Something New Under The Bun

Bobby Flay brings his ardour for excellent burgers, shakes, and sweet-potato fries to Eatontown. Make that Eatin’city.

Bobby Flay is in a pickle, or possibly it’s the pickle that’s in a pickle, as a result of Flay shouldn’t be satisfied it’s the precise spear for his new Bobby’s Burger Palace in Eatontown. It’s lunchtime, and the road is almo­st out the door. Flay is sitting at one of many lengthy slender tables, the one nearest the exit. From his seat he can see your entire restaurant, and, coincidentally or not, folks on their approach out cross proper by him.

“Why did you select Monmouth?” asks a younger lady as her boyfriend prepares to snap an image of her with the flamboyant TV chef. He explains that his mom lives in close by Spring Lake, and that he is aware of the world effectively, having spent summers on the Jersey Shore when he was rising up in Manhattan. They congratulate him and he thanks them, genuinely happy. “It’s been an unbelievably welcoming feeling from folks,” he says, returning to his seat.

However again to the issue pickle. It’s gentle inexperienced, recent and delicate, with glorious snap. You get one with each Bobby Burger, from the Basic (American cheese, lettuce, tomato, pink onion, $6.50) to the Philadelphia (provolone, griddled onions, sizzling peppers, $7.50) to the borderline frou-frou Napa Valley (goat cheese, watercress, Meyer lemon-honey mustard, $7.50). The pickle is a refined, subtle spear. What’s to not like?

“It could be a bit of too cucumbery,” he says. “I believe it needs to be a bit of extra bitter. Any person mentioned to me the opposite day, and I believed it was an important remark, ‘It tastes prefer it doesn’t know what it needs to be, a cucumber or a pickle.’ And I agree. I like meals that’s made up its thoughts.”

You’ll see no waffling, not to mention waffles, on the menus of Flay’s seven eating places in New York, Las Vegas, the Bahamas, Atlantic Metropolis, and now on the intersection of the Monmouth and Eatontown Malls at routes 35 and 36 in Eatontown. The title of 1994’s Bobby Flay’s Daring American Meals, the primary of his seven cookbooks, nonetheless describes his type—but there may be extra nuance and playfulness than you would possibly anticipate from the battle-tested Iron Chef and star of such Meals Community hits as Throwdown! With Bobby Flay.

Flay’s main eating places are upscale. However to listen to him speak, the meals nearest his coronary heart is the hamburger, which he calls “the quintessential sandwich. I might by no means do one thing simply because I believe it’s enterprise concept,” he says. “Burgers are the factor I crave. If I’m out having a pair beers with my buddies, and I’m hungry, what I take into consideration is the place I’m going to get burger. I believe in the event you ask lots of skilled cooks, they’ll offer you a solution alongside these strains. It’s not going to be foie gras and caviar.

“Since burgers are necessary to me in my on a regular basis life, I believed it might be enjoyable to translate it into an precise place the place you may get the type of burgers that I need to eat. And the issues that go together with them, like shakes and fries.”

The primary 75-seat Bobby’s Burger Palace opened on Lengthy Island final July. The Eatontown department opened in early December. Two extra are slated to open later this 12 months, in Paramus and on the Mohegan Solar Resort in Connecticut.

Though the costliest merchandise is the $8.50 Topless Burger Salad (any of the ten totally different burgers on a mattress of child greens with balsamic dressing), and freshly brewed iced tea and sodas are simply $2, the place has as a lot pizzazz in and out as any of the 44-year-old’s flagships. That’s as a result of Flay’s Daring Meals LLC can afford to rent one of many prime design companies of the final 15 years, David Rockwell’s Rockwell Group. (Jersey footnote: Though Rockwell, 52, was born in Chicago and lives in New York, he spent many childhood summers in Deal, the place his mom directed native stage productions.)

Meals author and editor Josh Ozersky, in his scrumptious 2008 guide, The Hamburger, traces the burger’s lineage to mid-nineteenth century America by way of the German metropolis of Hamburg. These have been chopped steaks—plate-and-fork meals—not the fashionable hamburger, whose story begins, Ozersky writes, with the beginning of White Fortress in Wichita, Kansas, in 1916.

Whereas the burger has gathered a cadre of condiments and accompaniments alongside the way in which—fluctuating in thickness, worth, and high quality—it might nonetheless be recognizable to Walter Anderson, the Wichita fry prepare dinner who Ozersky credit with creating the fashionable burger.

Flay’s contribution to ground-beef historical past could be the crunchburger—a cheeseburger with a stack of potato chips tucked beneath the bun. Whenever you press down, the burger crackles. Take a chew, and the chips add a pleasant salty crispness (though Internet dialogue boards warn that they might develop soggy earlier than you end the burger). At no further price, any burger might be “crunchified”—a phrase the chef favored a lot he trademarked it.

“After I was a child, cheese from my cheeseburger would drip onto my chips, and people have been those I needed to eat. So I made that part of the burger. It’s not the latest concept,” he admits. “Folks in Pittsburgh inform me they grew up placing potato chips of their sandwiches.”

Flay designed his BBP burgers from the within out, starting with “the precise patty: the feel, the grind, how a lot moisture and fats, what it was going to be cooked on.” He went with licensed Angus beef (80 % sirloin/chuck, 20 % fats, the latter holding the burger moist even when cooked medium to effectively accomplished). Since opening, he says, “I’ve discovered that extra folks like their burgers cooked greater than like them cooked much less.”

The 8-ounce patties (recent, not frozen) are sprinkled with salt and freshly floor pepper on each side earlier than they hit the griddle. The writer of Boy Meets Grill had no downside selecting griddle over grill.

“For those who prepare dinner burgers on a grill,” says Flay, who might be seen doing precisely that in a video on bobbysburgerpalace.com, “you lose the juices between the grates. On a flat floor, the burger cooks in its personal juices.”

Walter Anderson set his Wichita griddle to 500 levels. Flay experimented with that temperature however determined the burgers got here out too crusty, and settled at 400 to 425 levels. Certainly one of Anderson’s improvements, based on Ozersky, was urgent down on the scorching patties with a spatula. Anderson can be flayed if he tried that at BBP. “You aren’t allowed to place the again of the spatula on prime of the burger,” Flay says. “It squeezes out the moisture.”

So tips on how to maintain the floor flat? “The burger wells up within the center because it cooks,” Flay says, “so we beat the burger to the punch. After we put the patty down, the prepare dinner indents the center together with his thumb. Because it cooks, it comes again to its pure form.”

Flay additionally auditioned buns, rejecting ciabatta and different artisanal rolls as too thick and crusty. “The bun must be tender to soak up juices,” he says. “I like potato rolls, however we switched from them in a short time, as a result of our burgers have a lot moisture the rolls have been turning into soggy. Additionally, I like the feel of sesame seeds on prime, and you’ll’t discover potato rolls with sesame seeds.” He settled on enriched white rolls, that are toasted because the burgers prepare dinner.

French fries created from recent spuds “fairly often get soggy,” Flay says, “so we examined, like, 30 totally different sorts of frozen fries. Some have stealth coatings for crispness; then there are totally different sorts of potatoes and totally different shapes. We needed one thing extremely easy that tasted like potatoes.” Frozen received. But BBP’s sweet-potato fries, that are crisp and scrumptious, are created from recent sweets.

“Candy potatoes have the next natural-sugar content material, so that they solely should be peeled and fried as soon as,” Flay explains. “Russet potatoes must peeled, soaked, blanched, cooled down, then refried. It simply creates the potential for inconsistency.”

With onion rings, Flay got down to do frizzled. “However they have been getting too brittle and also you couldn’t style the onion, so we lower the onions thick and made a really gentle beer batter,” he says. “You possibly can really see the onion via the batter.”

Shakes blew his thoughts. “I couldn’t consider how a lot ice cream it took to make a very good shake—11 ounces,” Flay says. “It’s mainly a sundae in a glass.” The ten flavors are created from vanilla, chocolate, or espresso ice cream with fruit or nut purées added. The shakes are so wealthy that Flay determined there was no want to supply dessert, and he says there was no demand for it. The fountain sodas include limitless refills, however there isn’t a espresso in any respect­—a call that Flay says displeases his mom, Dorothy.

“She’s actually pissed off about it,” he says. “However I get virtually no name for espresso. And in the event you’re not serving lots of it, it may be outdated for the occasional one who does order it, so why?”

Lazy Susans positioned at intervals on the serpentine-shaped counter and on the lengthy, slender, free-standing tables are stocked with ketchup, chipotle ketchup, jalapeño sizzling sauce, a barbecue-like burger sauce, and yellow mustard. I teased him in regards to the mustard. He laughed. “There was an enormous debate within the workplace,” he mentioned. “I might have somewhat had Dijon, however all people outvoted me.”

Flay doesn’t get outvoted usually. When it got here to naming the restaurant, he put his foot down—proper after his spouse, the actress Stephanie March, signed off. “We have been joking round,” he recollects, “and I used to be like, ‘Wouldn’t or not it’s humorous to name it Bobby’s Burger Palace, as a result of it’s the palace of burgers? We will have, like, humorous chandeliers within the eating room.’

“And she or he mentioned, ‘I type of love that title.’ I mentioned, ‘You do?’ My spouse, for my part, isn’t improper. She mentioned, ‘What I like is that while you say it, you smile. It’s humorous. It’s like, Bobby’s Burger Palace…wink.’

“There was lots of debate about that with my enterprise accomplice. He thought it needs to be Bobby Flay’s Burgers or one thing like that. However I needed it to be just a bit softer. He mentioned, ‘What if folks don’t understand it’s Bobby Flay’s place, and so they suppose it’s just a few man named Bobby promoting burgers?’ I used to be like, ‘Look, that’s nice, as a result of if the burgers are good, they’ll nonetheless come.’

“So I just like the extra informal really feel of the title. It’s funner. I imply, that’s what this place is meant to be about. Nothing extra.”