The Burger:
This gourmet, artisanal butcher shoppe is yet another purveyor of a gourmet burger in the now all two extended gourmet burger renaissance, or perhaps pro to-renaissance. It’s a novel stand surrounded by the old-school food stands and juxtaposed by the countless antediluvian spice stores and homegrown pharmacies that make up the newly rehabilitated cum gentrified Grand Central Market.
The stand has counter seats for roughly a half dozen patrons, possibly a half dozen to few, it must be said. There’s a limited one page menu that ranges from a philly cheesesteak with a gamier kick via the introduction of goat meat to a meatball sub to the eponymous Belcampo burger, which is the sole reason you are there for.
The burger stands not so tall, maybe all of two and half inches in height, and seemingly does not quite aesthetically look the part of a “gourmet” burger, but what a wallop of flavor it gives off. The hand ground beef pastured from their own local farm (possibly part of the locavore movement that’s fashionable these days) melts in the mouth just like purest butter or a prime morsel of o-toro sashimi deserving of a master sushi chef.
The melted cheese (if it even exists, there was none in evidence), the single, microscope sheaf of butter lettuce, possibly no more than a nanometer in thickness, the caramelized onions (though unbelievably tasty) are merely superfluous. The thousand island dressing with barley there top notes of relish rounds out the sweetness of the burger. But it’s truly all about the beef.
They may as well put a nifty placard above the cash register that heralds ALL ABOUT THE BEEF. Though said sign is not actually in evidence.
The burger is consumed in a matter of seconds, possibly four bites. And yet one still feels virtuous, and complacent enough to still take on the day and research the intricacies of corporate malfeasance back at the old office if that’s white shoe working stiffs still do these days.
A paragon of this all too trite genre is what this deceptively simple though exceedingly delicious burger amounts to.
And for the strident, die hard flaneurs who still have nothing better to do ample stomach space beckons for more because why not gild that proverbial lilly.
A cappachino from G and B serves as a pithy tonic, or digestivo and then you are off.
Hence, you move on to Langer’s where a luscious pastrami, hand sliced with all it’s fatty unctuousness awaits your ultimately atavistic tendencies.
A salutary day has been had. Everything is well with the world save perhaps in the way of some delicious eye candy and then some.