Chris Christensen, The Amateur Traveler, was in Dallas for business, so Cali asked him to stop by for an interview and dinner. In preparation for our Big Trip to all 50 States, frugality has been the watchword, so yuppie burgers have been nearly banned from the options list.
Dinner with Chris was at State and Allen Lounge, an urban bistro in Uptown Dallas. Having not reviewed a burger in over a week, I felt obligated to order a Mushroom and Swiss burger, which came with a side of fries.
I need to do some morethinking to make a call about the importance of Burger to Bun Ratio (BtBR). For now I’ll just throw out the ratio that feels right in my heart. The burger experience is at least 60% about the meat, 15% about the toppings, and 25% about the bun. Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts about the proper BtBR in the comments.
The Mushroom and Swiss burger I ate at State and allen Lounge last night flips my loose BtBR on it’s head. This burger might be as much as 60% about the bun. The bun had to have been made with a good amount of butter because that was the taste that made this burger experience so uniquely good. The meat was excellent, although, I have yet to eat a burger in Dallas that is served truly medium. Medium in Dallas tends to be what I would call medium-well.
State and Allen has a very strong yuppie vibe. Dogs are welcomed at outside tables. Service is great, and they offer an impressive a la carte cheese and meat board.
This might be my second favorite yuppie burger, ever. The first is the Bluegrass Burger from Bluegrass Restaurant in Highland Park, IL. Dave, the chef at Bluegrass is THE starting point for most of what I believe about burgers, and he knows what it means to cook a burger medium.
It’s off topic here, but there are three places in North America with unforgettable Mac and Cheese. One is Nob Hill Restaurant in the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco. It is served with Blue Cheese crumbled on top. One is The Beaconsfield on the corner of Beaconsfield Ave. and Queen Street W in Toronto. It has a chipotle corn flake crust. The other is this place, State and Allen Lounge. State and Allen’s Mac and Cheese has toasted croutons on top.
Cali ordered the Al’s Love Love Spicy Chicken Bowl. It’s worth mentioning because of the name. Chris Christensen picked up the tab so our Big Trip frugality could remain in tact. Thanks, Chris!
I broke a personal rule today. I try and limit burger intake to once per week, but we were out, needed nourishment and the window sign said the three magic words: Kobe Beef Burger.
If you haven’t had the pleasure, Kobe Beef is reputed to be the best on the planet. The cows are raised in a particular region in Japan, and this is no joke, they receive daily massages and drink beer. This special treatment results in some expensive, but tasty meat.
I made the mistake of ordering my burger with everything on it. They use shredded iceberg lettuce, and I’m not a fan. I dumped the lettuce.
The taste of the meat was spectacular, but the other ingredients, including the bun, didn’t taste premium enough to complement the Kobe. The veggies, american cheese and buns could all use an upgrade. They seemed to be the same ordinary ingredients you’d get from a major fast-food chain. That wouldn’t keep me from coming back, though, or from recommending the place.
It was a burger to be savored bite by Kobelicious bite. I plan to return to taste some of the other treats on the menu. If you’re in the area, you should too. OH! And when the manager asked how the burgers tasted, he called me Neal. He remembered from when we ordered.
Dave Peterson asked for a lesson on Sweet Tea. I can explain it, but you really have to taste it in the South on a hot Summer day to understand it.
The two syllables in the phrase “Sweet Tea” should be pronounced quickly. It rhymes with BB, as in BB gun. There is no pause between the word sweet and the word tea. It’s also called Baptist Tea and Potluck Tea because that’s often where the best stuff is served from repurposed, gallon milk jugs.
Sweet Tea should not be confused with sweetened tea. Sweetened tea is an abomination and should never be discussed in polite conversation. Sweet Tea is served cold, usually over ice and the ratio of sugar to tea and water is significant.
The preferred brand of tea bags is Luzianne, but Lipton is okay too.
To make a jar, you need 3 family size tea bags, 1 1/3 cups of sugar and a jar (or pitcher). Boil 3 cups of water. Add the 3 tea bags. Stop the heat and let the tea steep for 15 or 30 minutes. Dump it in a gallon jar (or pitcher), dump in the sugar and the fill up the jar with cold water. Put it in the refrigerator and keep it cold.
A person might add lemon, to their glass, but if the lemon juice is added to the jar, it isn’t Sweet Tea. Â
I’m not a burger snob, but as a rule, drive-through burger dinning should be reserved for emergency situations where there aren’t viable sit-down alternatives. My favorite burger from a drive-through is the Olive Burger from Burger Street. It’s a regional chain operating in Dallas, Fort Worth and Tulsa.
I order the Olive Burger just as it comes. It has two patties, no cheese, and it’s topped with mayo, lettuce, tomato and sliced green olives. I think of it as a cool, refreshing, almost light burger. It’s especially nice on a hot Dallas afternoon.
Burger Street is also the best place for Southern Sweet Tea. It’s $0.99 for a large cup of Southern goodness.
Chicken ‘n’ Dumplins aren’t really a carnivore thing at all. It’s basically dough soaked in Chicken stock, so it’s carbolicious. Mama’s Daughter’s Diner in Dallas sells southern cooking in the most non-pretentious setting you can imagine.
I’m writing about the Dumplins because they’re too good not to write about. I compare them to my memory of my grandmother’s dumplins and that’s very different than comparing them directly. My grandmother’s dumplins don’t live up to my memory of what they were like when I was little. I don’t know if it’s a white-washed memory, if my grandmother has lost something along the way, or most likely, has just changed the recipe.
Mama’s Daughter’s Dumplins live up to my MEMORY of my grandmother’s, so I just had to share.
We softly launched Carnivore.TV as a blog last year when we first started talking about the idea of taking GeekBrief.TV on the road for a year. We’ve named the road trip, The Big Trip, and the goal is to get started sometime this summer. We’ll be shooting GBTV as usual, but we’re also going to be producing travel stories like this one we shot at the Fish Wharf in Washington, D.C.
Our friends are supporting The Big Trip by buying pixels at PaidByPixels.com. Several people have asked us for a Web badge they could use to show support for the trip, and we aim to please:
<a title=”I Support The Big Trip!” href=”http://www.bigtrip.tv”><img src=”http://www.bigtrip.tv/assets/bigtripbadge.png” alt=”" width=”175″ height=”175″ /></a>
I had an entertaining twitter exchange with a guy from Brooklyn. It started with his sincere question:
“Are Burgers not technically BBQ?”
I, understandably, thought he might be from a whole other country, but it turns out he uses the word barbecue as a verb synonymous with grill. Lots of people do it and their hearts are in the right place, but some BBQ education is in order.
BBQ is a noun referring to meat cooked slowly with indirect heat. In contrast, grill is a verb referring to a method of cooking meat quickly over direct heat. It’s easy to forgive the confusion until you’ve been baptized in the smoke of an old crusty BBQ shack with a line out the door. Once you’ve been blessed to have BBQ from any of the regions where it reigns, you start feeling the need to defend the distinction between terms.
Grilling can be done by anyone almost anywhere. The best BBQ is usually developed over several hours in an oven or pit built for the mission. The secret is always in the sauce or rub and the best places will sell the secret in a bottle, but will never tell you the specifics about ingredients and measurements. When it’s done the meat will fall apart because it’s so tender.
In the United States, BBQ has regional varieties, and I’m just beginning to learn the differences. There is Texas BBQ, Kansas City BBQ, Memphis BBQ, and Carolina BBQ at the top and other variations in places like Georgia, St. Louis, Alabama and Kentucky.
Meats used for BBQ are typically pork, beef and chicken. Sometimes, you’ll see turkey legs or lamb on a menu, but most joints build their business around a specialty of either pork or beef.
Some places favor dry rubs. Some favor a tomato-based sauce. Some sauces skew sweet and some skew sour. Connoisseurs have their favorites that they’ll fight and die to defend. That’s not me. Even though I strongly prefer vinegar-based sauces with a bit of spice, I’m willing to give your preference a try as long as you’re buying. If I’m paying, it’s going to be a vinegar-based sauce. Otherwise, we can split the bill.
In-N-Out Burger is legendary. Burger aficionados make annual visits to the West coast just to get a fix of one of the best fast-food burgers anywhere for any amount of money. In-N-Out is a regional chain and those of us out of the region are usually left to just long for the next time we’ll be near enough to drive through and use our secret menu ordering skills.
Mooyah Burgers and Fries in Texas is the closest thing to In-N-Out I’ve ever tried, and it’s pretty clear why. They use the same high quality ingredients. The burgers are fresh and never frozen with no additives, fillers or preservatives. The fries are made from potatoes cut fresh the same day. The buns are baked fresh every day and the shakes are made from 100% pure ice cream. When you visit a Mooyah, it even looks a little like an In-N-Out. The employees are friendly and the menu is almost as simple as the published In-N-Out menu.
The regular Mooyah burger, the one I always get, comes with a default of two patties that are also very reminiscent of In-N-Out. My standard order is a Mooyah Burger with swiss cheese, bacon, onions (sometimes raw and sometimes grilled), and mustard. Burgers are thoughtfully wrapped upside down, so when you turn them over to unwrap them, they are ready to eat, right side up.
When we go to Mooyah, we rarely order fries. It isn’t because they aren’t good. They are. We just don’t have appetites large enough to accommodate more than a Mooyah burger. Mooyah fries are cut from fresh potatoes and served in cups. When we DO spring for fries, a regular order is plenty for two. Mooyah gets extra points, from me, for including Malt Vinegar as a condiment beside the ketchup dispenser. A carny once told me, when I was little, that Canadians put vinegar on their fries, and I’ve preferred them that way ever since.
I wouldn’t dare proclaim a Mooyah burger to be as good as an In-N-Out burger, but it’s so close I no longer miss In-N-Out when I’m in Texas. The thing missing most from Mooyah, apart from years of history, is a secret menu!
Ok, this is BIG. I’m going to call Mike Anderson’s Barbeque the best I’ve ever had in Texas or anywhere else.
It’s on Harry Hines in Dallas, Texas, just across the street from Parkland Hospital (of JFK assassination infamy).
When we walked in, the smell of smoke was pervasively wonderful. From the open door, it was the best smelling BBQ joint we’ve visited, but that didn’t mean the food would be great or even good. We stood at the menu board and let a few regulars go ahead of us in line. They were all talking about how unusual it was that there wasn’t a line out the door. That was a good sign and also an indication of fortuitous timing on our part.
The menu emphasized something called a Spudzilla, a loaded, massive baked potato topped with the eaters choice of BBQ meats. This is not something we would have chosen to order except we saw it on the plates of a couple regulars who were ahead of us in line. It looked amazing, so we each ordered one. The people behind us were newbies too and after seeing ours, they ordered the same thing.
I’m not a lover of all BBQ sauce. I’m very specific in my taste. I like the taste of vinegar instead of sweetness and Mike Anderson’s sauce, for my taste, is EXACTLY perfect. It’s my favorite of all time.
State and Allen Yuppie Burger
