Adam is a hardcore line cook. Like... this dude lives to cook. Talks about food, cooking, his jobs, his chef... constantly. I am a hardcore fan of food, especially greasy American food. It's fine. You can call me a naive chump with bad taste, but I don't care because it seriously rules. I still like everything else. But "American" food and "bar" food is cheap and it's just good old comfort food. Besides, if you don't like this kind of food then you're doing it wrong, and that's why I'm here. It's all about excess! ...but all things in moderation, right? Anyway, back to Adam. He and I like to go on food adventures, and sometimes I get other people involved. On these adventures we take ideas that we've been brewing in our brains of how we can improve people's food experiences or cook something crazy excessive and gluttonous to come up with a new unheard of celebration of all things delicious and flavorfully hedonistic.
Here's an example, which while not our best, it's been our longest brewing idea that has yet to be put into action. It's called the Big Beef and Baconator... Big Baconator and Cheddar... or something like that. The idea is you get a Big Beef and Cheddar from Arby's then you run over to Wendy's and get a baconator... and put them two sum'bitches together to make a new excessively large but delicious sandwich. Get the idea? The deal is, it's not necessarily about the quality of the ingredients or sophistication of the cuisine. It's all about indulging in comfort food and excess and creating something new and tasty. So now that you understand how it works, let me tell you about today's creation... and wow... Good god.... It's one of the best things I've ever eaten. So without further ado:
"Josh and Adam's Breakfast Burger Bonanza"
(Are you ready for this?)
(Are you ready for this?)
BAM!
So what do we got going on here?! Let's talk about it from bottom to top for starters:
-Not one, but TWO hamburger patties with American Cheese
-4 strips of bacon
-1 fried egg (Medium)
-Half a strip of Goetta (I'll get to this later for you non-Cincinnati people out there)
-Half a pancake with syrup (Only Adam did this. I felt it compromised the integrity of everything else that was going on)
-Lettuce, onion, tomato
-Sesame seed bun
So now that you've seen the ingredients lets get some back story. The Blue Jay Restaurant is pretty much the greatest diner in the world. Hands down no questions asked. There used to be this place in my hometown called the Huddle that we would always beg our mom to take us to for pancakes and such, well that place is like prison food wrapped in nursing home leftovers compared to Blue Jay. It's the perfect hole in the wall with bad coffee, the same three or four waitresses working every day, open kitchen, and the same guy sitting at the counter reading the paper or some shit like that every day. And the food is cooked absolutely perfect every time (you might hear me mention that again. It's important). Adam and myself along with a few others have a habit of going there whenever we're good and hungover and he and I got into the habit of ordering the same thing every time even though their menu is pretty diverse and everything looks amazing coming out of the kitchen. We get two eggs (easy), goetta, black cofee, and toast because it's just too damn hard to get anything else. Their eggs are just so perfectly cooked that it took me a long time to stray away from them and try a burger.
I stopped in for lunch there with my sister about a week or two ago and I tried the burger, she stuck with the two eggs and goetta (which I of course had recommended and besides, she'd never had goetta). Before I go on let's talk about Goetta.
Goetta is "poor people" food to Germans, so naturally Cincinnati is the only place in the world where it's still popular. The idea is you mix your ground beef with oats so that it makes more to go around, hence the poor people appeal. But that's not all, you also get some onion mixed in there and just enough other spices that when you combine it with a plain ground beef patty that's been covered in cheese the flavors of the goetta pop their head out every once in a while in between mouth fulls of cheese and juicy beef... but more on that later. (I just have too much to say about this awesomness!)
So we're back to lunch with my sister and I'm staring at this burger of mine and her eggs and goetta. Typical of Blue Jay, the burger as plain and simply as it was presented, was abosulutely perfect. These are the moments where great moments in "things you should be doing with your food" are made. Why in the hell do I need to choose between burger and eggs? Lunch and breakast? I immediately called Adam and we had a mission on our hands.
Today we were both pretty good and hungover, so we figured this burgers time had come. Now at the time of conception this was merely a single patty with american cheese, goetta, and a fried egg well done. But Adam has a way of talking me into things and taking them to the level where they truly belong. It would be quite lackluster to leave our burger as it was when a second patty and bacon are an option. So we placed the order; two double cheeseburgers, one order of two eggs and goetta, and Adam threw in the pancake... meh, what the hell? And then anticipation builds and builds. I spent the next several minutes salivatin', fidgetatin', and fixinatin' to git my hands on that bad boy! Few people thought it'd ever be possible for a dude to be so anxious over a sandwich, but I went there, and ya'll just have to deal with it. And then they came... we each took our egg and put it on the burger... we each took our half of the goetta and put it on the burger...
And now we're at the part where we eat the sandwich. I'm sure you've probably all been thinking, "Dude you put eggs on a cheeseburger... there's no way that tasted good. There's way too much hype going on over this BS." You are all DEAD MO'FI'N WRONG!
The first bite brought a little bit of everything to the table, but not all at once... First the juiciness of the beef, followed by the creamy melting cheese, then came the crunch of lettuce and onion, the perfect texture of the egg white, and finally last, but definitely not least, everything was followed up with those spices in the goetta. It is unfair to humanity that few other people will think to do this. It was absoulutely perfect in every way... well except a few minor issues. We made the mistake of getting our eggs medium so when I took my first bite half the egg yoke burst out the back and onto my hand... But I mean hey, I'm sure Edison lit a few houses on fire before he had a bulb that worked right. It was all good though because, knowing all the yoke was going to continue spilling out the back I just pooled it all onto my plate and it made for an awesome dip for the burger.
Oh, and that's me destroying this bad boy over there by the way.
This was also my first experience with bacon at Blue Jay, and I can't say it enough... they cook everything perfectly! You're not going to find the fanciest food in the world there, but I gaurantee you anything you order will be cooked perfectly. Period. The bacon was just the right blend of chewy and crunchy. There was nothing burnt about it and nothing soggy about it. It was also so sweet that the flavor didn't get lost in everything else and it actually ended up being one of the highlights of the sandwich. So definitely do it with the bacon if you go for this thing. In fact the bacon was so good, that when we all finally finished eating and were wallowing in our meat hangovers at the booth I couldn't stop, I was grabbing bacon scraps and forcing them into my mouth for a good ten minutes after I finished my burger.
We followed the whole thing up with a discussion about church over a few cups of coffee at which point I came to the realization that the burger we'd just consumed was church enough for us. It had everything... flavor, satisfaction, friends, atmosphere, what have you. All's I'm saying is that if there is a god, that dude was present at that booth in Blue Jay, hand feeding delicious meat and eggs into our bellies.
So now that I've ranted and raved about how spectacular this whole experience was lets talk about the bad, because like I said earlier... This whole "club" or whatever you want to call it (us just being hungover mostly) is about excess, but all things in moderation at the same time... or something. It did indeed hurt, not to say it wasn't worth it, but that mammoth went to battle on me when we left. I was rocking the pink (Peptobismal for future reference) pretty hard before I went into work. But to nature's credit, my digestive system has been having an adverse reaction to eating eggs first thing after a night of drinking, which really sucks because it's one of my favorite things to do. On top of that, the whole thing ends up costing you about 8 or 9 bucks before tip and a drink (always tip your waitress 20% minimum you jerks!). Sure that doesn't sound like a lot, but we originally fell in love with Blue Jay because you could get such a satisfying meal for 4 or 5 bucks before a tip. Meh... these numbers matter when you're as broke as we all are. Oh and last but not least cholesterol, sodium, fat, blah blah blah. Shut up. But seriously... don't eat it too often. You'll die.
-Not one, but TWO hamburger patties with American Cheese
-4 strips of bacon
-1 fried egg (Medium)
-Half a strip of Goetta (I'll get to this later for you non-Cincinnati people out there)
-Half a pancake with syrup (Only Adam did this. I felt it compromised the integrity of everything else that was going on)
-Lettuce, onion, tomato
-Sesame seed bun
So now that you've seen the ingredients lets get some back story. The Blue Jay Restaurant is pretty much the greatest diner in the world. Hands down no questions asked. There used to be this place in my hometown called the Huddle that we would always beg our mom to take us to for pancakes and such, well that place is like prison food wrapped in nursing home leftovers compared to Blue Jay. It's the perfect hole in the wall with bad coffee, the same three or four waitresses working every day, open kitchen, and the same guy sitting at the counter reading the paper or some shit like that every day. And the food is cooked absolutely perfect every time (you might hear me mention that again. It's important). Adam and myself along with a few others have a habit of going there whenever we're good and hungover and he and I got into the habit of ordering the same thing every time even though their menu is pretty diverse and everything looks amazing coming out of the kitchen. We get two eggs (easy), goetta, black cofee, and toast because it's just too damn hard to get anything else. Their eggs are just so perfectly cooked that it took me a long time to stray away from them and try a burger.
I stopped in for lunch there with my sister about a week or two ago and I tried the burger, she stuck with the two eggs and goetta (which I of course had recommended and besides, she'd never had goetta). Before I go on let's talk about Goetta.
Goetta is "poor people" food to Germans, so naturally Cincinnati is the only place in the world where it's still popular. The idea is you mix your ground beef with oats so that it makes more to go around, hence the poor people appeal. But that's not all, you also get some onion mixed in there and just enough other spices that when you combine it with a plain ground beef patty that's been covered in cheese the flavors of the goetta pop their head out every once in a while in between mouth fulls of cheese and juicy beef... but more on that later. (I just have too much to say about this awesomness!)So we're back to lunch with my sister and I'm staring at this burger of mine and her eggs and goetta. Typical of Blue Jay, the burger as plain and simply as it was presented, was abosulutely perfect. These are the moments where great moments in "things you should be doing with your food" are made. Why in the hell do I need to choose between burger and eggs? Lunch and breakast? I immediately called Adam and we had a mission on our hands.
Today we were both pretty good and hungover, so we figured this burgers time had come. Now at the time of conception this was merely a single patty with american cheese, goetta, and a fried egg well done. But Adam has a way of talking me into things and taking them to the level where they truly belong. It would be quite lackluster to leave our burger as it was when a second patty and bacon are an option. So we placed the order; two double cheeseburgers, one order of two eggs and goetta, and Adam threw in the pancake... meh, what the hell? And then anticipation builds and builds. I spent the next several minutes salivatin', fidgetatin', and fixinatin' to git my hands on that bad boy! Few people thought it'd ever be possible for a dude to be so anxious over a sandwich, but I went there, and ya'll just have to deal with it. And then they came... we each took our egg and put it on the burger... we each took our half of the goetta and put it on the burger...
And now we're at the part where we eat the sandwich. I'm sure you've probably all been thinking, "Dude you put eggs on a cheeseburger... there's no way that tasted good. There's way too much hype going on over this BS." You are all DEAD MO'FI'N WRONG!
The first bite brought a little bit of everything to the table, but not all at once... First the juiciness of the beef, followed by the creamy melting cheese, then came the crunch of lettuce and onion, the perfect texture of the egg white, and finally last, but definitely not least, everything was followed up with those spices in the goetta. It is unfair to humanity that few other people will think to do this. It was absoulutely perfect in every way... well except a few minor issues. We made the mistake of getting our eggs medium so when I took my first bite half the egg yoke burst out the back and onto my hand... But I mean hey, I'm sure Edison lit a few houses on fire before he had a bulb that worked right. It was all good though because, knowing all the yoke was going to continue spilling out the back I just pooled it all onto my plate and it made for an awesome dip for the burger.Oh, and that's me destroying this bad boy over there by the way.
This was also my first experience with bacon at Blue Jay, and I can't say it enough... they cook everything perfectly! You're not going to find the fanciest food in the world there, but I gaurantee you anything you order will be cooked perfectly. Period. The bacon was just the right blend of chewy and crunchy. There was nothing burnt about it and nothing soggy about it. It was also so sweet that the flavor didn't get lost in everything else and it actually ended up being one of the highlights of the sandwich. So definitely do it with the bacon if you go for this thing. In fact the bacon was so good, that when we all finally finished eating and were wallowing in our meat hangovers at the booth I couldn't stop, I was grabbing bacon scraps and forcing them into my mouth for a good ten minutes after I finished my burger.
We followed the whole thing up with a discussion about church over a few cups of coffee at which point I came to the realization that the burger we'd just consumed was church enough for us. It had everything... flavor, satisfaction, friends, atmosphere, what have you. All's I'm saying is that if there is a god, that dude was present at that booth in Blue Jay, hand feeding delicious meat and eggs into our bellies.
So now that I've ranted and raved about how spectacular this whole experience was lets talk about the bad, because like I said earlier... This whole "club" or whatever you want to call it (us just being hungover mostly) is about excess, but all things in moderation at the same time... or something. It did indeed hurt, not to say it wasn't worth it, but that mammoth went to battle on me when we left. I was rocking the pink (Peptobismal for future reference) pretty hard before I went into work. But to nature's credit, my digestive system has been having an adverse reaction to eating eggs first thing after a night of drinking, which really sucks because it's one of my favorite things to do. On top of that, the whole thing ends up costing you about 8 or 9 bucks before tip and a drink (always tip your waitress 20% minimum you jerks!). Sure that doesn't sound like a lot, but we originally fell in love with Blue Jay because you could get such a satisfying meal for 4 or 5 bucks before a tip. Meh... these numbers matter when you're as broke as we all are. Oh and last but not least cholesterol, sodium, fat, blah blah blah. Shut up. But seriously... don't eat it too often. You'll die.
Have you had the Slam Burger at Denny's? That's another testament to modern society's slow acceptance of burger/egg combinations. I've never had it, but I imagine Nick Toerner would talk your ear off about it if prompted!
ReplyDeleteI won't have you bashing the Huddle. Best pancakes I ever had and will ever have. They served up REAL and warm maple syrup with them every time. and whatever they spread them on the griddle with (butter, lard, or whatever) made them melt in your mouth. Plus that place had a car crash into their kitchen and they still kept cooking! Legendary.
ReplyDeleteI like the Blue Jay a lot actually. the goetta is awesome. can't beat the prize. nice decor that has probably never changed since they opened (respect). but their pancakes don't touch the Huddle's.