Shake Shack's demented cousin (Square Burger)

So if you actually want to read an objective view on how this burger tastes (i.e. not blinded by raw hatred), you should probably support AHT (even though they haven't been paying me on time, tsk tsk...) and read the original post over there... because this post is going to be the exact same thing, but written from an angry Asian person's perspective. Let's begin: Square Burger is an epic fail on Stephen Starr's part. Good job on Butcher & Singer, but you fucked up hard on Square Burger. It aspires to be everything that Shake Shack is, a small burger-centric shack that churns out a simplistic top-notch product at a reasonable price. Well they did one thing right by using a small hut, but it's a craptacular one at that. You can't even tell it sells burgers until you get within 20 feet because their giant metallic sign is a giant illegible mirror during the day. Good going guys. Okay... so maybe the shack looks demented, but according to every single other person in Philadelphia, the burgers are awesome... so it's okay!



... except sometimes I swear half of Philadelphia is either perpetually drunk or blazed out of their mind. After reading post after post after post (I'll refrain from linking since I basically just called them all twats) about how beautifully simplistic the cheeseburger is, you'd swear that its place in history ranks up there with when Columbus discovered America. Let me say this... the burger is not that good. This burger is not worth $4.75. It is nothing more than a glorified McDonald's Quarter Pounder that tastes more of mustard, ketchup, and pickles than meat. Does that sound like an appetizing burger to you?



Maybe if you REALLY like ketchup. Admittedly it uses better ingredients than McD's - it's built on Martin's potato roll and uses a proprietary 80/20 blend from some place - but none of that matters when I'm basically eating a ketchup and mustard sandwich... which I paid $4.75 for. Fuck, that's a Happy Meal at McDonald's. That includes fries, a drink, and a toy.



Then I paid another $2 for fries. Theirs are frozen and then refried (hey, that's just like Shake Shack!). They're actually not awful, but for $2 I expect a little more than a 12 oz. cup filled with fries. Can you tell I'm still irked from that ketchup-mustard sandwich I paid $4.75 for? Yeah... the bitter flavor of mustard and pickles is a hard taste to erase.



This is the one thing you did right Square Burger. The only thing. Blending Tastykake butterscotch Krimpets into half-and-half and ice cream. Then adding more butterscotch syrup. Let's be completely honest here though, all those things are pre-packaged, and all you did was mix them together. La-dee-da, it just means that the only product you produce effectively is the one that effectively removes any element of skill. Put stuff in cup, press button, blend. That said, seriously... good job on this. If I had to trample senior citizens to get another one... so be it. It is straight sexual (not even holding back by using "sensual"). But back to the anger...

What pissed me off the most however, wasn't even the food. If you follow me on Twitter (which if you don't, you probably should... it helps my boost my low self-esteem)... I was obviously uber-excited to get a Cake Shake. Why did I tweet about it on so many different days? Because the people who run Square Burger make asshat decisions to close up whenever they damn well please. The first time I went, they told me they closed with park hours at 6 pm. Okay, that's fine - except the sign at the entrance of the park said closing time was 9 pm. Whatever. I go back the next day at 4 pm. Apparently the hut was closed because it had rained in the morning? What happened to "rain or shine?" Twice. I was lied to twice. In summary, it took three trips to accomplish what I had to, which was to be disappointed by one of the crappiest burgers I've eaten in Philly. The Cake Shake is truly fantastic, but it doesn't really make up for the general suckfest that is Square Burger.
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Eating noodles, dumplings, and rabbits (E Mei Restaurant)

They say the first step to fixing your problems is to admitting you have them right? Well, I am a spicy food addict. I guess it's some sort of masochism, but I really enjoy torturing my taste buds with the sharp unrelenting stinging pain of capsaicin. I like sitting there without drinking water, squirming helplessly with my best "holy crap gotta take a shit this is painful" face. I'm not sure why. I realize in a lot of cases something that is overly spicy just masks the true flavor, but that's not what I'm talking about. I want something that builds in intensity because of my refusal to drink water. Do I regret it several hours later when that same "heat" reappears in the bathroom? Maybe. Is it worth it for that first pass from the top? Hell yeah.

I've been told E Mei is authentic Szechuan. I do not know. Like I said in a previous post, I don't actually know shit about Szechuan food... so I don't know what "authentically good" Szechuan food tastes like, but this was on the recommendation of another Asian, so I went. The 擔擔麵 (dan dan noodles) were decently good. Lots and lots of what seemed like refried ground pork bits were doused in a not-so-spicy sauce and lined with two sprigs of greens (so it looks healthier than it actually is). The presence of chili seeds and peppercorns was definitely there, but they played a much more aromatic role than a spicy one. Greasy and mild, the noodles were easy to stomach... that's about all there is to say. They're not worth trampling young children for, but they're worth ordering.



I'm sure some people are going to have ethical issues with me eating rabbit. "How can you eat them? They're so cute, fluffy, and innocent!" or "That's disgusting, rabbits aren't meant to be food!" Listen, if something tastes good, I don't really care how cute or revolting it might be. It's going into my mouth. I mean... if it's good enough for Kim Jong Il, then it's good enough for me. If you've never had rabbit, it's like chicken... but better. How can I qualify that statement when fried chicken is pretty much the greatest thing since... uh... non-fried chicken? Because texturally, rabbit is superior. Flavorwise, plain rabbit is as boring as plain white chicken breast, but texturally it's more resilient, more sinewy, and gamier. It's in general... springier? When tossed with a thin coating of chili oil and stir fried with peanuts and peppercorns you get a dish that starts off mild but builds into something that is fantastically spicy. After a few bites you'll still be tasting the flavor of the meat and smelling the peanut scent, but your mouth'll be begging for forgiveness. Screw that, the only respite my mouth got was when I had to spit out the occasional bone. Someone needs to breed a rabbit without bones. "Amorphous delicious eating rabbit" I shall call it.



These 紅油抄手 (hong you chao shou) tasted kind of like the ones they have in Taiwan - and I like those. Kind of thickly skinned, they're just plain ol' wontons sitting in a pool of fiery yet sweet chili sauce. Complete with small islands of chili seeds floating around inside! In this case, the fact that this dish is good doesn't hinge upon the requirement of having kick ass wontons, but rather that the flavor profile of the sauce doesn't overwhelm it. Having shoved my mouth full of spicy rabbit beforehand, pretty much everything would've tasted mild, so... I honestly can't really can't remember if these tasted good or not. I'm gonna say... probably?

That said, I'm not infatuated with E Mei (aside from the rabbit... goddamn that was good). It's not that they don't do a great job cooking all their shit, I guess it's just not my style of food. I can appreciate the use of peppercorns as an aromatic element, but everything kind of ended up tasting similar because of it. I guess that should be expected. Anyway, E Mei is a good enough restaurant if you're a fan of the genre, but I think I'll stick to the more familiar in the future. Unless I want rabbit, in which case I'd go back.
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Vanilla cake, peanut butter, and beef (Adsum)

If you feel ever so compelled to learn more about the gorgeous burger you see above, head on over to "A Hamburger Today" and read my post there. Now, it's not that I want to take away any potential page views from the fabulous people who write my food checks, but here's the disappointing summary in condensed form... that burger, while huge and grossly filling, is shamefully nondescript even with strange additions like pancetta onion-fondue i.e. a fancy name for bacon in melted cheese and onions. It's not a bad burger at all, it's just not a burger I'd find myself frequently craving... especially not with its price tag. I rarely find myself so indifferent when it comes to meats of this size (10-ounces!), but the Adsum burger just doesn't do it for me. It's okay, prepackaged dessert snacks do... cream filled snacks = cream everywhere.



There was a definite reason I was fat growing up. My mom tried to make me normal lunches like PB&J or ham sandwiches, but I refused to eat them. Looking back, I was kind of a bitch (sorry mom!), and also an idiot. Those things are fucking delicious. Back on point... the only things I would eat in school were Poptarts, Twinkies, and Tastykakes - washed down with chocolate milk of course. The point is, I've had a long love-hate relationship with prepackaged dessert snacks (most of it being love), so when I found out that my beloved Tastykake was in financial trouble, and Adsum was selling Tastykake sliders to support them, I knew what I had to do.

The idea of putting a ball of beef in between PB Kandy Kakes is awesome to me. I mean, I like vanilla cake, I like peanut butter, I like chocolate, and I generally like eating cows. What could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately a lot. The "sliders" were basically slightly flattened meatballs topped with a Sriracha-cherry jam and cheese, which were then sandwiched with prepackaged desserts. Meh. I think it's great that the chef at Adsum wanted to support Tastykake by using them in a dish, but execution-wise... these weren't all that great. They're edible (although not from a logistics point of view), but I don't think I'd pay good money for them again. You should keep in mind that this is coming from someone who loves when people use doughnuts for buns... so, these must've been pretty mediocre.



Ugh, duck-fat poutine with foie gras. I don't even like foie gras.

I don't know what to say aside from... I think Adsum kind of takes everything a bit too far. Being innovative is a great and all, but almost everything just felt... too much. It's like a toddler with ADD, the parents always think their kid is cute as a button, but to everyone else it's just annoying as fuck.
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Non-Asians and Asian food suggestions (Dim Sum Garden)

Something I asked on Twitter last week... "Is it racist that I don't trust non-Asians when they make Asian food suggestions?" The answers varied. A few Asian people lol'd and told me they do the same. On the other end of the spectrum... someone suggested that it wasn't racist, but that it was ignorance. I won't try to deny that I have more than my fair share of idiotic views in life, but let me clarify what I really meant by this statement - I don't (generally) trust non-Asians when they preach about how deliciously authentic an Asian dish is i.e. don't trust whitey. Is that really so bad? It's not that I don't trust my non-Asian friends' perspectives on food. If you have good taste, you have good taste, but how can someone possibly comment on the authenticity of a dish if they have never had it from the source before? As I've learned from my engineering writing source... if you're just following fobs around, you're simply paraphrasing the source. Give credit where credit is due.

Last week I went with a friend to a small Chinese restaurant near Reading Terminal Market called Dim Sum Garden. The name is kind of deceptive, it's not so much a dim sum place in the traditional sense as it is a place that serves Shanghai style entrees and appetizers.

One of the things I most definitely wanted was 炸醬麵 (zha jiang mian), the Northern Chinese take on black bean noodles. DSG's version was super traditional - gobs of loosely strewn pork combined with a salty and slightly runny black bean sauce peppered with a hint of spiciness and sweetness. It was good, and to me... it was super authentic. My grandfather was from Northern China, ate this shit all the time, and cooked it for me all the time. See? I can say that because I've been there eaten the food, and have a direct comparison.



Shanghai shumai (上海燒賣) are apparently a sticky rice variant on normal shumai. Instead of gob of pork you get a gob of sticky rice with bits of pork inside. As much as I love rice, I think I enjoy pork more. I was not in love with this dish, but the texture was admittedly as interesting as anything I've eaten recently. See... I will not comment on the authenticity of this dish because I have no fucking clue if it's legit or not. I have never been to Shanghai, nor do I hail from there... so I will refrain from making assclown statements about whether it is "native" or not. They're fun to eat, I'll leave it at that.



We also got pan-fried dumplings (生煎包). These were, in fact, actually awesome. As good as most, and filled with more meat, than any I've ever eaten in Taiwan. The skins were super thin, borderline transparent, and they exploded with pork juices upon puncture. Again, I can make this statement because I know what the OG versions taste like, having sampled directly from the source.



What can I say about this? It's a cold dish of roasted pork (將肉). Flavor-wise it's pretty bland, you dip it in sugary soy sauce or vinegar soy sauce, but texturally it's fun to play with. The odd bits of cartilage make for curiously gelatinous nuances, adding a slight crunch to an otherwise plain cooking of meat. Twas good. Again, I have no clue where this dish actually originates, but it's something that was always on my table growing up... so I feel 100% validated in making asinine statements about it.

To conclude on this post which I'm surely to get bashed for... it's not that I completely distrust non-Asians when it comes to Asian food suggestions, I just find it ridiculous how often people make ridiculous commentary on things that they're completely oblivious to (I'm sure I do this too... and I hate myself for it). I mean, I'm sure an aeronautics engineer could explain to you how an airplane flies from reading books, but I wouldn't want them flying a plane. Similarly, you can tell me food is good, but leave out the commentary on authenticity unless you've hard the original for comparison. Until then, I'll continue to listen to Asians when it comes to Asian food.
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