This column originally ran in Wednesday’s Off Menu newsletter, where you’ll find restaurant news, gossip, tips, and hot takes every week. To sign up, visit the Standard’s newsletter page and select Off Menu.
Happy World Hamburger Day! Yes, this is a thing, and it is today.
On this fabricated holiday, it is worth asking: Is a restaurant a restaurant without a signature burger? After all, a burger — when it hits — can become the main draw, its reputation almost preceding the eatery itself.
See: Nopa’s grass-fed burger with house-baked brioche bun ($29), Wayfare Tavern’s version with brie and red-onion marmalade ($25), or Spruce’s famous English muffin burger ($31), available at the bar. (As one Standard colleague put it: “I mean, does Spruce serve anything else?”)
Because of the fervor a ground meat patty between a bun can create, chefs are perpetually trying to out-burger one another. And the city has a couple of new additions to the genre that are getting some buzz.
At Bar Shoji, the new Japanese restaurant and bar in SoMa, it’s an expression of what’s known as a fondue burger, which is a thing in Japan. This version ($26) is made with a Painted Hills brisket patty, caramelized onion, pickled cucumber, and beef-tallow brioche. It comes served in a skillet, sliced in half and face down, drowning in a bubbling pool of cheese. It is an audacious, visual gut bomb. Unsurprisingly, it’s trending on TikTok.
Not to be outdone, Side A is offering something even more savage — a lily-gilding $35 burger. The bistro that just opened in the old Universal Cafe space in the Mission has one of the most expensive “cloth-napkin” burgers I’ve seen (just a dollar less than the dry-aged burger with bacon jam at Tyler Florence’s spendy steakhouse Miller & Lux). This half-pound specimen comes with a side of garlic fries and a log of bone marrow, which you are meant to scoop out and add to the ground beef short-rib patty. It’s also loaded with Kenne (a soft-ripened goat cheese from Toluma Farms in Marin), eight-hour red-onion jam, watercress, and slices of dill pickle.
The creator of this beast, chef and co-owner Parker Brown, is philosophical about its meaning. “I think a cheeseburger is an expression of what you want to be as a restaurant,” he said. “We’re from Chicago. We were aiming for gluttony. We wanted to be the place where you know the burger will be a food coma.”
All the news you can eat
Get the Off Menu newsletter every Wednesday for the latest restaurant dish.
However, there can be a downside to burger fame: When guests come for your burger and nothing else, it can put a dent in a restaurant’s check average. Brown says that from a business POV, “it’s a math game. We can’t have every guest come in and have a cheeseburger and walk out.” But for luring people in the door in the first place? A burger is king.
Burger hot tips? Email me at sdeseran@sfstandard.com.