The best burger you’ll ever make that isn’t dumb luck. Nostalgia isn’t always bad.
One of my good friends in college, less so now, visited me on Martha’s Vineyard one summer shortly after our third year (that’s how our college framed it, we were not “juniors”) — free lodging on a resort island being a huge draw for him, but free beer for me, so score. Anyhow I picked him up from the boat and suggested we head to a bar because it was Saturday at 4 o’clock or so, the Sox game was just starting, and he was hungry and thirsty. He said yes and on we went.
Two things. One, I love Saturday 4 o’clock Sox games more than anything in this world. Two, the bar upon which we alit was called the “Ocean View,” despite having nothing of the sort. Even if you could see the deep water and not just Oak Bluffs harbor, which you really couldn’t, given the lack of windows, it would have been Nantucket Sound, not the ocean. But again, you couldn’t. There are many bars on Martha’s Vineyard but few that can retain the “true island scum only” vibe during the summer months, and the Ocean View was one of those few.
(A quick time-out to explain why I’m discussing it in the past tense. Yes, it’s closed. No, it wasn’t gentrified out or anything. That happens often on the island, but not in this case. This was far simpler, and more elemental: In 2022, it burned down.)
Anyhow my friend and I get to the bar, which is almost fully packed, but there is a single two-person table facing the ball that’s available. The instant our butts hit the seat, Nomar Garciaparra absolutely laced one off the monster, the absolute platonic ideal of the Nomar Experience. I was going to tell my friend he already got the true New England experience, but I would have been wrong. He was getting it right then, because as I was thinking, a townie deep in discussion with Cutty Sark yelled “ATTA BOY NOMAAAAAAH!,” as if on Broadway, on cue.
My friend and I looked at each other and cracked up. THAT was the experience, and it was the best. The Sox hadn’t won a single World Series in decades at that point. They, spoiler alert, subsequently have done so, but that was the best. That’s what being a Red Sox fan was all about: Nomar, his unceasingly doubles (hence double cheeserburger), youth, possibility, free popcorn and everything that followed. I wish I could go back. Or do I?
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The Menu is a perfect movie. It’s not the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it’s perfect. Spoilers etc but at the end of the movie, chess champion and future Emperator Furiosa Anya Taylor-Joy requests that Ralph Fiennes’s character make her a cheeseburger, and he does so with a thematic, nostalgic twist, with a remembrance of things past not unlike my Nomar story, though mine has far fewer -cides at the ends. Anyhow, I decided to make the burger from the movie at my apartment one day, figuring I’d be disappointed. I was dead wrong, but unlike Fiennes’s character, feeling very much alive.
This is a post about nostalgia, and its power, which is a well-worn topic. My point is that in my memory and in this movie, the nostalgia isn’t simply for the past. It’s for a legitimately better past, not type we lie about and call politics. If you disagree, look at Nomar’s 1997-2000 seasons or just taste this burger, then tell me I’m wrong. Or don’t. I won’t be listening.
Anyhow I believe the recipe I ultimately made was this one from Buzzfeed, from which I’m cribbing/copying, if you must know. So you need:
- Ground beef (given the indulgence factor, let’s just assume 80/20)
- American cheese (a plot point and non-negotiable)
- Pickle slices (NOT spears)
- Yellow onions, thinly shaved
- Sesame seed bun
- Ketchup (in the Buzzfeed recipe they say “sauce of choice,” but in the movie it’s ketchup, I used ketchup, you use ketchup. And Heinz ketchup, if we’re being serious)
- Salt and fresh ground pepper
Bryan’s Notes
Once you make this burger, and make it right, you can never go back. This is an encouragement more than a warning, but just know: You will see the face of whatever deity to which you pray. Life will not be the same. The other burgers will still be good though bc, you know, burgers.
- Toast your buns (burger buns, but the other ones are nice when toasty as well)
- Make at least two beef balls about the size of lacrosse balls (this is a double cheeseburger)
- Heat your pan and add meat balls (two words on purpose) to it when hot
- Smash the meat balls, then season with salt and pepper before laying a few onions on top of each
- After 2 minutes, flip and add the American cheese to both
- While the cheese melts, add ketchup to the top bun and pickles to the bottom bun
- Put the patties those buns, really scraping the pan for the good bits, and serve while thinking about Nomar’s Sports Illustrated cover. Wait what? Was I just horny the whole time? Who’s to say?!