Burger Club NY: Spotted Pigs, Happy Cows, and Devils on Horseback, or The Thinking Man's Burger

To eat a burger at The Spotted Pig, you must first overcome a number of Herculean challenges set forth by the restaurant's owners and chef. It starts with the test of patience: unless you are Mike Myers (or his doppelganger) with a table in the back, no reservations accepted. So, even though we showed up a little before 8:00 on a Monday night, we were told we'd have at least a two-hour wait. There are tons of other burger places in the neighborhood with little or no wait, so it was tempting to head elsewhere for some instant burger gratification, but despite our tummy rumblings, Burger Club decided to stick it out and see what chef April Bloomfield (recent winner on Iron Chef) had to offer. In the end, we only had to wait about an hour and a half, but nonetheless we sat down expecting something good in return for our patience.

Next, the battle between cheese and meat. As our server informed us, the Spotted Pig serves "happy cow" (AKA grass-fed) meat, which makes for a clean, fresh, non-greasy, slightly smoky, very tasty, and—dare we say it—happy burger. Atop its brioche bun, however, the meat is drenched in Roquefort (or, as Bex's boyfriend called it, "stinky armpit cheese"). Roquefort is, of course, an acquired taste, and if you don't like it, this burger is definitely not for you. For others, the Roquefort cheese adds a sophisticated taste varying from bite to bite, with some deliciously salty bursts. However, about halfway through the burger, even the Earl of Roquefort himself (if he existed) would agree that the cheese eventually overpowers everything else—the brioche bun, the tasty meat—and even the most liberal slathering of Heinz ketchup doesn't cut the taste. So you have to love the cheese to even like the burger; everything takes backseat to the cheese.

On the side, the skinny fries test your physical prowess and agility. Skinny fries are for people who don't actually enjoy eating fries. Veering off in different directions and at different lengths, they're long and sharp, so eating them is about as pleasant as shoving 10 potato toothpicks into your mouth. Bex discovered an ingenious way to eat them, using her ketchup as an adhesive to pick them up on the burger, but even she had to be careful not to get stabbed by their spiky edges. If you are able to get a few of these in your mouth without injury, you will be rewarded. There's a great seasoning over the fries including slivers of rosemary, garlic (large chunks of both which are visible in the mix), and some other "secret sauce" type herb combo, and these really do complement the burger. Like the Roquefort, however, the seasoning can be overwhelming after a few bites, and if you're not careful, in the dim lighting you might mistake a piece of the garlic for a fry.

In the end, if there's one thing the Spotted Pig's burger does, it makes you think, and in the end this Thinking Man's burger was hard to grade. Perhaps there's an inherent paradox in eating happy cow under the watchful eye of a spotted pig, or maybe the unholy devils on the horseback we ate as an appetizer altered our burger palates. Usually, by the time we're all done with our burgers, judgments come swiftly and easily, but this time we left the table as undecided about the burger as we were at the first bite. We all needed time to mull it over; our final judgments are below.

Jane: First time I had the burger (four burgers and nearly one hundred dollars ago), I gave it 5 cows, but this burger loses some of its allure with each subsequent visit.

(or 4 spotted pigs)

Anna: Too much cheese this time around. When you are hungry, skinny fries are a tease.

Roger: I think these kind of "gourmet" burgers go against what I believe a burger should be. They are made to be had exactly the way the chef wants you to eat it. No one puts baby in a corner when it comes to my burger. The blue cheese was too much, the fries pissed me off and the wait (1.5 hours) on a Monday was annoying. The meat and bun were good, I think. I couldn't get a grasp on it because the blue cheese was such a bully.

Bex:The meat was juicy, tender, and delicious, but the Roquefort overpowered all of my taste buds. I tried scraping it off, but no such luck, it had already soaked into the bun. I never thought I'd hear my-cheese-loving-self say this but if I could've had the burger without the cheese it would have been WAY better.