Cheeseburger Haiku - Corner Bistro

A burger was eaten by me at the Corner Bistro, located at 331 West 4th St. in the West Village. According to many, this is among the best burgers NYC has to offer. According to me, it was oddly formed.

In what many burgerologists decry as heresy, the Corner Bistro bucks all trends and has the nerve to call a meatball between two buns a burger. Quite a risky move, if I may say so myself, to put a ball of meat where a stout cylinder is the norm. In avoidance of the dramatic, I'd like to disclose that it was not, in fact, a meatball rather it was a thick burger (almost 2''maximum girth) and was actually pretty small as a bird would see it. That is, it was big on the z-axis yet Cartesianlly challenged. I, and many of my burgerologist colleagues, maintain that this is not the proper way to form a patty. A burger should be round on the edges only with a gentle--gentle--tapering towards the center to ensure that the thickness of the patty never exceeds one-half of its radius.




Moving onto the review portion of the review, I got the Bistro Burger, which means it comes with bacon, I guess. Word to the wise: don't ask to see a menu at this place, there's three things to choose from and if you're not ready when the server comes then be prepared to wait while he willfully--almost spitefully--ignores you for upwards of five minutes. So yeah, the Bistro Burger has bacon on it. What else? some raw onion, lettuce, pickles, tomato and bun. Nothing fancy here, well, except that the thing was so tall it could probably ride the hot new coaster at your local theme-park. Just kidding, burgers can't ride roller coasters. Enough talk about the choadburger, you came here to know if it was good. Well, it was good. It was good, not great. I found it to be quite serviceable and the thickness of the patty was not as much of a bother as it potentially could have been, for the meat was appropriately cooked and juicy. It did everything a burger should as far as the tasting is concerned, though it did leave me wanting. Perhaps a little too little, methinks. But then again, this was one of the more affordable burgers (with bacon, no less) to appear on the 'ku, coming in at about $7.50. This price doesn't include fries, but when does it these days? In this economy who can afford to tack on fries as an extra added bonus to your burger experience? The fries were of the shoestring variety and demanded a generous heaping of ketchup to raise their flavor quotient.  I did not wash it all down with beer, instead I had a root beer that I was too timid to ask to get refilled after the terrible menu incident of earlier in the meal. Would I go back? Yes, but only in certain circumstances, like proximity or a guest that must try the burger that all the tourist books are raving about.

And now, a haiku:

Photo credit to Phil Yip