam Lynas:

Yeah. I mean I think it’s been great, Harry. Thanks so much for the time. There’s nothing from me other than to stay tuned, let’s finish up our guide, let us keep eating burgers, and when January 2016 comes around we’re going to be ready and we hope everyone’s excited to see what we spent six months working on.

(00:29:44)
Harry Hawk:

It’s going to be fantastic and I’d obviously like everyone to go around once again and plug their Twitter and plug their websites, just so everybody knows how to get in touch with everybody whose here today.

(00:29:56)
Sam Lynas:

Cool. Joe, after you. Joe and Dave, you go in.

(00:29:58)
Joe DiStefano:

Yes indeed. Joe DiStefano of chopsticksandmarrow.com. You can find me at your local hamburger joint or on Twitter @joedistefano. You can find me on Instagram at joedistefanoqns. Thanks for having us, Harry.

(00:30:20)
Harry Hawk:

Great, Joe and Dave?

(00:30:22)
Dave Cook:

And I’m Dave Cook and my website is Eating in Translation and you can find me under that handle on Instagram, on Flickr, online, or on Twitter @eit.

(00:30:39)
Harry Hawk:

Dave, it’s great to have had you here. We’ve exchanged emails over the years and you’ve been very helpful in the past and it’s great to actually talk to you, and Sam, I’m just going to throw it back to you and I’ll let you say good-bye at the end, but please, again, tell everybody before that moment, verify your…

(00:30:54)
Sam Lynas:

I’ve got one question for you. Just remind me where your best burger is in New York. Where would you recommend that we try?

(00:31:01)
Harry Hawk:

Well, of course, I like my own when I pop it up and do it occasionally from here or there but if I had to pick a burger, it’s so hard for me because I’m really making them myself but it’s kind of close to New York City but I really happen to really love the Burger Shakes Fry burger in Greenwich, Connecticut. I know that’s a little bit of a geographic cheat but how about that.

(00:31:29)
Sam Lynas:

Okay. I hope one day we’ll get there or I’ll get there, anyway. We do have food expert in Connecticut so I know she’d love to go down, so we’ll sort that one out. Thanks for that. And final thing sign off from me, so yeah, Sam Lynas and I’m the Channel Director for FoodieHub, very proud to be so and our Twitter account is @foodiehub. Our website where you can find the essential eats around the world is foodiehub.tv and our YouTube channel is youtube.com/foodiehub and that’s where we’ll be releasing our New York guide to best burgers from the first week in January 2016.

(00:32:09)
Harry Hawk:

Say good-bye for everyone or?

(00:32:11)
Sam Lynas:

Yeah. Thanks so much for listening and good-bye.

(00:32:13)
Harry Hawk:

Good-bye, everyone.

(00:32:14)
Dave Cook:

Bye-bye.

(00:32:14)
Joe DiStefano:

Bye.

(00:32:15)
Chuck Fresh:

My name is Chuck Fresh and I am being paid to thank you for listening to Talking About Everything with Harry Hawk. Harry wants to hear from you on Twitter @HHawk or harryhawk@gmail.com, and now, a word from our sponsor. Life Extension Coach and Favorite Chef, Hawk Digital Marketing is focused on bringing brands and people together. We build communities of interest based on trust and transparency where consumers and brands can converse, learn, discuss, or solve problems together while creating a long-term connection, entanglement, between you and your customers. Once connected, we help you engage, communicate, sell, present, educate, and inform. Evolve your communications with us, hawksocialmarketing.com.

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