BURGER FRIDAY
Alison Cook tries the butter burger sliders at Riel.
For one week only, let’s change the name of this column to Burger Tuesday — because that’s the only day of the week you can try the magnificently over-the-top butter burger sliders at Riel.
Chef Ryan Lachaine, the Manitoban who weaves ideas from Canada into his Gulf Coast menu, continues his “We the North” theme with this regional burger quirk from the dairy state of Wisconsin: topping a burger with a pat of butter. Caramelized onions and sticky cheese are part of the deal, too.
These babies are available only during happy hour, from 5 to 6:30 p.m., for technical reasons I address below. Maybe that limited window is a good thing, because this glorious concatenation of butterfat and beef fat is not exactly health food. But it is so headspinningly delicious that once I tried Riel’s butter burger, I could scarcely wait for the next Tuesday to roll around.
Here’s why.
PRICE: $8 for two butter burger sliders. Add a beer or a glass of red wine and you’ll break the 10-dollar mark. ORDERING: Table service only. Grab a seat at the bar, the chef’s counter or in the dining room.
You might have to ask, because the just-introduced butter burger is not on the printed happy hour menu. Not yet, anyway.
ARCHITECTURE: No salad stuff. No condiments, even! On a griddled baby bun goes an ounceand-a-half beef patty, a square of American cheese, a profusion of deeply caramelized onions and a crowning pat of butter that drips down the sides and — this is important — pools on the plate.
QUALITY: The profound appeal of this little burger lies not in fancy beef or fancy cheese or exceptional condiments of any kind. It springs from the deep well of savor imparted by beef and butter and a soft, swoony mesh of onions that have been cooked down in beef stock to a deep bronze shade.
Lachaine has a deep-seated love for French onion dip (it’s a retrograde passion I happen to share), so he seasons the ground beef with onion and garlic powders before concentrating the effect with the fragrant cooked onions that cover the patty. The disk of meat is cooked and smashed down on the griddle with a little butter so that it emerges crusty and medium to mediumwell done, a degree of doneness that works nicely in this context.
Between sweet beefy onions and melted butter and sticky cheese, the effect is dizzyingly rich and suave — creating the kind of intensity that would be destroyed by the contrast of a sharp pickle or a jolt of mustard.
Once you let your palate and some primitive part of your brain sink into the experience, you may find yourself waiting impatiently, like I did, for Riel’s next little window of butter burger opportunity.
Why so few butter burgers, and so far apart? Lachaine explains that cooking too many little burgers throughout dinner service could monopolize the plancha cooktop, creating chaos for his team when orders for hanger steaks or fish came in. In a way, I’m grateful, because otherwise I’d be tempted to eat way more butter burgers than are good for me.
OOZE FACTOR: Most excellent, from beef fat to butter.
LETTER GRADE: Solid A. VALUE: Good. Two of these opulent sliders may be all the average brain stem can handle, and the indelible memory of the flavors and textures is, um, priceless. BONUS POINTS: An array of cocktails, beers and wines by the glass is on hand to set off your slider. And for additional happy hour pleasure, there are items like a pristine mini crawfish roll or festively dressed mini hot dogs. Feel like you need a salad chaser? There’s a lovely Little Gem lettuce number with blue cheese dressing, tomato, bacon and brown-butter bread crumbs.
LOCAL COLOR: Professionals, artsy types and tattooed restaurant industry kids all flock together in the long, low dining room, giving it a decided Montrose feel. Vases of snowy cotton bolls line the counter and a museum-display’s worth of local stickers hovers above the open kitchen. Amid the soft thump of rap on the sound system, I’d swear I heard some vintage Geto Boys — for whom the My Mind Playing Tricks on Me cocktail is named. RIP Richard Shaw.