Alphabet City Double Deckle At The Brindle Room
The Brindle Room on 10th Street near Avenue A often flys below the radar. I missed it a while back when Time Out rated it as one of the city's best new burgers. Then Food Curated recently created one of its gorgeous video food poems and called it the "best burger in the city":
This kind of stuff is like the bat signal to Guttergourmet, so I headed over to check it out. Now I don't know what the hell "brindle" means, but I sure as hell know what "deckle" means. Deckle literally translates as "little fatty thing" and is the prized part of the brisket as any Texas barbecue aficionado will tell you. The Brindle Room mixes its proprietary burger blend with glorious fatty deckle.
Jeremy Spector likes to play mind games with comfort food. I had previously been to The Brindle Room only once and the burger, served only at lunch and brunch, was unavailable. So I opted for the duck confit poutine instead, which rivaled its cousin at Montreal's legendary Au Pied de Cochon. His latest mad creations are homemade donuts, which he gets to the right yeasty consistency by mixing in mashed potatoes, and topping them with various toppings including homemade caramel and toasted almonds stuck to Nutella.
As the first person in the door for Sunday brunch at 11 a.m., I told Jeremy how much I salivated over his burger's recent video debut and watched from the bar as he seared my Swiss cheese covered fatty beauty. Jeremy plays by his own rules. The burger takes center stage.
Supermarket bun, no annoying lettuce and tomato, just beef, cheese, and some amazing skin-on hand tossed fries. As for the beef, every burger recipe in the universe now calls for an "80/20" meat to fat ratio. Not Jeremy's little fatty burger. He's not telling, but the "white" patty betrays a much higher fat ratio. Sounds good to me. Tastes even better.
Caramelized onions (à la Minetta Tavern's entry for best burger in New York City) make the perfect foil for the rich burger. My only criticism is that Jeremy thinks 6 ounces is the right size and that any bigger would be too rich and too much of a good thing. For myself, at least, I wholeheartedly disagree. Next time, I'm ordering two burgers and will combine them on a single bun. What to call my creation? A "double deckle," of course.