Last Burger Standing

I wrote a story about a year ago picking the 20 best hamburgers in America. I still get two questions over and over again. The first: "What was number one?" (The sirloin burger at Le Tub in Hollywood, Florida.) The second: "What burger did you leave out that I should know about?" The way the story worked out, I ended up with a list of exactly 21 great burgers, and I had to drop one. That turned out to be the hamburger at Blue Smoke, in Manhattan, which is primarily a barbecue restaurant. For that matter, it's one of the best urban barbecue restaurants in America. I suppose there are a few spots in Kansas City it can't match.

Barbecue restaurants almost never have interesting burgers. That might be because barbecue is all about cooking meat until it's well done, and the hamburger at Blue Smoke is best rare or medium-rare. It's made with brisket, round and sirloin, a combination I've never run into before, and it comes out fat and flavorful, full of juice. That's pretty much all anybody can ask of a burger. Before leaving the grill, it's brushed with barbecue sauce, which seems to add a touch of lacquering, a smidgen of sweetness, a hint (am I imagining this?) of crunch. Now that I think about it, this burger sure deserved to be higher than 21.