Burgers burgers everywhere

but not a drop to drink

Eden

Nov 21, 2024

Was NY Metro Weather right? Is it raining right now?

This week, I’m bringing you the latest Beef Fancy Dinner™ at Red Hook Tavern. This place had so much hype and it was not an easy reservation to get, so was it worth it? I also have not been able to get The Haunting of Hill House out of my mind since watching it (which feels like an example of life imitating art?). I know I’m 6 years late, but wow I have thoughts. Due to the content of the show, I’ll be discussing death, grief, and suicide, so if you don’t want to read that right now just skip the Watching section.

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Over the weekend I had a Beef Fancy Dinner™ at a place that promised me a really great burger - Red Hook Tavern. I read a lot of NYC restaurant reviews and watch a lot of YouTube videos and the near consensus is that Red Hook Tavern’s burger is possibly the best in the city. The burger regularly gets shoutouts from chefs and normies alike and after making me eat a shitty burger at JC’s on Long Island, I knew Beef needed more burger education. So when the alarm I set for 6am one morning went off, I sleepily rolled over, tap tap tapped my phone, and managed to grab a reservation for a Sunday night. Yeah, reservations only open up 2 weeks in advance - it’s that kind of place.

The building was a former liquor store and still has the old sign hanging outside.

When we arrived for our reservation at 5pm, there was already a massive line outside. It wasn’t really clear if the line was for reservations or walk-ins, so expect some chaos at the hostess stand. We were eventually seated inside and I was surprised at how tiny the place was! Luckily they have a lot of outdoor seating available, otherwise it would be even harder to get a reservation (though I do wonder what their outdoor/winter setup looks like). The inside immediately evoked Minetta Tavern’s decor and upon further reading I learned that spot is somewhat of an homage to classic NYC taverns like Minetta and Peter Luger.

Photo from Red Hook Tavern’s website - this is the entire place! A bar and a row of tables. It’s basically the front half of Minetta Tavern without all of the tables in the back.

We all knew we wanted the burger, but wondered if there was anything else on the menu worth trying. Beef ended up ordering the French Onion Soup and Lorenzo and I split the Country Ham Croquettes, although as I saw the wedge salads pass us by with that giant slab of bacon on top I began to have second thoughts. Ultimately though, our choices were very solid. Beef said the soup was one of the best he’s ever had and is considering making a version for his Friendsgiving (ok, he asked his girlfriend to try to recreate it). The ham croquettes were absolutely filled with thick gooey cheddar and though I didn’t really find any ham chunks inside, there was definitely a hammy taste. My favorite part of that dish was the dijonnaise underneath though - I love a good mustard and I would have gladly dipped anything in this one.

But you want to know about the burger, don’t you? Red Hook Tavern was born from the mind of Billy Durney, owner of what I believe to be some of the best BBQ in the city - Hometown BBQ (I wrote about my visit to their Industry City outpost). Durney and his team have absolutely mastered the art of cooking meat at Hometown (that brisket 🥵), so it made sense that another meat-forward dish of his was getting accolades all around. And knowing that the RHT burger was an ode to the Minetta and Peter Luger burgers, it stood to reason that it would be very fucking good. And I’m happy to report that it was very good, but it was not my favorite for a few reasons.

Before you say "your entire table seriously all just ordered burgers??" please know that every single table ordered at least one burger. When Rihanna sang "this is what you came for" this is what she meant.

Overall, the burger was great. As soon as you bite into it you get a nice peppery punch from the crust followed by a slight dry aged tang. The patty is thick, but not too densely packed so it remains soft and juicy. I also thought that adding a layer of raw onion under the patty was a nice touch to keep the bottom bun from getting too soggy. The burger is topped with the perfect amount of American cheese and has no other toppings or sauces otherwise which I appreciate; I think a good burger should speak for itself.

As good as this burger was though, it felt like it just wasn’t quite there. If this burger was an ode to the Minetta Burger, then I’m sorry to say that the student has not surpassed the master as many reviews would have you believe. A dry aged burger should have a delicious unctuous funk to it and while the RHT burger did, it felt quite a bit weaker than the Minetta Burger. And I’m not even a person who likes really funky tasting food! A good burger should speak for itself flavor-wise and while the RHT Burger was definitely good, it wasn’t great.

RHT lost a few points from me for other reasons, too. First off, it’s hard to get a reservation and if you are able to get one, you’ve gotta go all the way to Red Hook. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Red Hook, but it’s a bit of a schlep. I’ve also just come to really hate places that have really particular reservation requirements. Life wasn’t always like this and I miss the before times! I was also quite disappointed in the fries. They were little ruffley potato coins, similar to those at JG Melon, but they were just not executed well at all. Some of them were way too soft and puffy and none of them had any seasoning. I saw that when RHT initially opened they had potato spears and I think I might have liked those ones better. If we’re comparing to Minetta again, the fry to fry battle just isn’t even close.

Fior de latte gelato with Homemade hot fudge and candied pecans

Lorenzo actually said that his favorite part of the meal was the sundae we got for dessert, and that speaks volumes. So while Red Hook Tavern was definitely good, I don’t know if it’s worth the trouble to wake up early to grab a reservation and then take 2 buses out to Red Hook. I’d much rather grab a sloppy pile of brisket at Hometown BBQ and grab a swingle at Steve’s Key Lime Pie for dessert.

I know I’m about 6 years late, but I just watched The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix and I am obsessed. I even got Lorenzo to watch it with me and he absolutely hates watching horror stuff and downright refuses to watch anything spooky after dark. But is this even a ghost story?

Ok hear me out, it kind of is but it also kind of isn’t!

I think that the ghosts in Hill House are real. But I don’t think all of the ghosts we see throughout the series are real. Something interesting that the show did really well was give the viewer lots of evidence to allow them to decide on their own whether this story is actually supernatural or whether it can be explained more pragmatically. Keep in mind this quote from Steven in the very first episode:

"A ghost can be a lot of things. A memory, a daydream, a secret. Grief, anger, guilt. But, in my experience, most times they're just what we want to see. Most times, a ghost is a wish."

Hill House itself is definitely haunted and early in the series Olivia tells us that all of the women of the Crain family are “sensitive”, which explains why they’re the ones most affected by the house’s spirits. Shirley has premonitions similar to her mother Olivia (as evidenced in her sleep talking), Theodora is the most overt with her memory-by-touch, and Nelly experiences time non-linearly. I don’t think Luke actually has any sensitivity, but rather experiences bits of Nelly’s through their twin connection. There’s also a popular theory that each Crain kid represents one of the 5 stages of grief, but I personally find the stages of grief themselves to be limiting, so I find that interpretation to be a bit reductive.

Steve and his father, Hugh, do see the ghosts in the house from time to time, but they routinely explain them away with logic. I think Steve and Hugh are meant to be the audience’s conduit into the Hill House world. It’s easy to watch a show like this and yell at the screen “that’s a fuckin ghost!” or “why are you ignoring that banging??” But keep in mind that in your own regular life, you don’t think you’re in a ghost story. If you heard banging on the walls, wouldn’t you just think it’s the radiator kicking on? Steve and Hugh don’t know they’re in a ghost story so when weird things happen around them, they simply make excuses.

I do believe that the ghosts in Hill House drove the family mad, especially Olivia. And I think that everything the family experienced in that house obviously left them with quite a bit of trauma. Unfortunately, none of the kids were able to work through their trauma because their dad refused to talk about what happened to their mother and also routinely squashed any of their talk about seeing ghosts. The funny thing about trauma is that it really sticks with you and pops back up when you least expect it. Luke’s trauma led him to begin using drugs to cope. Shirley became super focused on “fixing” things and making the grieving process easy for others while ignoring her own needs. And Nell’s trauma surfaced through her night terrors and sleep paralysis. So what I’m getting at here is that I don’t necessarily think any of the ghostly shit that happened outside of Hill House was actual ghosts - I think that was all the kids’ trauma manifesting as ghosts. So while yes, technically the house did continue to torment them, it was their memories and experiences in the house that continued to eat away at them as adults and ultimately lead them back to it.

Side note: I also experience night terrors and sleep paralysis from time to time and the way the series depicted this was really well done. Episode 5 (The Bent Neck Lady) was one of the best episodes of television I’ve ever seen, both for how Nell’s night terrors were depicted and the expert fucking non-linear storytelling that allowed the viewer to experience time as Nell did. Beautiful 🤌

Nell seeing the Bent Neck Lady and later experiencing one last dance with a specter of her late husband

The Bent Neck Lady episode was by far one of the best of the series (lots of folks like the long takes of Ep 6 which are also good, but long takes feel like a shtick to me). The whole series constantly jumped back and forth between the 90s and present day and at times it didn’t really work for me, but this episode flippity flopped beautifully. It’s absolutely devastating to learn that Nell has been seeing her own dead self in the Bent Neck Lady her entire life and equally heartbreaking to watch her life unravel in this episode as she inched closer to her death. The juxtaposition between the real world and the apparitions Nell was seeing were so well done; the locket-to-noose switch up was so goddam tragic.

But in the last episode we get to hear from Nell herself how it feels now that she’s on the other side and she understands what’s been happening all along. Sure technically she’s dead, but she’s always been dead and also she’s always been alive because time is not a straight line. This is one of my favorite time theories (Eternalism) and I love the idea that time is actually just a big blob and we all exist in all times all of the time (or as Conor Oberst might say, we are nowhere and it’s now). So when all of the Crain kids are finally back together in the Red Room and Nell stops them from apologizing it’s because she knows they all love each other because at some point they all did so naturally they always do. Does any of this make sense to you??

The end got a little over-explainy at parts but I still really enjoyed it

Finally, I want to talk about the Red Room. The door to this room in the house was always locked…or was it? The Red Room is explained to us to be the house’s stomach, where it traps and digests people. In order to do that, it appeared as a sort of Room of Requirement to the family members. They each spent time in that room without knowing it because it appeared to them as their personal room of refuge: a play room, a dance studio, a tree house. Later, we also learn that the Red Room is the source of all of the black mold that’s permeated the house and this is where things get a bit interesting. Since all of the family members (except for the dad really) spend lots of time in the room, was it actually the mold affecting them all along? Did the mold make Olivia go crazy and did the mold sicken the kids and cause their lifelong issues? Mold or ghosts? Series creator Mike Flanagan has stated that it’s definitely ghosts and the proliferation of the mold simply represents everyone’s deteriorating mental states, but the show itself leaves it up to interpretation.

Did you catch that each of these rooms has the same long vertical window? I fucking love visual cues like this!

I think I just love watching atypical depictions of grief, so this show hit me right in the feels. Like sure it was kind of creepy too, but for me this was primarily a character driven show about trauma and how you never really get over anything because time (like grief) is not linear. Remember Steve’s quote from the first episode about how ghosts can be a lot of things? We all have those little things that haunt us, memories that threaten to spill over and cause a sudden resurgence of grief in our lives. The fact that these memories always live in us are just further proof that time isn’t linear - anything can (and usually will) spill over at any time because we never really get past anything. The best we can do is find some degree of acceptance over what has happened and find a way to live alongside it.

Share Big City, Little Friend with someone who also watches tv shows years after they’re actually popular.

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7 months ago · 27 likes · 1 comment

Abigail of