A Hamburger Today- aht.seriouseats.com

Blue Smoke on the Cheap

Posted by Adam Kuban, November 15, 2006 at 4:48 PM

BLUE SMOKE
Address: 116 East 27th Street, New York NY 10016 [map]
Phone: 212-447-7733
Getting There: 6 Train to 28th Street
Short Order: As the Shake Shack's sister burger, Blue Smoke's sandwich has the same coarsely ground, beefy, salty meat mixture. And it turns out, there's quite a bit of flexibility in how you can order it.
Want Fries With That? No. Sub in the hush puppies at no extra cost.

Blue Smoke Split Burger, blogged to AHT from the Flickr photostream of Slice

Pssst: Want a great lunch for two for around $14 total (before tip) at Blue Smoke? Ask them to split their usual nine-ounce burger into two burgers.

Blue Smoke general manager Mark Maynard-Parisi said the restaurant is happy to make two 4.5-ounce burgers for the same price as the single nine-ounce sandwich on its menu ($11.50, comes with fries; cheese and bacon each $1 extra).

This is good news for people who aren't that into big-ass honkin' burgers. Especially at Blue Smoke, where the otherwise big-ass honkin' burger is especially tasty. Downsizing to two half-size burgers does the trick nicely: You still get a decent amount of meat, and because it's served on an airy brioche bun, the bread component is not as overwhelming as you'd fear -- it can be squished down nicely.

Two of us at AHT went there for lunch recently and got out with a total food bill of $13.50. Not bad for a classy Danny Meyer joint, eh?

Mr. Maynard-Parisi suggests supplementing the burgers with an appetizer or two (the sausage plate caught our eye), but ours was a filling meal without.

We probably shouldn't even be sharing this with you. Who knows how long they'll keep this up once word gets out. :(

1 Comment | Tags: Adam, countries, New York, NYC, U.S.