Just a Good Ole Fashioned…
’Comfort food is not just what gives you momentary pleasure or stress relief. That’s…’ Whereupon she employed a scientific term that rhymes with ‘perturbation’.”
- Colin Goh, Comfort Me With Burgers
Buenos Aires - I’m sorry, but Woo Yen Yen is simply wrong, burgers are absolutely comfort food, if… they comfort you. Though I agree with her assessment as she continues on with her explanation about it evoking associations with security and pleasure - so perhaps she doesn’t have those, but there are people who do. I’m sorry, but I don’t need to get all Proustian and wax poetic about madeleines in order to call it “comfort food”. Now, the burger wars, as they may be styled by various writers, and to which I suppose I’ve contributed my share, will probably continue long after you and I are gone. “The best burger in New York”, or perhaps for that matter any city where there are competing offerings, will simply never be settled. It will always be a matter of opinion. It occurred to me a day or so ago, when I was out wandering the East Village, that over the years I’ve probably stopped in and had more burgers at Paul’s Place, 131 2nd Avenue, than anywhere else. Maybe it’s the sign out front that greets you with “When was the last time you had a really great burger? No, I mean a really great burger!” Maybe it’s the huge, sloppy, dripping with grease burger topped with anything you might care to order that they have in the house (I go, always, with the St. Mark’s Burger - topped with grilled onions, mushrooms, and choice of cheese). Maybe it’s the truly great onion rings, or the thick cut fries. Or the root beer or coke floats. I don’t know. But I’m happy there, munching away, and I feel no urger to perturbate…
January 27th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Now that’s a Burger!
January 30th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Burgers not comfort food!? I’m with you, Dan. I think under the right conditions a great burger is positively therapeutic. Since Argentina is so beef-centric, are hamburgers popular there?