Louis Lunch
Life has been pretty hectic for this blogger over the past two weeks. As well as having a million things going on in my home life, I have also spent some time over in the US. As a result, I haven’t had much time to get into the kitchen and tackle some more recipes from Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food. It’s a strange experience, I feel like I did as a kid whenever I was overdue with my homework! Anyway, I hope to get cracking with some recipe attempts over the next couple of days, so watch this space…
In the meantime, I thought I would share this tale from my recent trip to America. A while ago now, the chef Heston Blumenthal, of Fat Duck fame, put out a TV series called “In Search of Perfect”. The basic premise of the show was that Heston would take some of the nation’s favourite dishes and give them the Fat Duck treatment, creating the best, most over the top version imaginable. A kind of “Pimp my Comfort Food”. Anyway, in this episode he tackled an American icon that has taken over the world – the hamburger.
I remember the show well, in particular Heston’s trip to a quirky place called Louis Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut (edit: their website seems to be down right now!). Louis’ was the first ever restaurant to serve hamburgers and is the oldest hamburger joint still operating in America. Now, the humble old burger, like it or not, has to be the most popular item on pub food menus all over the country. So, when I found myself in New Haven during my recent trip over the pond, I just had to make a stop at Louis’ to give these famous old hamburgers a try.
It all started in 1895 when Louis Lassen began selling ground steak hamburger sandwiches to local factory workers. Now owned by the fourth generation of Lassens, Louis’ still serves its burgers the original way. The burgers come in between two slices of plain white bread with cheese, tomato and onion the only garnishes and NEVER mustard or ketchup. The patties are made from a secret blend of five different cuts of beef and still grilled on the original vertical cast iron stoves.
The place is small, and it’s no fast-food joint. Everything is cooked to order and we were waiting a good fifteen minutes for our burgers to arrive. But when they came they were well worth the wait. The meat was perfectly cooked, medium rare, and was unbelievably juicy. The strange white bread and processed melted cheese was weird, but just worked in a strange “taste of history” kind of way. Definitely a fun place to check out if you ever find yourself in that part of the world. Here are few more pictures to whet your appetite.
Hungry for more? Check out this youtube video.
