$100 Hamburger

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Irregular News for 06.21.06

 

Boca Raton,FL -- A hundred bucks might buy you more than six dozen cheeseburgers from McDonald's but none will co mpare to the one brawny beef bucket introduced Tuesday in the swanky Old Homestead Steakhouse.

 

"Delicious ... messy ... worth it."

 

Boca Raton Mayor Steven Abrams could barely speak between bites as he devoured the 20-ounce, $100 hamburger billed as the "beluga caviar of sandwiches."

 

The burger debuted Tuesday at the restaurant in the Boca Raton Resort and Club, where a membership costs $40,000 and an additional $3,600 a year.

 

"We've never had a hamburger on our menu here so we really wanted to go to the extreme," restaurant owner Marc Sherry said, calling it "the most decadent burger in the world."

 

At about 5 1/2 inches across and 2 1/2 inches thick, the mound of meat is comprised of beef from three continents - American prime beef, Japanese Wagyu (Kobe) and Argentine cattle.

 

"Heaven on a bun," Sherry said.

 

At his New York restaurant in 2002, Sherry debuted a $41 Kobe beef burger and a year later unveiled the $19 foot-long 11-ounce Kobe beef frankfurter. The restaurant also has a location in Atlantic City, N.J.

 

For Tuesday's debut, the beef arrived at the restaurant in a chauffeur-driven black Hummer limousine and was carried out in packaged slabs on the shoulders of chefs.

 

In the kitchen, workers sliced the meat into two-inch cuts and pressed them into a grinder, producing a velvety red and white pile of ground beef.

 

Each saucer-shaped mound was sauteed without seasoning in a pan with grape seed oil for about five minutes on each side before being finished in an oven at 375 degrees.

 

"We let the meat do all the talking," said assistant chef Joseph Galison. "You really don't need to add any spices at all."

 

The meat is flown into New York about every three days and shipped fresh to the Boca Raton restaurant, Sherry said.

 

The bill for one burger, with garnishing that includes organic greens, exotic mushrooms and tomatoes, comes out to $124.50 with tax and an 18 percent tip included. But don't think you're eating lavishly without a cause. The restaurant will donate $10 from each sale to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Southern Florida.

 

"They don't serve these things at McDonald's, I can assure you," Abrams said.

 

The meat is also available via mail. Sherry said orders for the burly burgers have already been placed by 1960s crooner Paul Anka and former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth.

 

The most expensive hamburger commercially available is the $120 db Double Truffle Burger served at the DB Bistro Moderne in New York City exclusively during the black truffle season, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

 

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