some news from new york. the things i ate were generally good, but i shouldn't necessarily say materially better than london with one exception: the burgers. to be fair ~60% of the meals i ate were burgers. here are some reviews ranked in increasing order of merit - all were decent with the poorest at the level of goodman in london's costly mayfair district or hawksmoor.
5 napkin. decent. juice flowed down my arms, beef was present. there was some funny business with rosemary aioli but otherwise i would say a fine burger.
shake shack. beefy, loaded with other stuff which wasn't too distracting. dirt cheap. i also had a hot dog very loosely "through the garden" but this was like a pastiche of chicago. a tasty pastiche.
minetta tavern. the most expensive by a long way. the beef flavor was tip top. nice bun. texture unbelievably soft - i guess it is quite hard to fry an emulsion of beef fat and retain any texture. perhaps given the mouthfeel this would be top choice to a cantonese palate. too much onion gunk though.
roberta's. i had hoped to eat some of the awesome food one see's on the us blogs: pasta with pigeon offal, roast duck, steaks, tomatoes from just outside and so on. sadly, at lunch the choices were fewer, so i had the burger. the patty was like a lovely minced asador/chuelta experience - mineral, meaty, hint of roquefort like mouldy taste. no nonsense. the very ideal of burgerhood.
i also got intensely drunk on gin in the carlyle hotel bar. there was quite a good jazz band who were taking requests. my memory fades after a bit, so i cannot honestly say if i requested "brilliant corners".
