Posted by Damon Gambuto, November 12, 2008 at 2:00 PM
The Oinkster
2005 Colorado Boulevard, Eagle Rock CA 90041 (map); 323-255-6465; theoinkster.com Cooking Method: Griddled Short Order: A fine dining chef's take on the fast food leads to an excellent burger Want Fries with That? Yes, please. The twice-fried, Belgian-style fries are a superior value at $2.25 Notes: Sun. to Thurs., 11 a.m - 10 p.m.; Fri. to Sat., 11 a.m. - 12 a.m. They serve beer and wine so you can make it a night out!
Eagle Rock is what I grew up dreaming a suburb was like. For a boy living in a cramped Manhattan apartment, there was nothing more fantastical than having a home with a backyard and a neighborhood of kids with whom to share it. It sounds strange to narrate it now, but growing up I never really experienced the American suburb—not even an overnight visit to a friend’s place during a summer vacation. My life was a mix of New York City’s impossibly urban landscape with occasional sojourns to the beach or a rural farmscape. It was nothing like the lives of those kids inside my television who populated the quiet bedroom communities built on the back of a post-war boom. They lived a magical life of mid-sized cars, big families, and little leagues. To me, it was all perfectly sized, and even though I could gaze across the river to its edges, it seemed far, far away.
When I reached my college years and finally ventured into the planned community landscape that was home to so many of my new friends, the fiction television helped me write was shattered by the facts of their lives. Suburbs could be just as—if not more—stultifying and limiting. The grass, it seemed, wasn’t any greener in their backyards.
Los Angeles offers up a third option: the suburb masquerading as a city. (Or is it the other way around?) In either direction, Los Angeles seems like it can be all things depending on how you look at it. This comes into sharp focus when you first get a sense of the varied landscape of Los Angeles and realize that its many neighborhoods have been passing for Anytown, USA, or Anycity, USA (even my New York City!) throughout television and movie history. It’s a bit uncanny, the sense of driving though a neighborhood for the first time and feeling like you’ve seen it before. The truth is, often times, you have.
The McDonald's hamburger on the right is from 2008; the one on the left is from 1996. And they both look fairly edible.
Wellness educator and nutrition consultant Karen Hanrahan has kept a McDonald's hamburger since 1996 to illustrate its nonexistent ability to decay. Aside from drying out and bit and having "the oddest smell," it apparently hasn't changed much in the past 12 years.
This isn't the first time someone kept an uneaten McDonald's hamburger for an extended period of time for the sake of science. Or in the case of the Bionic Burger Museum, multiple burgers for over 19 years. There are even instructions on how to start your own collection of old, self-preserving burgers.
Anyone else have experience with Fast Food That Just Won't Rot?
Posted by Nick Solares, September 23, 2008 at 11:30 AM
Shopsin's General Store
Stall 16, Essex Street Market, 120 Essex Street, New York NY 10002 (b/n Delancey Street and Rivington Street; map); 212-924-5160; shopsins.com The Short Order: Amazingly authentic sliders that rival the nation's best, but Shopsin himself is the real star of the show Want Fries with That? Comes with chips, fries are extra and untested by the reviewer Price: sliders $9; burgers $7 Notes: Open Tues. through Sat., 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
"That's you?...You're wrong!" bellowed Kenny Shopsin when he discovered that I, occasional but passionate (and accepted, at least at the time of writing) patron of Shopsin's General Store, and the writer of Beef Aficionado who last year heaped lavish praise upon his sliders, were one and the same. It wasn't enough that I called his sliders the finest I have had in New York City and the closest one can get to White Manna, the appropriately named holy grail of sliderism in Hackensack, New Jersey, without actually leaving Manhattan.
"I see what they are doing," he said. referring to a video I had posted on White Manna. "They steam the onions; my sliders are better, I grill them," he stated definitively, as if that was the end of the discussion, which it actually turned out to be. "You'll see—try mine again and you'll eat your words."
I retorted that when it came to burgers I didn't mind eating my words one bit, and put in my order. I could have posited that the gooey, oozing onions on the sliders at White Manna add a particularly pleasing textural component—not to mention a sweetness that his onions lack by virtue of all the sugars being caramelized—but Shopsin had moved on, laying out a perfectly reasoned but expletive-filled diatribe against the city parking system. Of course, Shopsin's onions, like Shopsin himself, have their own particular charms. And while I still give the White Manna slider the slight edge, the ones at Shopsin's have one thing that Manna does not have: Shopsin himself.
Dear Readers,
The world is raining on my burger parade today. On Sunday night I watched Year of the Dog, in which Molly Shannon's character becomes a vegan. She is completely consumed with rescuing animals from food production, to the point where everything else in her life crumbles. The movie struck a chord in my brain, and I woke up feeling less than grade A. I'm not sure why this movie stuck with me so, but it did. Now the only thing which will make me happier is an adorable beagle puppy I can name Pencil.
Then, yesterday morning, Serious Eats greeted me with Ed's post asking, "If we eat less meat, can we save the planet and ourselves?" The facts about factory faming conditions, and CO2 emissions are not new to me, but they are weighing heavily. How can I be a passionate burger blogger and still consider myself a good global citizen? Being a vegetarian is something kids brag about on MySpace. Is it still cool to be seen eating meat?
Dear Readers,
