Shake Shack

Southeast corner of Madison Square Park
(212) 889-6600

The Shake Shack is a pretty polarizing place: People love the food, but hate the wait. And depending on your constitution as a human being, one necessarily trumps the other. For me, the food trumps the wait, and that's because it's a quality burger you're getting.

Let me explain. I am not a burger person. I don't like burgers for the sake of burgers, and I will turn up my nose at a mediocre burger in favor of a dirty-water dog any day of the week. For me to really enjoy a burger, it has to be nothing less than transcendent. Enter the Shake Shack. I had never once in my entire life craved a burger — until I had the Shack Burger.

Ode on a Shack Burger

Thou still unravish'd morsel of tastiness,
Thou meaty dream of Leanness and slow Cooking,
Exquisite taste experience, who canst thus express
Thine fresh deliciousness more sweetly than our rhyme:
What red-leaf-lettuce fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of patty or fillet, or of both,
In Madison Square Park or the dales of Arcady?
What vine-ripened tomatoes are these? What delectable sauce?
What mad pursuit? What totally worthwhile wait?
What coffee* and black-and-white shakes? What wild ecstasy?

*Importantly, the Shake Shack serves coffee shakes. All the time.

My one niggling complaint is that you can no longer order a small shake — starting this season, it's large only. I can't make sense of this from an economy-of-scale point of view. Don't they make more money if we buy smaller, higher-priced-per-unit quantities? Why must the Shake Shack, purveyor of fresh, relatively healthy and fresh fast food, supersize its shakes and bombard me with calories I don't want? Perhaps I shall never understand.

But one thing you will understand, when you bite into a Shack Burger, is all the fuss about the place. Don't go during lunch, when the line is most ridiculous, and don't go when you're absolutely starving, since you will wait a little while whenever you go. I used to work near the Shake Shack, and a fellow Shack devotee and I discovered that right around 5 PM was a pretty good time, as were days of inclement weather. If you need a tipoff before you set out, check out the handy-dandy Live Shack Cam.

Read more about Shake Shack:

Official Web site
Citysearch
MenuPages
New York Magazine
New York Times
Time Out New York
Yelp

The Bourgeois Pig

122 East 7th Street
(212) 475-2246

Bourgeois Pig West
124 Macdougal Street
(212) 254-0575

I like this place so much that I debated whether to write about it. I've been to both branches several times and mysteriously, they aren't as crowded as they should be for how good and cheap they are. I call this mysterious because as we know, this is New York, and as soon as something comes along that is truly, sincerely good on many levels, word will get out and it will soon be choked with throngs of people (Exhibit Z: The Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden in Astoria) and no longer be accessible or good. I don't want this to happen to the Bourgeois Pig. Ever. It would break my prole little heart.

After giving the matter some thought, however, it occurred to me that my blog, with its casual readership of four, is unlikely to bring about this turn of events. So sing the Pig's praises I will, and loudly.

The first thing you need to know is that there are five kinds of fondue, and all of them are delicious, particularly the blue cheese and the raclette. And the the dippables — which include not only the standard bread and potatoes but also cauliflower, apples, roasted peppers, and cornichons (emphasis added to indicate superiority of taste experience) — are served on a wooden slab shaped like a pig. Awesome. (Some of the appetizers, in particular the strawberry bruschetta, are really tasty, too.)

The next thing you need to know is that they have reasonably priced bottles of wine. And all night on Mondays and Tuesdays, before 7PM on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and before 6 PM on Fridays, these already-reasonable bottles of wine are half-price. I've gone there with a group, split a few bottles of wine and two orders of fondue, and walked out only $25 more proletariat (and that includes tip). You can't beat that. You just can't.

To sum: Run, don't walk, to the Bourgeois Pig. Just don't beat me to a table.

Read more about the Bourgeois Pig:

Official Web site
Citysearch
MenuPages
Yelp

Sripraphai

64-13 39th Avenue
(718) 899-9599

This one's a total no brainer. Sripraphai has the best, most authentic Thai food in New York (so they tell me, anyway; I've never been to Thailand to experience the real deal firsthand). It's tasty as hell, it's cheap, and the surroundings are devoid of hipness and pretension. Word to the wise: Don't try to be macho about your spice tolerance. Sripraphai will win this ego battle, and you will cry through your meal and for several hours afterward. The lowest levels of spiciness are totally adequate to the non-Thai palate.

Be sure to try one or more of the desserts in the refrigerator case by the counter. The milkier and more gelatinous, the yummier.

Read more about Sripraphai:

Citysearch
New York Magazine
New York Times
Time Out New York
Yelp

Joya

215 Court Street
(718) 222-3484

I went to Joya the other night with the ladies from work, and we had a tasty, so-cheap-you're-not-sure-if-they-messed-up-the-bill meal. Most of the dishes were around $7. I'm not sure whether it's just a cheap place or whether such deals are totally commonplace in Brooklyn; if the latter, I am beginning to think Brooklyn is a magical place that, however far from Inwood, deserves to be further explored.

The food is not at the Sripraphai level, but it's totally decent and respectable Thai. We shared several appetizers, including the vegetable dumplings, the salmon and mango spring roll, and the fried calamari. I am a recent convert to calamari and as such am quite sensitive to rubberiness; this calamari was decidedly unrubbery and good. I got the Spicy Noodles with chicken as my entree, which was quite delicious but not spicy in the least. Perhaps you have to ask for spicy, or perhaps the waitstaff simply saw that I am the whitest person alive and spared me. Hmm.

One word of caution, however: Do not order a mojito. Under any circumstances. They don't know how to make them, and as one of my colleagues astutely observed the product tastes something like a glass of seltzer in which someone has just swizzled a toothbrush. Skip it and get a bottle of wine instead; they're all reasonably priced.

Read more about Joya:

Citysearch
MenuPages
New York Magazine
Time Out New York
Yelp