BURGER FRIDAY
El Kourmet brings South American flavor to the party.
If you think Colombian hot dogs are wild and crazy, let me tell you about Venezuelan burgers.
Specifically, the highly embellished specimens at El Kourmet, two burger-and-arepa spots in north and south Katy. The business started as a food truck in 2015 and found footing in an area known to Venezuelans as “Katyzuela.”
A “Top this!” street-food vibe still pervades the El Kourmet menu, and that’s the aesthetic that informs their sprawling, behemoth burgers.
I visited the northern edition, on North Fry Road about three miles up from Interstate 10, past flourishing strip malls and placid developments of brick homes, across Mayde Creek and up where the malls are still forming and grassland clings.
Come along for the trip — and I do mean “trip,” in the late 1960s sense.
PRICE: Kourmet Burger $8.99; extra queso de mano $1.50; papelón con limon, a Venezuelan limeade, $2.50, for a total of $12.99 before tax and tip.
ORDERING: You can order and pay online via the Orderspoon platform. (El Kourmet is takeout only right now.) It helps to scroll through the online menu first, with its wealth of photos and head-spinning detail. Then hop on the “order online” section, and be sure to scroll down on each item to see the many, many customizing options. You can add or subtract condiments and ingredients at will — the very heart of El Kourmet’s mission.
Ordering online kicks off an “as soon as possible” pickup schedule. But since I was coming from 30 miles away, I phoned the shop right after I hit “submit” and asked for them to schedule a later pickup time. They did so, and my food was ready when I arrived — with the exemplary Venezuelan beverages kept cold in a cooler.
ARCHITECTURE: Salad stuff on the bottom. On a griddled bun goes mayo, shredded romaine, tomato slices, a layer of crunchy little potato stixand some ketchup and pink “Kourmet sauce.” Then comes a half-inch beef patty, a fried egg, a thin slice of griddled ham and a slice of griddle-seared white cheese.
And are you ready for this? I added a final melty ooze of queso de mano on top, just because I could, and I adore the delicate mozzarella-like cheese.
QUALITY: The appeal of this burger lies not in its rather ordinary, dense, vigorously seasoned beef patty, which is aggressively seared and well-done, with no juiciness to speak of.
No, the fun resides in the concentration of fixings and condiments that riot across the palate as you eat: the light crunch of romaine squiggles and little baby commercial potato stix against the singed flap of ham. The wellfrizzled surface of hard-fried egg playing off the equally frizzled surface of the griddled slice of white cheese. The softly elastic cascade of the add-on queso de mano binding it all together, along with mellow secret sauce and sharp, sweet drizzles of ketchup.
It’s a blast. One that can be augmented, if you wish, by the addition of a smoked pork chop (!) and/or a grilled chicken breast for the Double or Triple Kourmet Burger, which I cannot even bring myself to imagine.
OOZE RATING: Strictly condiment-based, sob.
LETTER GRADE: B for because. Because this burger fights for its right to party.
VALUE: Good in terms of quantity and flavor punch for the
money.
BONUS POINTS: Superior beverage choices. Only a week after I realized, at downtown’s Stack Burger, that iced Vietnamese coffee was an ideal burger accompaniment, I encountered three equally appealing drink options at El Kourmet.
My favorite was the papelón con limon, a refreshing Venezuelan limeade made with piloncillo, a brown, unrefined cane sugar that gives the drink a round burnished tone set off by the tartness of lime.
But I loved the tart parchita, or passionfruit juice (I specified no condensed milk or cinnamon dusting, as I did with the papelón); and the gentle, milky rice beverage called chicha, in which condensed milk and cinnamon combined to make a plush milkshake equivalent.
STUFF FOR LATER: Lately, I am always looking for takeout options that will tide me over into the next day. At El Kourmet, I scored a Pepito sandwich, a sort of hot sub in which hunks of grilled chicken and smoked pork chop tumbled together with potato sticks, griddlesinged white cheese and coleslaw, not to mention ketchup, mayo and Kourmet sauce. It’s a wild mix that reheats nicely and holds much of the same spunky clown-car appeal that the Venezuelan-embellished burger does.
I also carried home a side order of queso de mano, simply because I love it so much; and a tiny translucent dessert of crystallized papaya with pineapple. Maybe I’ll eat them together.
LOCAL COLOR: El Kourmet has the stacked-up chairs of the age in its clean, workaday space. I was the only customer in my time slot, but outside on North Fry, the lateafternoon Katy traffic clotted the road, which gave me plenty of time to appreciate the freewheeling cultural mix of businesses.
In one strip mall, I spotted a Thuy’s, an Aisha’s and a Katy Halal. And I counted Colombian, Chinese, Jamaican, Cuban, “American comfort” and Mexican restaurants as I made my way south toward I-10. Many is the Katy joke made by smug Inner Loopers, but the reality on the ground is more nuanced and far more interesting.