Burgers at Minetta Tavern in NYC, New York

If you follow this blog, you know that I love burgers! What I like is the bold flavor of the meat combined with the cheese, sauces and bread. It is so comforting and a good burger can be divine! There are so many restaurants who serve this great dish, but not all of them succeed. Recently, I decided to try the burgers at Minetta Tavern. The place has the same owner as Balthazar and therefore gets its breads and pastries from there! Apparently,  when they need something, they send a staff member to the Balthazar bakery to get it!

The place is smaller than what I imagine and is divided into two rooms: the main room in the back where the kitchen is located and the bar where few booths are available. There is an old feel to the place, with the black and white photos on the wall and the overall furnitures. 

Minetta Tavern is known for its Black Label burger, a $26 burger with a patty made of prime dry age meats: strip or ribeye, skirt steak and brisket, all coming from the Creekstone Farms (black angus beef raised and grazed in the US and USDA approved). So I decided to try it.

I ordered it medium and the waitress told us that medium means pink in the center. When the burger came, it look fabulous: a thick patty, shiny on the outside probably from the clarified butter that they drizzle the meat throughout the cooking process, with simply caramelized onions on top. It was served on a brioche bread that was not toasted and with some French fries.

The burger was juicy but clearly more medium rare than medium. 

It did not knock my socks off! I was expecting a rich meat flavor that any good dry aged meat would have. In fact, as we wanted to make a comparison,  Jodi ordered the Minetta burger, a cheeseburger that was served with the caramelized onions, as well as the brioche bun, but with cheese on top.

Similar to the Black Label Burger, it came with a thick patty smothered in cheese. The temperature of the burger was the same: medium was in fact medium rare. I'll be honest: there was not a big difference between the Black Label and the cheeseburger! And both burgers were salty!

What I truly liked were the fries! They were spectacular! I think these are the best French fries I got so far: perfectly salted and crispy! I was close to finish my plate until I remembered that this place was just a stop in a food journey...

 We finished with eating the coconut layer cake that stared at us during the entire lunch: Jodi could not resist looking at it. The coconut layer cake is on the menu and comes from Balthazar Bakery. I am not the biggest fan of coconut, but I have to say that it was delicious!

It was made of a very moist cake with two layers of cream and some icing on top with coconut shaving. The coconut taste was perfect and subtle. On top of that, the cake was very light! Fantastic!

I was a bit disappointed by the burgers at Minetta Tavern as, with all the buzz about them, I was expecting something awesome. The only reason I would come back would be for the French fries and the coconut layer cake, not the burgers!

Enjoy (I did)!