Burgers Are the Restaurant World’s Safe Haven
漢堡：餐飲界的避風港

With apologies to John Milton, a hamburger is often the final infirmity of a noble restaurant. When times get tough, even the best chefs will succumb to the popular appeal and simple economics of a ground beef patty slid between well-buttered buns. Cheap chopped meat can conceal a lot of shortcomings and do wonders for the bottom line.
當經營困難時，即使是頂級主廚也會選擇推出漢堡。漢堡廣受歡迎且製作簡單，平價的絞肉更能有效提升利潤。

Nowadays, the financial incentives are more compelling for high-end establishments than burger joints. Inflation has pushed up the cost of beef — as much as 20% over the last 12 months, according to UK’s Office for National Statistics — so fancier spots can sell a pricey burger that’s still a bargain for their clientele. Depending on how you weight your cost-benefit analysis, you might opt for, say, a Gordon Ramsay burger rather than fast food in a box on a plastic tray. Currently, the two-for-one Whopper deal at Burger King in the UK will set you back about £12 ($16.20). That’s with a coupon. Without a promo discount, you may have to lay out almost £8 for just one. Some estimates have the Whopper increasing by a whopping 45% since 2020. In comparison, you can get a posh burger and brag about the famous culinary reputation attached to it for around £18. (Unless you want it with tender wagyu beef, which will cost you extra).
通膨推高牛肉成本，對高級餐廳而言，賣漢堡比速食店更有利可圖。即使是高價漢堡，對其顧客來說仍相對划算，因為速食漢堡的價格也在上漲。因此，消費者多花一點錢，就能享用名廚漢堡。

Imparting an uptown sheen to down-market cuisine is an age-old ploy. At steakhouses — like the 137-year old Peter Luger in Brooklyn, New York — unused cuts of meat that didn’t become sirloins, porterhouses or filet mignons were ground down and put to profitable use. Not only did the resulting burgers make customers happy, they sustained and buttressed the margins of the business. At the Grill in Midtown Manhattan (which occupies the Philip Johnson-designed space of the legendary Four Seasons), whatever’s left from the previous night’s $98-a-person prime rib is available off-menu — first come, first served — as heaving sandwiches at lunch for around $30 each. In London, poulet roti — homey, French-style rotisserie chicken available ready-to-eat at Paris supermarkets for about €9 (£7.80 or $10.50) — is newly fashionable, with wonderful incarnations in Shoreditch (The Knave of Clubs) and East Dulwich (Norbert’s), £38 and £30 respectively for a whole bird.
將平民料理高級化是常見的策略。例如，牛排館會利用剩餘的肉塊製成漢堡來增加利潤。同樣地，其他餐廳也會將剩餘的頂級肋排做成高價三明治，或將平價的法式烤雞包裝成時髦餐點高價販售。

The hamburger is the protean protein of the age of American hegemony. There’s one story that Jewish immigrants to New York traveling on a ship called the Hamburg were responsible for sparking its popularity in their new homeland. Forget old Europe: Hamburg has a better claim on the Beatles than on the hamburger, even if there is a German fried meatball recipe dating from the 18th century. There are versions out of Scandinavia and Poland as well. Like all archetypal entities, its real beginnings are mysterious.
漢堡的起源眾說紛紜。儘管有傳聞稱它與一艘名為「漢堡號」的移民船有關，且歐洲多國早有類似的肉餅料理，但其確切的起源至今仍是個謎。

By the time dishes bearing the name hamburger (or Hamburg steak) proliferated in the US, variants were cooked on a griddle or presented raw and topped with an egg. In some versions it was poor man’s fare, but a menu item by the name was also one of the most expensive at the legendary Delmonico’s restaurant, which was founded in 1837. Vendors served it between slices of bread at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair — an apogee of America’s Gilded Age — and it soon became part of the country’s culinary vocabulary and a mainstay of fourth of July barbecues and family reunions.
漢堡排在美國曾以多種形式出現，既是平民食物，也曾是知名餐廳的高價菜色。直到 1904 年聖路易斯世界博覽會上，用麵包夾著肉排的吃法開始普及，漢堡自此成為美國的代表性美食。

It also became a manifestation of American business enterprise as it set off on world conquest. White Castle, a pioneering burger franchise, was founded in 1921; McDonald’s was established in 1940 before Ray Kroc bought it in 1961 and turned it into a global phenomenon. Since then, there’s been Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr., In-and-Out, Five Guys, Smashburgers, Shake Shack and on and on, plus innumerable corner burger bistros. It’s also become a cross-border barometer of global living standards as embodied in The Economist’s Big Mac Index — which compares the varying prices of the double-decker McDonald’s burgers in cities across the world. The photojournalist Gary He has published a marvelous look at the adaptability of McDonald’s across cuisines and cultures in McAtlas, which won two James Beard media awards this year.
漢堡也成為美國企業向全球擴張的體現。從 1921 年的先驅「白色城堡」，到日後成為全球現象的「麥當勞」，各類漢堡連鎖店與餐館應運而生。《經濟學人》的「大麥克指數」更以漢堡價格作為衡量全球生活水準的跨國指標。攝影記者 Gary He 的得獎作品《McAtlas》也記錄了麥當勞融入各地文化的面貌。

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Much like the US dollar, the hamburger has become the safe-haven cuisine of haute restaurants in trouble. Still, a whopper by any other name is not necessarily a culinary feat. After a string of particularly awful greaseballs in the US, I gave up burgers for a few years. But then Shake Shack began doing special editions of its burgers in collaboration with top-ranked chefs, including ones I admired here in London. This year, Jackson Boxer recalibrated his Notting Hill restaurant Orasay, renaming it Dove and revamping the menu. The much-hyped draw: an off-menu hamburger. Only 10 were prepared for each service (lunch and dinner), so you had to book a table at Dove when the doors opened to get a chance at it.
漢堡如同美元，已成為高級餐廳陷入困境時的避風港。 不過，漢堡不一定就是美食傑作。我曾因吃過太多難吃的漢堡而戒了幾年，直到 Shake Shack 與頂尖主廚合作推出限定漢堡，才讓我改觀。 今年，主廚 Jackson Boxer 將其餐廳 Orasay 改為 Dove 並調整菜單。備受矚目的賣點是一款隱藏版漢堡，每個餐期僅限量十份，想吃到就得搶先預訂。

I had to get in on it. Boxer has one of the best palates in London so I wasn’t surprised his burger was a gustatory thrill — thick and messy and oozing with gorgonzola and beefiness. Everyone who scored an early table ordered a burger — and a bunch of other dishes on the menu — as did I.
我當然也要嚐嚐。Boxer 是倫敦頂尖美食家，他的漢堡果然滋味驚人——厚實、醬汁淋漓，滿溢著戈貢佐拉起司和濃郁肉香。所有搶先入座的客人都點了漢堡，我也不例外。

But what moved me was an unexpected ingredient: nostalgia. Maybe it was just me, but it revived remembrances of very good patties past. I was heartened to read that Boxer was inspired by the burgers produced by the British-born chef April Bloomfield who found fame with the Spotted Pig in New York in the early 2000s. I love her cooking. I found myself reminiscing over the juiciness and char of burgers I had as a child at the Manila Polo Club, from long vanished days of family privilege. Who knew that a burger could be a madeleine?
但真正打動我的是一個意想不到的元素：懷舊。它喚醒了我對過往美味漢堡的回憶。我很欣慰主廚的靈感是來自於我所欣賞、並在紐約成名的主廚 April Bloomfield。這讓我想起童年時，在馬尼拉馬球俱樂部嚐過的多汁焦香漢堡，以及那段早已逝去的家族優渥時光。誰能想到，一個漢堡竟能像塊瑪德蓮蛋糕？

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