Last night, I found myself at Cafe Asean in the West Village very openly staring at a woman eating a burger.
It wasn’t just any burger — it was the Cheryl Burger, my very first culinary creation to appear on an actual restaurant menu. Who wouldn’t be all excited and weird and googly-eyed at the sight of someone you don’t know actually eating a dish you dreamed up? Palms sweaty, I approached the woman to explain that a) I wasn’t some creep trying to intrude on her dinner–well, I wasn’t a creep without a somewhat valid reason, anyway… b) I’d designed the burger and c) I wanted to know, “What do you think?”
Mouth full, Susan the diner (who just so happens to have a fashion connection — she’s the designer of Skin Lingerie) gave me two thumbs up. And all of a sudden, the months of experimenting with meatball and burger recipes, marinating and pan-frying and then marinating more and grilling — it all suddenly seemed worth it. I felt like the Sally Field of cooking. I was liked! Well … my burger was liked, anyway.
The quest for the Cheryl Burger began at my last Labor Day cookout — after a heady evening of countless sauvignon blancs and burgers that had been steeped for hours in a marinade of hoisin sauce and Asian sesame oil before being thrown on the grill, a sated chef Simpson, owner of Cafe Asean, pronounced, “I’ll tell you what — if you come up with an Asian-style burger that I like, I’ll put it on the menu.”
And the challenge was ON!
The big question of the next few months was: What Asian flavors would work well in a western burger?
Teriyaki sauce? Too pedestrian. Hello, if even Mcdonald’s has done it, it’s done, done and done. I like hoisin — the sweet soybean-based sauce greatly enhances the flavor of beef. But Simpson himself had already done a hoisin burger at Jefferson,
another West Village restaurant he’d owned a few years ago. (Another fashion connection: Jefferson figured prominently in a key “Sex and the City” moment — it’s where Miranda held her wedding reception, when Samantha blurts
out to the girls that she has breast cancer.)
The idea of a burger marinated in Korean kalbi flavors (soy sauce, sugar, scallions, garlic, honey, sesame oil) was enchanting. So was creating a burger inspired by nasi lemak, an intensely flavored Singaporean/Malay dish featuring fragrant coconut rice mixed up with spicy sambal (a shrimpy hot sauce) that’s served with chicken wings, a fried egg and deep-fried anchovies. For Simpson’s West Village clientele, however, a sambal-flavored burger topped with a fried egg and a sprinkle of minced, deep-fried anchovies seemed just a little too exotic.
I visited Relish, a West-meets-East restaurant in Singapore, to check out chef Willin Low‘s version of the popular Malaysian Ramly burger, featuring a beef patty marinated in worcestershire sauce that’s pan-fried, wrapped in a paper-thin omelette and topped with gobs of mayonnaise.
Finally, after much experimenting in my tiny Brooklyn Heights kitchen, we invited Simpson over in March for the unveiling of … the Cheryl Burger: a minced chicken burger marinated with sesame oil, chopped cilantro, scallions and ginger (and a bunch of other ingredients that I can’t divulge for now). Using chicken instead of beef as the canvas would allow the diner to taste the jumble of sharp, crisp yet also sweet Asian flavors more. (I also liked the fact that chicken was lighter, presenting a healthier option than heavy beef patties that can leave you feeling too full.) At the unveiling, I served it with an optional Korean-style scallion-relish topping.
And that, boys and girls, is the story of how the Cheryl Burger got onto the specials menu at Cafe Asean. Not to tout it — too shamelessly anyhow — but the $12 burger now is on the menu and comes dolloped with saffron mayonnaise and a side of fries, a scallion relish and sliced jicama, mango and avocado.
One catch — I’ve had to promise to stop staring at diners who order it.
