Bobby Van's Grille (New York), 8/10

Unlike Toronto, we did go to New York with some ideas of what to eat. Perhaps unusually for my travel eating, this involved largely fast food - burgers, hot dogs, pizza, bagels. I know New York has lots of fancy restaurants (and we did that too), but the things it seemed to be famous for are junk, albeit junk food taken to new levels.

After wandering around downtown, including that financial mecca Wall Street, we decided to have a late lunch at Bobby Van's Grille, which is apparently home to the 5th best burger in New York (according to the New York Times and the Burger of the Month club).

It also has the added coolness factor of being in an old bank vault.

Being right around the corner from Wall Street, the majority of their clientele are likely suits with expense accounts, so it was fortunate that we arrived in our touristy clothes a little later than prime lunchtime. After deliberating whether we were too scabbily dressed to be able to enter, we went in anyway and the staff were very nice (to our faces anyway!). Luckily, as we were there for the burgers, which they talk up, at least we didn't have to pretend to be considering the posh part of the menu.

We were offered a choice of cheese, including American (that lurid yellow stuff), cheddar, swiss, blue and possibly some others, and bacon. Kyle chose the lurid yellow one, while I opted for swiss. Kyle ordered bacon, but either they didn't hear or it was forgotten, but it probably wasn't necessary anyway. We both ordered the burgers cooked medium rare and a couple of their draught beers to accompany them (a Brooklyn Dark Ale and some sort of wheat beer).

The burger was a soft white bun wrapped snuggly around the large ground beef patty, which was at least 5cm thick and weighed 12oz. And I have to admit, the yellow cheese did look the All-American part. The other half of the burger bun was topped with a large piece of lettuce and a thick slice each of tomato and raw onion. The burgers were accompanied by fries, onion rings and a pickle. The plates were enormous. This was a lot of food - when we'd finished, there was probably still a whole meal left!


So how did it taste? The burger patty was well-seasoned and satisfyingly beefy. Unfortunately, mine was cooked medium at best, maybe even bordering on medium well. Kyle's was cooked perfectly medium rare, with the juices soaking beautifully into the bun. The salad on the burger was quite hard to eat and the enormous slice of raw onion was removed immediately. We tried some of the Bobby Van's Steakhouse sauce, but found it quite sweet and lacking in good barbecue sauce spice. The pickle tasted like a cucumber in vinegar, which I know it is, but is that a good thing? The fries were quite good, with plenty of crunch, but the onion rings - revelation! I don't think I have ever had onion rings outside of a bad fast food chain, so therefore only bad onion rings. These were amazing - soft, sweet onion (do they boil them first or something?), lightly and erratically coated in a crunchy batter. The burger was good, the onion rings were amazing.

Overall, I think this was a pretty good burger experience in New York (we also tried to go to the Shake Shack on our last day, but when we arrived there were about 100 people in the queue - literally - and we had a plane to catch), but perhaps the expectations were too high. At any rate, I feel truly burger inspired now and I can't wait to try and make those onion rings!

Food: 8.5/10
Drinks: 8/10
Service: 8/10
Ambience: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

Bobby Van's Grille
25 Broad Street
New York