Doenjang Noodles

Ann has been feeling her kitchen oats a bit recently, coming up with dishes that she wants to make. And I could not be happier. She's a wonderful cook and I love the break from having to come up with dinner all the time. Well, that's a bit of a lie just now. My foot is just healed and out of the cast and I am starting to walk gingerly and I'm itching to get back into the kitchen. Despite my jones to be back in the kitchen, I'm still happy to sit at the counter and watch Ann work.

Doenjang-Gochujang Perciatelli

Last night being my first tentative foray into walking unassisted by crutches in almost three months, we decided to celebrate with a bottle of Champagne. As we were sitting on the sofa chatting over Champagne, Ann decided that she would make a dish for me that she has been planning for some weeks. The dish in question hails from the NY Times and is called quite unimaginatively Doenjang Noodles.

Doenjang Noodles is pretty much the recipe, too. The par-cooked noodles are finished in a sauce of a quarter cup of doenjang whisked into a pint of milk, end of story. The dish is garnished with a few grinds of black pepper and a grate or two of pecorino romano.

Measuring the Doenjang and Milk

While I believe that the idea of the NYT recipe was to be an umami-laden ersatz alfredo, we like a bit more flavor in our pasta. After tasting the pasta, Ann ended up doubling the inoffensive amount of doenjang in the original recipe along with adding a big glob of spicy gochujang. 

I Love This Woman!

What a really easy and tasty pasta for a quick meal!

Xi'an Cumin Lamb with Scissor-Cut Noodles

Now that my foot is almost better and I am in a walking boot, I can at long last get back in the kitchen and start cooking again. Ann showed me a photo a few times recently of a dish that is something of a current-day internet phenomenon, cumin lamb noodles modelled after the New York restaurant chain Xi'an Fine Foods.

Xi'an Cumin Lamb with Scissor-Cut Noodles

And so on our last foray to the grocery store, my first since early February (you don't know what a blessing it is to be able to do your own shopping until you cannot), we got some lamb to make the dish. We would have liked to have got some shoulder or loin, but that's really only available at the as-yet-unopened-for-the-season farmers market, so we settled for ground lamb.

Our original thought was to make some of our typical pasta dough (egg pasta of about half all-purpose flour and half semolina) hand-cut into wide flat noodles, but that egg pasta did not sit well with me because it is atypical in China. Meanwhile, I had been reading about various styles of Chinese noodles and decided to make some wonderful looking scissor-cut noodles.

Noodle Dough Resting

The noodle dough is merely a couple cups of all-purpose flour, some Kosher salt, and enough water to bring it together into a shaggy dough. I kneaded the dough just enough to bring it into a ball and let it rest on the counter under film for a couple of hours to hydrate. Then later in the afternoon, I kneaded the dough into a smooth paste to develop the gluten. I let it rest for another hour or so before we started on dinner.

Right after making the dough, I toasted the spices, one part Sichuan peppercorns and three parts cumin. At the same time, I heated a quarter cup of oil with a tablespoon of chile flakes to make some chile oil (which is much better made to order than in bulk because it goes rancid fairly quickly).

Toasting Sichuan Peppercorns and Cumin

Oil and Chile Flakes Becoming Chile Oil

When we were ready to eat dinner, Ann and I attacked it together. She started the lamb while I cut pieces of dough into a pan of boiling water. The lamb is a quick sauté of onions, spicy green chiles, and ground lamb seasoned with the ground spices that I toasted earlier. To finish the sauce, she added some soy sauce, chile oil, sesame oil, black vinegar, and a bit of sugar.

Ann Making the Lamb Sauce

Cooking the Noodles

In cooking the noodles, I treated them just like gnocchi or spätzle, removing them from the pan once they floated. It could not have been simpler. The final dish we garnished with (much) more chile oil, sesame seeds, and cilantro.

Delicious Xi'an Cumin Lamb with Scissor-Cut Noodles

We're definitely making these noodles again, one, because they are so easy to make, and two, because they satisfy our desire for pasta with body (you might guess by that, that we are no fans of capellini). The sauce needs work. We hewed closely to a recipe from the web, but now we feel free to make it our own.

Our next version needs to be spicier and funkier, plus I feel like I want a higher ratio of Sichuan peppercorns in the spice mix. I'm thinking of starting with fermented soy paste and creating a dish more akin to zha jiang mian. Good thing the farmers market opens in a week or so, giving us access to locally raised lamb shoulder.

St. Patrick's Day 2023

St. Patrick's Day arrived three weeks after my foot surgery this year and I was in a cast, in pain, and not in a mood to cook anything. [And here I am 7 weeks later, posting, not having been up to even blogging]. Ann and good friends Rob and Dyce conspired to put together a nice meal to cheer me up. It so did cheer me up and I truly appreciated it, having been confined to the house for a month and fully in the midst of going totally stir crazy, not to mention being pissed off at having to sit on the freaking sofa all damn day every day.

St. Paddy's isn't a big event at our house. Ann's full Napoletan on both sides and my family is from Wales and England. But what the hell: everyone is Irish on St. Paddy's Day!

Co-Conspirators

Sadly, the day of St. Patrick's Day, Rob was ill and elected to stay home. We probably would have cancelled the event had Dyce not been up since early morning putting the corned beef brisket on the smoker. In addition to the corned beef, Dyce also brought some Irish cheese, a bottle of Irish malt, a bottle of Chassagne, a loaf of soda bread, and a small lemon curd cake. He went way overboard as he does always.

Irish Cheddar with Porter

My First Irish Single Malt: Pretty Good

We started the evening with a little Irish Cheddar and a shot of Bushmill's single malt. Though I've been to Ireland a couple of times and consumed my fair share of whiskey, it's always been a mild blended whiskey and not a single malt. As a great fan of Scotch, I had never really taken notice of the Irish cousin and was pleasantly surprised. It's not super complex or peaty or smoky, but it is a good dram. Not having had a drop of alcohol in a month, I nursed mine very slowly.

A Seriously Delicious Chassagne

Dyce's Corned Beef, Smoked then Braised

With the beef that Dyce made, we had an unusual wine pairing: Chassagne-Montrachet. I might have picked a light fruity red (Gamay) or even a Riesling or a sparkling white to go with corned beef, but when somebody brings a bottle of Chassagne to my house, all bets are off! That bottle is getting opened!

Italian Girl Cooks Colcannon!

When Ann and Dyce were planning this dinner, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard Ann say, "I'll make colcannon!" Really, I had no idea that my Italian bride even knew what colcannon was, let alone would volunteer to make it. I thought cabbage was firmly on her no-no list. Live and learn! Day of, I hobbled over to the counter and seated at a bar stool with a portable cutting board, I finely sliced two leeks and half a cabbage for her. She then browned both of these in leftover bacon grease and added them to her mash of yellow potatoes. Delicious!

Ann Slicing "Irish Soda Bread"

Dyce scored a loaf of soda bread from a local bakery. I've eaten a lot of soda bread in Ireland, made a lot of it, and even have a handwritten recipe from Alice O'Sullivan, my innkeeper and damned fine baker from my final visit to Killarney. Bottom line, what we bought locally doesn't look like pound cake and it sure as hell does not taste like pound cake. Irish soda bread is not sweet, often has a good portion of whole wheat flour in it, and traditionally is shaped as a round loaf with a cross cut into the top. We were fairly put off by this so-called loaf.

Corned Beef, Colcannon, and Soda Bread

Damn Fine Lemon Curd Cake for Dessert

I cannot reiterate what a lifesaver it was for me for Dyce and Ann to put together this dinner. It so elevated my spirits.

Happy Bendiversary!

[Ed note: so I started this post on February 11, never expecting that I would shatter my left foot on the 15th in a freak accident and here it is already the first of April before I'm feeling up to working at the computer again.]

Time is flying right by! It struck me a couple weeks back that we were quickly coming up on the first anniversary of our moving to Bend on February 10, 2022 from our prior home in McMinnville, closing a year that zoomed by at warp speed. I thought we should celebrate if for no other reason than we don't do enough celebrating in our busy lives. And time is flying right by!

Here's to a Year in Bend!

I asked Ann if she would have a date with me on the 10th to celebrate moving. Her immediate acceptance was never in question! I planned a stay-home date without telling Ann, because we have a brand new kitchen in our house to celebrate. I thought that celebrating by making a nice dinner at home and having a date at our new kitchen counter would be both fitting and appropriate. 

At first, I let Ann believe that we were going to a restaurant, but there was no way that I could pull off a meal in the kitchen and still maintain the ruse of going out. A day or two before, I told her what my plan was and enlisted her help in making the island counter look nice. To that end, I bought a bunch of spider mums and Siberian iris and arranged them. Ann set our places at the counter.

All Set for the Two of Us

Ann Taking the Shot Above

In thinking about what to make for our celebration, I recalled that recently Ann has been pinging me about making coq au vin, a dish that she has never had before (incredible, if I may say so). This got me planning a French-inspired menu for our celebration. French food is something that I am well versed in and certainly classic French technique underpinned nearly everything that we did at the restaurant.

Even if we desired to dine out, there is no French restaurant at all in this part of Central Oregon. And besides, I don't get the urge to get in the kitchen and cook much any more, so I wanted to strike while the proverbial iron was hot and make a delightful rendition of coq au vin for Ann.

I planned a simple menu of tartines, coq au vin, and cheese (which we never got around to eating, so filling was dinner). Tartines are a classic component of the apéro, the French happy hour and are typically small open-faced sandwiches. And the difference between a tartine and a canapé is in the eye of the beholder. To me, a canapé is much more of a one-biter and a tartine is slightly larger. YMMV.

Tartines of Mousse Truffée, Cornichons, Dill, and Lemon Zest

For tartines, I thought they should be slightly decadent and worthy of a celebration, so I stopped by our high-end grocery store for a locally baked baguette and a block of mousse truffée, truffled foie gras mousse. Rounding out the toppings are split cornichons, sprigs of dill, lemon zest, and a sprinkle of my very best salt. The result: simple, elegant, and terribly easy to make.

To accompany them, I opened a bottle of Champagne, a great non-vintage blend with both red and white notes. The nutty raspberry notes from the red fruit (Pinot noir and Pinot meunier) work well with the foie gras while the lemony acidity from the Chardonnay really help cut through the fat. 

Champagne: The Celebratory Drink of Choice

For our plat principal, our main course, I made an upscale coq au vin. Coq au vin and its many variations are a classic of French country cooking, traditionally a tough old rooster (coq) braised to tenderness in wine (vin). The wine varies depending on the region of France, to wit: coq au champagne from the Champagne, coq au riesling from Alsace, coq au vin jaune from the Jura, coq au chambertin from Bourgogne, etc.

While I have fond memories of sitting in a tiny, homey, low-ceilinged café in Fleurie chatting away waiting for our Bresse hen to braise to tenderness in a bath of Beaujolais, because of its humble origins, coq au vin is not a dish found in too many higher end French restaurants. By extension, I never made it at my restaurant: it would not have sold, being too homey and not chi chi enough for fine dining. Pity that.

Traditionally, a whole chicken is cut up, browned, and braised with white mushrooms, pork belly lardons, onions, carrots, red wine, and often a good slug of Cognac. Once the chicken is tender, the braising liquid is thickened with beurre manié, a flour and butter mixture.

While I have cooked it just so, these days, my fine dining chef instincts kick in, especially for a celebration and I deviate slightly from the canonical recipe. I think the food gods will allow this liberty because I have paid my dues in over 40 years of making the dish.

I start deviating with the chicken. It was traditionally made from an old and tough yard bird, but that has morphed into using younger Bresse hens, at least in more upscale places. In any case, the bird is cut into pieces and cooked and served on the bone.

In America at least (I cannot speak for France), the chicken quality is poor and the white breast meat is almost uniformly terrible. I would rather eat nothing than breast meat and so I only use thighs for their succulent and tender meat. And in this particular case, I deboned the thighs and halved them, wanting to do a nice presentation and to avoid having to deal with bones at the table.

Most high-end versions use whole tiny onions; I prefer whole small shallots. Because of the slight garlic undertone of the shallots, I forego any garlic. Instead of plain pork belly, I have a great fondness for using American smoked bacon if for no other reason that it plays so well against red Burgundy and Beaujolais. I really do not care for white mushrooms, the mushroom used in the classic preparation, the mushroom that the French call champignons de Paris. And so, I use rehydrated dried porcini to amp the earthiness of the dish.

Happy Bendiversary!

Coq au Vin on Puff Pastry

I Use Shallots Rather Than Onions

The Pot Ready for Braising

I really did enjoy making this dish for Ann and spending the last year in Bend with her!

Gochujang-Roasted Carrots and Brussels Sprouts

I love gochujang, that somewhat spicy, funky, thick and sticky, fermented Korean paste of red chiles, glutinous rice, soy, and barley. Although many people would find gochujang highly spicy, in my world, it's pretty mild as spicy things go.

Gochujang-Roasted Carrots and Brussels Sprouts,
Ann: "Damn it! You're Trying to Get Me to Eat Vegetables!"

Back during the height of COVID sequestration, I started toying with the idea of gochujang and carrots, using those carrots as a base for a fish dish. Initially, I tossed the carrots in a gochujang-based sauce before roasting them, but in more recent iterations, I have taken to roasting the carrots first, then tossing them in the sauce after cooking, à la Buffalo wings. I prefer this method because I can roast the carrots just to doneness without having to worry about the sauce burning in the high heat of the oven.

Last night, in expanding on the theme I decided to do a strictly vegetarian dish of roasted carrots and brussels sprouts in gochujang sauce over rice. From the get-go, Ann was asking, "What protein are you going to serve that on?" She's not quite of the "if it's not meat, it's not a meal" ilk, but vegetarian is harder for her than for me. I could happily live on vegetables without any meat at all, but that would really test Ann's limits.

Gochujang Sauce

My new iteration of gochujang sauce shows some evolution from the original as well. Last night, I mixed a lot of gochujang with a little rice vinegar, some agave nectar to balance, a little soy for salt, a touch of sesame oil for complexity, and finely minced garlic. A couple of tablespoons of warm water helped make the sauce fluid enough. This would make a really tasty Buffalo wing sauce, come to think of it.

Sweet Potatoes

Man, the restaurant life really sapped my enthusiasm for cooking! My love for the kitchen, even to this day, has not recovered and I retired from the business five and a half years ago. I used to think nothing of spending joyful hours in the kitchen, but now there are days when I can barely be bothered to go back in the kitchen for two minutes to throw together a ham sandwich.

Kitchen Mojo: Sweet Potato Cakes, Pork Tenderloin, Cole Slaw, Chipotle Honey

Just after retirement from the restaurant, I had no love for the kitchen. But these days some five-plus years hence, my love of cooking comes and goes. In the last ten days or so, my kitchen mojo is finally on the wax, at least temporarily. That's a good thing in that I have accumulated of a bit of winter fat and I need to eat better. Also, my body is longing for fresh vegetables, something that it quite usual for me in this cold vegetable-challenged season. That longing in part spurs me to action in the kitchen.

Though many vegetables are now available 365 days a year, thanks to a worldwide supply chain, old habits die hard with me. I try to use ingredients only in season, though I have relented a bit from this imperative in recent years. Back in the restaurant days, as a seasonal restaurant supplied by local farmers, we were limited in winter to storage vegetables from the previous growing season, our farmers bringing us only the tiniest amount of fresh produce from their expensive-to-heat greenhouses.

Winter therefore meant sweet potatoes, bushels and bushels of sweet potatoes. Out of necessity, we had to find creative ways to use them so as not to bore ourselves or customers. Fortunately, the sweet potato is as equally useful as a regular potato and therefore lends itself to a myriad of preparations: boiled, mashed, baked, chips, fries, grated for latkes, and even hashed.

Exercising all my creativity, at one point during my restaurant career, I hit upon a sweet potato hash that quickly became a customer favorite when accompanying our Berkshire x Ossabaw pork, wild boar, Moulard duck, or any of the venison that would come and go on the menu throughout the course of the winter: red deer, white tail, caribou, or elk.

The hash at the restaurant would have started in a vast sauté pan with cubes of our slab bacon, or house-cured pancetta if we were between slabs of bacon, cooked just enough to release a bit of fat. Into the sauté pan would go diced onion and cubes of raw sweet potato. Like any hash, it would stay on the flame until the bacon was rendered, the onions browned, and the sweet potato cooked all the way through.

I have never been one to like sweet food (I'm that guy who does not eat dessert) and I have always frowned on sweet sweet potato preparations. Properly cured sweet potatoes have enough natural sweetness on their own that they really don't need any added sugar, except perhaps if they are being served as a dessert course. But I do make a slight exception for my sweet potato hash.

Just as the hash is cooked is where the sweetness comes in, though not via added sugar (at least not raw sugar). At this point, we'd add dried sweetened cranberries (or cherries) and then flambé the whole shebang with a good slug of Bourbon. Ann is not a fan of the sweet woody and vanilla notes that the Bourbon imparts nor has she ever been a fan of fruit in savory dishes. But this hash ticks my boxes: creative, savory, smoky, and oh so tasty.  For more on the hash technique see here and here.

I have finally got enough distance from the restaurant and its sea of winter sweet potatoes to want to prepare sweet potatoes again at home. So, to accompany a roast pork tenderloin, I made this hash again, omitting the bacon to keep the dish a bit healthier. In spite of Ann not being a big fan, every once in a while, I make a dish because I like it. My usual MO is to only cook the things that I know that Ann loves. Mea culpa.

I actually cooked two tenderloins and put the second one in the fridge along with a small amount of leftover hash, the perfect starting point for a leftover-based dish the next evening. But how to change it up so that it would be different enough from the night before? I didn't have enough hash left to serve one person, let alone two, so I thought about ways to stretch it. And it occurred to me that if I roasted a sweet potato, mashed it, and incorporated the leftover hash into the mash, I could make sweet potato cakes.

I find myself using rolled oats instead of bread crumbs or panko to bind things these days: meatloaf, meatballs, potato cakes, and so forth. The results are fantastic and to my mind, at least, the complex carbs in rolled oats are a healthier option than the more simple bread carbs. Although I put a little panko on the surface of the sweet potato cakes to yield a nice crust, I bound the cakes with oats.

Sweet Potato Cakes, Bound with Rolled Oats

Once I had made the sweet potato cakes and put them in the refrigerator to set up, the full dish came together in my mind: sweet potato cakes, thinly sliced pork tenderloin, a bit of my vinegar-based cole slaw that is always in the fridge, and a drizzle of spicy chipotle-honey (chipotle purée, honey, water to thin, and salt to taste).

At least temporarily, my kitchen mojo is back and functioning at a decent level and I'm still making good use of winter storage vegetables: sweet potatoes, onions, cabbage, and carrots. And Ann is going to forgive my use of sweet dried fruit and Bourbon in the sweet potato cakes.

Bend Smashburger Smash-Off

Update August 2023

Since Ann and I did our initial tasting of Bend smashburgers in January 2023, some things have changed and some have not. Americana is still crushing it at Podski. Willieburger bought a new cart which has taken up quasi-permanence at the Deschutes Brewery; they are no longer at Boss Rambler. 

MidCity left the traffic-poor and landlocked Boneyard location downtown for the richer environs over at Hayden Homes Amphitheater for the summer concert series while searching for a new location elsewhere. They appear to have settled on the parking lot at the Waypoint Hotel (Olney and 3rd) for after the concert season ends.

As for these three, nothing has changed with respect to quality: everything we said before holds, except that we find the burgers at Americana have a better crust than ever, solidifying them firmly as the burger to beat in town. Willieburger is right up there with Americana and it will come down to your personal preference as to which is better than the other. MidCity remains a far distant third.

Also, Blue Eyes has finally got their retail act together and are slinging smashies daily over near Pilot Butte (7th and Greenwood). They also have a cart that is currently at Boss Rambler where Willieburger used to be. Sadly, Blue Eyes burgers, while very large and with a nice crust, have very little flavor. At $11 for a single and $13 for a double, the quality to value ratio isn't there. Also, their fries are strange: I have never had a tough fry until I visited Blue Eyes.

Finally, Bend Brewing launched a smashburger on their new post-renovation menu. It is a good burger, not in Americana and Willie territory, but way above Blue Eyes and MidCity. It's a bit spendy at $15, though that's not a bad price considering what real estate costs right downtown on the river.

TL;DR

After coming to love smashburgers in the last year, Ann and I set about finding the best smashburger in Bend, regardless of price or size. The Americana Truck's OG burger takes the crown, barely edging out the Willieburger double. Despite coming in behind the other two, the MidCity Smashburger Smashy Boi is a great burger if you're in the neighborhood. Details below.

Old Dog Learning New Tricks

As a retired fine dining restaurant chef/owner, my idea of a hamburger has always been an inch thick and medium rare, a not terribly lean juice bomb with a great toasted bun and simple condiments. Now that I've retired and moved to Bend, burgers that fit my profile are few and far between. In the last year, I've come to know the smashburger, albeit reluctantly at first.

Much to my surprise, I have become something of a smashburger fanatic. This non-traditional burger is pressed with great force onto a flattop such that it becomes a wafer-thin patty. This flat, the burger comes off the flattop well done with a gorgeous maximally crunchy and über-meaty surface.

Although smashburgers are 180 degrees from my once-ideal burger, I have come to love them in the same way that I am coming to love Detroit-style pizza (similar to Roman pizza in teglia), the antithesis of my beloved Neapolitan-style pie. This old dog is learning new tricks!

The Players and Their Burgers

We know of four places in Bend that offer smashburgers and there are probably others as well. For our totally non-scientific survey, we got burgers from The Americana Truck, Willieburger, and MidCity Smashburger. Blue Eyes on Greenwood near Pilot Butte offers a smashburger as well, but they managed to remove themselves from the competition by repeatedly being closed without making any announcement to their would-be customers.

Formerly located at Spider City, The Americana Truck has recently moved to Podski near the Box Factory, occupying a new-to-them gold foodtruck passed on from El Sancho. It is unclear if the original Jesus-muraled truck that we came to love at Spider City will be put back into service some time in 2023.

Number One in Our Taste Test: Americana's OG, $8, 10.3 ounces

Willieburger is a pop-up run by brick-and-mortar restaurant vets. While they were regulars at the NWX Farmers Market during the season, they are currently splitting their time on weekends between Boss Rambler and Deschutes Brewery (Colorado Ave, not the pub downtown). Namesake dog Willie is a cute little guy! Check their Insta feed for their schedule and adorable pics of Willie.

A Very Close Number Two: Willieburger's Double, $11, 8.4 ounces

MidCity is situated in a food cart at the Boneyard tap room on Lake Place, hard on the Parkway in Old Bend, not at the main pub on Division. MidCity opened an offshoot of their Portland business with much fanfare in early 2022 and they do a great job of marketing their product on social media.

Third Place: MidCity's Smashy Boi, $6, 5.6 ounces

While we have eaten a lot of each of these three burgers over the last many months and while we have had our opinions about them, we had never sat down to try all three at the same time, head-to-head. Once we came up with this idea (blatantly ripped off from Podski's burger challenge) this winter, we had to wait for Willieburger to get back from vacation to hold the Smash-Off.

We drove to all three places, ordered a burger to go, kept it in its original packaging until we got home. There, we unwrapped all three burgers, weighed them, and put them in a microwave for 30 seconds to make sure they are were all equally warm.

To be fair, we tested as equivalent and as standard burgers as possible, ordering two patties and no add-ons. All came with cheese, a sauce, and onions. Other toppings vary slightly. The Willieburger comes as a single, so we ordered a double. The OG and SmashyBoi are doubles from the get-go.

We couldn't taste the burgers blind: we are too familiar with them and they are individually too distinctive looking and tasting. Also in the spirit of transparency, see the photo below. What's better with burgers than beer? Several of these are hazy ales and that may have "clouded" our judgement. 

What Better with Burgers?

Evaluation Criteria

We ranked the burgers based on four criteria that are meaningful to us: the bun, the crust on the burger, the onions (all come with onions standard), and the sauce. We did not consider the cheese, because they all have deliciously gooey American-style cheese.

Moreover, we did not use size or price in our evaluations. That is, the Americana Burger would have still topped the rankings at a even higher price. Willie would have come second even at half the price and MidCity would have still placed third at twice the size. 

Buns. Ann and I are sticklers for good buns. It matters that they are good quality and carefully toasted. Americana uses split-top brioche buns that are well-toasted. For this test, the Willieburger came on a standard bun, really well grilled, but we have had brioche buns from them in the past. MidCity had a pretty average bun.

Burger Crust. This is what a smashburger is all about. Willie kills it with a fantastic crust. You will wait the longest time for that killer crust but it is so worth it. Just slightly below this is the Americana crust. When the truck is less busy, sometimes the crust can rival Willie. And MidCity has a decent crust, just not quite as good as the other two. From a technical aspect, I believe the Willieburger crust is due to the cast iron flattop, unique among the three.

Onions. Onions are crucial on burgers for their acidity which helps cleanse the requisite fat from the burger and the cheese from your tongue. In other words, onions help keep each bite of the burger fresh. Willie again kills it with thinly sliced raw onion smashed into the burger. The onions keep a bit of their crunch and acid and help elevate the burger. The other two use caramelized (or at least cooked) onions, which while tasty, do not help the burger.

Sauce. I've always been a mustard guy where burgers are concerned, but mustard is just wrong in the context of a smashburger. Even I can see the error of my ways. I have come to admit that a mayo-based burger sauce can really do wonderful things for a burger. And the number one thing that sets Americana apart from its peers is the burger sauce, redolent of black pepper (Joe later told me the pepper is actually in the onions), whose slightly spicy bite does the same thing for the OG that the onions do for the Willie. Willie has a decent burger sauce, but neither of us were huge fans of the thicker and paler sauce at MidCity.

Burger	Bun	Crust	Onions	Sauce	Overall
Americana OG	1	2	tie 2	1	best
Willieburger Double	2	1	1	2	second, by a nose
MidCity Smashy Boi	3	3	tie 2	3	third

You'll note in the summary chart above that Americana and Willie split top honors in the four categories. But a burger is the sum of all its parts and Ann and I are unanimous (What? We're never unamimous!) that the OG from Americana when taken as a whole is the better burger.

What's more is that Ann and I both agree that a perfect smashburger might be the Willie burger on the Americana bun setup.

I was in the in the business for ages and I hope that nobody feels any disrespect. Ann and I know how damn hard you work and we applaud your efforts. We were just having a little fun in sampling the various burger options and we are very thankful to have those options.