I talked to my real estate contact (he's a longtime friend of the family whom I trust to be straight with me) and he asked around to some of his contacts who have dealt with the landlord. The consensus among these guys is that this landlord is a major league asshole, who is very quick to go to litigation about anything and is just generally a huge pain to deal with.

He couldn't really give me any explanation for why the landlord suddenly wouldn't want to rent to me, other than to speculate that he's got another offer that he feels is better. Possibly something corporate, although I'm not sure why people would view corporate-owned businesses as a safer bet than independently-owned entities in the current climate. A Bank of America recently vacated the space next door to the restaurant, and up until recently, I'd think that a property owner would view a huge bank like that as a dream tenant.

So. We're done with this guy. This deal is dead. I've mentally moved on already and am considering other spaces. I will probably call the landlord again Monday just to put the screws to him and see how he responds, but that will be more out of curiosity than anything else. I'm fairly sure that I wouldn't move forward with him at this point, knowing what I now know, even if he changed his mind. My real estate adviser (who may soon be my real estate agent, depending on how things go) says that we're lucky to have seen his true colors early enough in the game that we're not out any much money.

There are two spaces that I'm now focusing on; one, I've seen and one that I haven't. The one that I've seen is on Western Ave. and is a completely built-out, well put-together space. It's a great deal because the cost of purchasing it is less than we were going to pay with our previous deal, plus there would be practically zero build-out costs. It would represent a savings of about $50k over the last deal. Downside is that the location is completely different and we've already done a ton of research and legwork about the previous Lincoln Square location. The rent is also higher.

The second option, which I haven't seen, is practically right next door to the space we had a contract to purchase. The location appeals to me because we can pick up right where we left off, and there would be a certain sense of retribution or revenge there based on how this landlord is fucking us over. I'll show him! But, I know practically nothing about the space--whether it's built out as a restaurant, what the rent is, what the entry costs are, etc. Supposed to hear more this coming week.

Crazy stuff. We'd been working on this deal for months. I'm upset that we've spent so much time and some money on this location and now it's all of a sudden off the table. Most of our legal fees will now have been wasted, since we'll have to draw up new paperwork for anything we end up moving on, the cost of the inspections I did is now wasted, we've got checks with that address printed on them, and accounts with the gas and electric companies already up and running. Not a huge amount of money, and it certainly could have been worse, but it's a frustrating fucking waste.

Mostly, though, it's shifting gears emotionally that's hard right now. I did a lot of picturing myself in that space, planning what I was going to do with the space, writing layouts and floorplans, telling people about the location, and fantasizing about what life in my restaurant would be like in that particular spot. It's really hard to just pick all that up and move it to another spot, especially one that I haven't seen, or one that's in a different part of town with a completely different feel.

It's not quite as bad as in the past, when I've been fired from a job, but it's a similar feeling. A big part of identity is where you work--what you do. And when someone takes a job or a restaurant away from you, all of a sudden all the identity-forming stuff that comes from that is gone, and it leaves you feeling untethered, and somehow less legitimate. I've been fired enough times to know that I'm not defined by one particular job or restaurant space, and that what I "do" isn't dependent on where I do it, but it's still a hard feeling to deal with, especially for the first week or so after it happens.

Follow up to today's post.

I spoke with the seller this evening and he seems genuinely puzzled as to what this is about. I don't think he's lying because I just don't think he could lie that convincingly. He also didn't ask for or even imply that he wanted more money from me.

Basically, he seems just as pissed as me that the landlord is pulling this shit, and is wondering whether they guy is doing something behind the scenes like putting liens on his equipment or getting ready to padlock the door and seize everything as retribution for what he's owed.

Apparently, the seller owes about $15,000 in back rent; more than a few months. The landlord told me today that he doesn't mind letting the place sit empty, since the seller is paying him. So a bit of a disconnect there. Seller tells me that his conversation with the landlord was similar to the one I had today; that the guy believes that my idea isn't viable, that I won't make money, and that he'll be in the same position with me in a year or so that he's in now with the seller.

He also supposedly told the seller that he's got another space that I might be interested in.... Which makes zero sense if he really thinks my idea is no good.

This is crazy stuff. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what this guy's angle might be. I've got calls in to my attorneys and my contact that knows commercial real estate, so I'm hoping they might give me some insight.

Other than that, I'm not sure what I can do, other than to string this out as long as possible and hope that this guy comes to his senses.

I got the explanation for why the landlord hasn't been calling me back over the last two weeks--he apparently doesn't want to rent to us anymore.

This is nuts. I spoke with him at his office about a month and a half ago and he said he thought the concept was a great idea. I showed him our business plan, talked about the fact that we have enough in reserves to pay rent during our 'growth' period of the first year or so, and everything seemed fine on that end.

He is kind of a crazy old guy, with a storefront office in an old apartment building that looks like it hasn't changed since about 1958 or so, right down to the pictures hanging from the faux-wood paneling in his office. I got the impression then that he didn't care at all who was sending him the checks, as long as they kept coming in, and when I gave him the business plan I had worked up, he tossed it onto a pile on his cluttered desk in a way that made me feel like the chances of him reading it were pretty slim.

Back then, I was confident we were going to get him to make some significant accommodations on the rent and the terms of the lease, given the current economy, but he took a hard line and would hardly budge at all. After talking to a friend who is an experienced commercial real estate guy, and, as it turns out, who negotiated with this same old landlord himself, I realized that the terms being offered weren't really too bad, and that he had a reputation for not budging on deals. So I resigned myself to signing a lease that was more or less what he had offered me back then.

Now, all of a sudden, he tells me today on the phone that he doesn't think the concept is right for the neighborhood, that all of the other restaurants around don't do very well at lunch, etc, etc,.... This from a guy who's leased to three different restaurants in the past four years. All of a sudden, he's all picky about who's paying him rent?

He asked me if I'd spoken to the seller recently, and then, when I said "no", he told me that he wasn't interested in renting to me. I was incredulous. I kept asking him what the problem is, and he wouldn't really say. He kept telling me to talk to the seller, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be asking the seller about this; he's got nothing to do with the lease situation.

The only possible explanation for this is that the seller called the landlord and told him not to rent to me, so he can either back out of the deal or try and hit me up for more money. My suspicion is that the seller owes quite a bit of money on back rent and is now telling the landlord that, unless he can get more money out of me, he won't pay him. So they're teaming up to squeeze me.

The other possibility is that he got another offer that he's contractually not permitted to accept, so is trying to get me to quash the deal so he can take the other offer.

Either way, this is not good. I've put about four or five months of work into putting this deal together and preparing for the restaurant, and now it might all be for nothing. A complete waste of time.

I'm trying not to panic here because this is about the fourth time this seller has done something to try and make me nervous or panicky and then tried to hit me up to either move faster or pay him more. As soon as I got off the phone with the landlord, I put calls in to the seller, my lawyer, and the real estate guy that I mentioned above, but nobody's called me back yet.

One thing that's making it a bit easier not to completely panic about this is that I looked at another space last week. A neighbor of mine, who had originally considered investing in my restaurant, owns a building that houses a restaurant whose owners are looking to get out of the business. They're deep in debt, due to overextending themselves on the buildout of the place.

The upside of that is that it's completely brand new; a fully up-and-running restaurant--far nicer than I was planning on making Automatic. But this leads me to question whether the concept is right for the space; is it too nice? Will the simple concept I've been envisioning work in the almost corporate-feeling new construction space? Can I kind of "trash it up" a bit to make the space feel right for the concept?

The other upside is that the asking price is incredibly low; half of what I was offering the Lincoln Square seller.

Downsides of this other place are:

• Rent. It's higher by about $1000/month.
• Location. It's very different than the Lincoln Square location, and doesn't seem as much like a sure thing. It's on a major street with tons of traffic, but lacks the affluent housing and foot traffic of the original location.
• Layout. The place has kind of an odd diagonal shape and the kitchen is laid out more for table service than for a quick-serve operation.
• Concept. I'm not sure the concept I've worked up will translate to this neighborhood, although I do believe it could if I tweaked it. A big part of the concept, though, was that it'd be lunch-only, and that was driven by me trying to achieve a balance between my work life and family life. This new location lends itself more to later hours

So my mind is spinning right now. I'm going to wait and see what the seller and landlord have to say, but I also have to plan for this deal to fall through and start thinking about looking for other possibilities.

Today was a flurry of activity. Unfortunately, not much actually got done.

We're a day outside of our contingency period and the seller hasn't been calling me back. This morning I called him at 7:30am and got ahold of him and the first thing he did was ask me "since we're outside the contingency period, that means I can entertain other offers, right?"

Well, I wasn't sure, so I said that I just didn't know, but I believed at the time that the answer was yes. So, of course, I started getting all worried and nervous that someone's going to come buy the place out from under us. Which is, of course, what he wants. He's been playing these kind of games with me from the start--I should know better by now, but I can't help but buy into it.

I emailed my lawyer and asked what we need to do to get this thing closed ASAP. We still have to get a lease in place (shouldn't be hard, we're basically just agreeing to the landlord's terms) and we're waiting for two searches to come back to determine if the seller has any debt we need to concern ourselves with.

I told the lawyer that I'd like to just blow off the searches and get this thing done.

Meanwhile, I had an guy coming at 1pm to inspect the stoves and grill, and the seller informed me that he couldn't have anyone there at that time to let him in, but that I could go pick up the keys at his sister's house and do it myself.

Fine. Except I still don't have a vehicle, since this guy out in Joliet hasn't gotten back to me about this truck that I'm supposed to be renting. More on that later.

Anyway, the seller's sister's house is in Albany Park, and rather than taking the train all the way downtown and then taking the brown line all the way back out there, I decided to get off the train at Jefferson Park and walk from Lawrence and Milwaukee to Foster and Kimball. It looked pretty walkable on the Google map I punched up, but it took me an hour and a half of pretty hard walking. Plus it was HOT out today.

But, things went according to plan for once. I got the keys, walked the three more blocks down to the Kimball stop on the brown line, and then rode the el four stops over to where the restaurant is going to be. I was there in plenty of time for the 1pm inspection, so I grabbed a salad and had lunch.

While I was walking, the truck guy from Joliet called me and told me that there's a problem with the "transfer case"(?). Not sure if I'm remembering that right, but it's something having to do with the four-wheel drive. Anyway, whatever the fuck it is, it means that I won't be able to get the truck until sometime next week. Great. Whatever, keep me posted.

Then, while waiting for the appliance guys to show up, I spoke with my lawyer, who patiently explained to me that "contingency" is one thing and "conditional" is another. The contingency period, which just ended, was the time allotted for me to do inspections and, if I desired, walk away from the deal without penalty.

The conditions of closing, on the other hand, are not, he informed me, constrained to any set amount of time; they're simply things that must get done before we can close the deal. So, what all this means that the seller cannot entertain other offers. He's locked in and, really, has no choice but to wait for us to get the lease and the debt searches done.

Hearing that, plus getting the results of the inspection, cheered me up immensely, and I no longer have this feeling that we need to get this done NOW or we're going to lose the place.

And--bonus!--the char-grill that's in the place is a pricey TEC infrared unit that retails for upwards of $3,000 and only needs a couple hundred worth of repairs. The Vulcan six-burner that's there is pretty much trashed, but I wasn't planning on keeping that anyway. Good deal.

So all my hoofing it around town paid off. I finished up my lunch, made a couple quick calls, locked up, and then rode the el downtown, walked over to the Metra station, and took my train back home. Eight hours of running around, but at least *something* got done, plus I'm in a much better place than I was when I left home.

Although, it's not like the surprises don't keep coming. The furnace and hot water heater were both disconnected from the gas, I noticed. The gas company insists that the room where they're housed is unsafe due to inadequate ventilation, and that they need to be relocated. Plus, I saw a dead roach in the hall near the bathrooms and the appliance guy, after sticking his head up into the ceiling, said he saw rat droppings and that the electrical was "a mess".

But I'll cross those bridges when I come to them. I need to focus on the eight or ten balls I currently have in the air.

So...now we still wait. For the landlord to decide to call me back, for the debt searches to come back, for the insurance people to email me their various bids, and for the Joliet truck guy to get his transfer case or whatever it is ready to go. This coming Monday is Memorial Day, so it's a safe bet that little will get done tomorrow, and it's certain that nothing will get done on Monday.

Hopefully next week, things will start taking shape. The blisters on my feet should be better by then.

The last two days have been waiting days. We're in the contingency period of our purchase of the existing restaurant's assets; we opted to not purchase the corporation because the guy we're buying from couldn't produce any tax records, books, really, any financial records of any type. And if we bought the LLC from him, we'd be on the hook for anything they owed anyone. No, thanks.

I was supposed to be doing inspections during this contingency period and negotiating the terms of the lease with the landlord, an ancient guy named Saul who, when he bothers to call me back at all, usually confuses me with someone else from one of his other buildings. Nearly every conversation with him starts with about five minutes of me refreshing his memory about who I am.

But for the last week or so, he hasn't returned my calls at all, and my repeated calls to his office staff have gotten me nowhere. It's frustrating, because we're basically in agreement on the terms, so this shouldn't take long, but I need to come to an understanding with him before we can move forward.

The other thing I'm waiting on is insurance. We met with our family's insurance agent months ago, went over every fine detail and all the coverages available, and he gave us a ballpark quote of about $5,000 per year, which included the "package", workman's compensation, and an "umbrella" policy of $1 million. I'm putting those words in quotes not because I'm using them in a novel way, but because I'm simply repeating words that these insurance people have been using and I have no idea whether they're real terms or not. I also don't care. I hate insurance.

Part of my prep for getting the restaurant open involves using a pickup truck for a couple months, so I can go to restaurant equipment sales and auctions, whip out cash, and haul stuff away on the spot. That is how you get deals....right place, right time, cash in hand. Anyway, after calling the conventional car rental places and getting quotes of $1200/month and up (plus milage) to use a truck, I placed an ad on Craigslist looking for someone to rent me one, and found a guy willing to do it for $400/month.

Sweet. Except the guy (understandably) wants me to carry insurance on the truck. So I've been going back and forth with the insurance folks about whether this can be done. Yesterday, our family person told me it's not possible--that one has to have the title in order to insure a vehicle. Today, she calls me back and says that it is possible, under some sort of "leased equipment damages" clause or something. But then she also lays the quote on me, and it's $9,000/year.

Later, she called me back with another, more reasonable quote, but says that they won't do the leased equipment damages thing.

So, back to the truck guy, to tell him what's up and he agrees to talk to his insurance people and get back to me.

And so I wait. And continue to wait. Antsy to get started gutting the place and buying equipment and painting and re-tiling and all that other fun stuff that needs to get done before I can actually toss a burger on the grill or dunk a basket of fries into the hot oil.

Fun, eh? The restaurant life is so very glamorous.

Oh, the other thing is that we're technically supposed to close tonight, but the contingencies have not been taken care of. In other words, we don't have a lease, and we don't have inspections completed. I have an inspection scheduled for tomorrow at one, my hot appliance guy is supposed to come look at the six-burner unit and the char-grill, but the seller is not returning my calls or emails to inform me of whether he'll agree to extend the contingency period or have someone there tomorrow at one to let me and the appliance guy into the space.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of this whole four-month process, which has included multiple sellers (who disappeared when it was time to sign the contract), a seller who wanted to change the name of the owner at the last minute (ah...no), multiple "other offers", which seemed to appear any time there was a sticking point to the negotiation and just as mysteriously disappear when we appeared ready to walk, a gas company guy who wouldn't turn on the service because he deemed the mechanical room unsafe, and more.

I'll detail that stuff another time, when I'm in the mood to backtrack. This post was just about venting my frustration with having to wait. I feel like there's so much I need to do to push this project forward, but I can't do any of it until the current steps are completed; lease, insurance, truck, inspections, close.

As the unveiling of my project grows closer (I'll share more details when I can), I've been cruising around town trying boatloads of burgers and fries.

The more I try, the more I'm amazed at the differences from place to place. Here are some quick reviews of places I've tried recently.



Muskie's
2878 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago

This is a classic-looking old place with a sparse, simple menu that regularly gets pretty good marks on the various restaurant review sites. It's very clean inside, the owner is usually running the show behind the counter, and is extremely competent and friendly.

The burger, however, is your standard-issue frozen hockey puck. Besides lacking juiciness and good beefy flavor, which is almost always the case with a factory-formed, machine-stamped frozen patty, mine tasted freezer-burnt to boot. If the best part of a burger is the toppings, it's just not worth it, in my opinion.

The highlight at Muskie's is the fries. They're cutting their own potatoes here, but they're doing a thin fry, just about the same size as that awful place that starts with McD. And, these crispy shoestrings were cooked perfectly. Nicely cooked through with a great crunchy, well-browned exterior. This is the only place I've ever seen do a fresh-cut fry in this style. Very nice.


That's-a-Burger
2134 E 71st St., Chicago

This place has been recommended to me by dozens of people and I finally got around to trying it. The burgers are a nicely-done example of the diner-style griddled smashburger; fresh beef scooped and then smashed on the flat top. I did see (despite having to look through the bullet-proof glass) the guy scoop the fresh beef and flatten it with a specially-bent spatula that he fashioned (I presume) for this specific task, so they're at least doing it the way it's supposed to be done.

As a result, the burger was pretty good. Beef tasted fresh and had that nice crispy-yet-crumbly texture you want from a griddled diner-style burger. It was pretty juicy as well. They have a lot of other interesting-sounding stuff on their menu, and I've heard rave reviews about their turkey burgers, but I was interested in sampling just the straight-up burger and fries, mostly unadorned, in order to really be able to taste and assess the meat.

The fries, while fresh-cut, were abysmal. The trick with fresh-cut fries is to be able to cook them through in the time it takes the outside to brown and crisp up. In order to accomplish this, most places cook their fries twice--first in a lower-temperature oil, to cook the potatoes, and then again, at a higher temperature, to crisp and brown them.

That's-a-Burger, I believe, skipped the first step, resulting in fries that did not fully cook through before they started to brown. Then they wrapped them up in the same butcher paper as the burger, Gene and Jude's style, where the trapped steam caused them to lose any hint of crispness that they might have had when they came out of the fryer. They also lacked salt.

Which wouldn't normally be that big of a deal--I can add salt myself, no problem--except that since That's-a-Burger offers no dine-in options, not even a ledge to perch on while you stand and eat, we were a block and a half away, eating in the car, so it wasn't all that feasible to go back and beg for a salt packet.

Oh, and I also had an issue with the spongy, cake-like bun, which had a kind of strange-tasting artificial sweetness to it that I found just very off.

Another thing about this place was that it took them more than 20 minutes to cook our order of three burgers and fries. We just walked in and ordered, but from what I observed, it seems like the protocol is to call your order in ahead of time. I'm not sure why it would take that long to cook burgers and fries. Wish I could say better things about this place. I wanted to like it, really I did.


Poochie's
3832 Dempster St., Skokie

I stopped at Poochies with the intention of having a burger and fries--honestly. But the really unique item on their menu is the char salami sandwich. They cut thick slabs the long way off of an all-beef kosher salami, and then cook it on the char-grill, crisping it up, rendering out some of the fat, and giving it a great, smoky, charred flavor.

It's served on very good crusty bread, as well. It's quite a sandwich. I ordered mine with the mustard and grilled onions, and I give this combo very high marks.

The fries, though, at Poochie's, are really the star. Here is a perfect exemplar of the fresh-cut fry the way it's supposed to be. Cooked through, almost creamy on the inside, nicely browned and crispy on the outside, and well-seasoned. These fries are perfect. Order the cheese fries and they'll slather a mound of gloppy Merkt's on there too. Just as good as Weiner's Circle, but without the verbal abuse!

They do char cheddar burgers with the Merkt's at Poochie's too (in the same vein as Paradise Pup), so I'll have to get back there fairly soon and check out the burger, although I doubt it's made with fresh beef.

Goldyburgers
7316 Circle Ave., Forest Park

Another oft-recommended burger spot is Goldyburgers in Forest Park, just west of Harlem Avenue and south of the Metra tracks. This place is definitely worth seeking out. It's a classic old tavern that's just perfect for taking in a Cubs day game.

The burgers are definitely fresh beef, hand-pattied, and have good flavor. They're also pretty big--at least a half pound, I'd guess. The one I ordered was, unfortunately, overcooked, but I believe that if it had been cooked as I ordered it, there would've had a lot more juiciness to it. Even cooked all the way through, it wasn't dry.

The service here was very friendly, in that kind of neighborhood corner bar sort of way. There's a lot of low-rent charm here as well--the food is served on cheap paper plates, 50's-era paper place mats appear after you order food, and kitschy burger-themed salt and pepper shakers adorn the tables.

The fries were nothing worth mentioning, but the feel of the place and the good (potentially very good) burgers make it worth checking out.


Kuma's Corner
2900 W. Belmont Ave., Chicago

Kuma's was a must-try for me, since they've won all sorts of awards for the best burger in the city. So I stopped in for lunch on a weekday around 2pm and the place was packed to the point that I just managed to find a spot at the bar.

I had the "Kaijo" which featured bacon, blue cheese, and "frizzled" onions. As you probably know, all the burgers are named after heavy metal bands at this place. I'm not familiar with the band Kaijo, but the burger sounded good to me.

It was cooked spot-on perfect, as you can see from the picture above, and the meat tasted like it was fresh and looked hand-pattied. It was juicy for days and was, overall, probably the best burger of the bunch I'm reviewing here.

The one thing I didn't love about the Kuma's burger was the fact that it was over-topped. They really heap on the toppings, which, when you're dealing with fresh, good-quality beef, really kind of overwhelms what's supposed to be the star of the show. I also wasn't crazy about the "pretzel"-style bun, but I did appreciate the fact that it was structurally sound enough to stand up to the giant, juicy, over-topped mess (and I mean that in a good way) that is the Kuma's burger experience.

The freezer-bag-to-fryer waffle cut fries and chips are nothing worth mentioning. It's a shame that a place that features burgers this good isn't also doing high-quality fresh-cut fries, but given the volume they're doing and the small kitchen, I understand why they've made that choice.

So, to recap, the Kuma's burger was the best of the bunch, with their good-quality, fresh beef and ability to cook it to the correct degree of doneness. While I prefer the thinner, diner-style griddled burger featured at That's-a-Burger, the main consideration for me is the quality of the beef, the freshness, and the juiciness, and Kuma's really delivered on all three.

The runaway winner for fries was Poochie's, with a special mention to Muskies for their unique shoestring hand-cut fries.

That said, I think I can do better.

As some of you may already have read, I'm actively working on a project for which I'm researching burgers. Everything about them; the best way to cook a burger, whether it should be made thick or thin, which cuts of beef to use in the grind, the ratio of fat to lean, the perfect bun, etc, etc....

I've been running around town trying lots of different burger spots, and have been doing tons of reading on the web as well.

This post is going to serve as sort of a compendium for the information I've amassed thus far.

On the local front, The Chicago Burger Project is a promising blog that began as a quest to eat through Time Out Chicago's 55 Best Burgers article. Two years later, the guys who started this blog have managed to choke down 41 of them, and written some decent reviews, but their pace has slowed down considerably--lately they put up a new post only every other month or so.

As usual, LTH forum is a wealth of information. One can, if time allows, do a search and wade through the literally dozens of topics about various types, styles, toppings, and specific restaurants. And then there are topics like this one, from which one man's nostalgic meanderings about the burger of his childhood (Mike Gebert of Sky Full of Bacon again) a near-scholarly discussion emerges and touches on the burger's provenance, the etymology of the term, and it's history in various regions. Deep.

Expanding my scope outside Chicago is fruitful. People take burgers a lot more seriously in places like New York, New Jersey, and L.A., I'm afraid. Chicago has it share of food specialties and does a lot of things well, but it's not a burger town.

George Motz may be the foremost expert on burgers in the country (and, therefore, the world). His Hamburger America empire includes a Beard Award-nominated film, a book, and a blog, all bearing his HA brand. He's taught a course on burgers at NYU, has consulted for Wendy's and has had a burger named after him by esteemed burgermeister Harry Hawk.

A Hamburger Today, the burger blog maintained by Serious Eats is a logical command center for such an endeavor. It's one of those blogs that's maintained by multiple editors and bloggers, takes itself pretty seriously, and does a really excellent job of reporting just about every burger-related story on the web, along with generating some of its own original material.

I found this piece, which reviews 12 of NYC's best burgers using a numerical ratings system similar to the one I employ for my Bacon List to be really informative and helpful. Sometimes simply identifying and figuring out the right words to use to describe the concepts being discussed can be really difficult, and this piece goes a long way towards establishing a workable lexicon with which to discuss, evaluate, and reverse-engineer burgers.

In this piece, Chef Tony Maws of Craigie on Main in Cambridge, MA uses three different cuts of beef, two types of fat, and dehydrated miso powder in his fancy-schmancy burger mix, before cooking it up in a hi-tech C-Vap oven and browning it on a 900° plancha. That's a bit outside the scope of my project, but there's still some useful insight there.

Along those same lines, here's a rundown of how to make the Blumenburger, Heston Blumenthal's 32-ingredient, 30 hour prep-time burger that he worked up for the BBC's series In Search of Perfection, which seeks to re-work classic dishes so as to arrive at the benchmark version.

And then there's this hilarious nugget that someone dug up and put on YouTube. It's a Wendy's training video from the 80's, which, yes, does contain some interesting info about the technique the fast food chain employs to cook their patties (they keep the griddle at a very low 250°) But the appeal is more in the dated look and feel, along with the bust-a-gut-funny rap-song dream sequence. This one is not to be missed. Make sure to watch both parts.

There's much more, of course. Burger blogs are freakin' everywhere. There's The Burger Beast, HoosierBurger Boy, Portland Hamburgers, and Texas Burger Guy. And then there's Cincinnatti Burger Guys, Burgatory, a guy who just reviews fast food burgers, LA-based BurgerTour, Waunaburger out of Wisconsin, and, of course, twelve bazillion blogs and articles about people eating sixteen-pound manhole-cover sized burgers, and burgers that are so over-the-top decadent that they render themselves completely disgusting.

And then there's this:



God, the internet is just so weird.

Oh, and out of what I've tried so far, I liked the burger at Five Guys on Clybourn the best. Very juicy. Enjoy!