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I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

thrillist.com

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Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#371

Post by cvwright »

matchagaucho wrote: post #342
joezydeco wrote: post #221

Let's hear from a local about what really happened to Stanich's: https://www.metafilter.com/177718/Sometimes-its-better-not-t... "Anecdotally, I went to Stanich's a few weeks before the shutdown. They certainly weren't getting overrun with customers at that point. The place was maybe a quarter full on a Friday night, and it was filthy. Dust everywhere, dishes left on tables, stains on the floor, the crust on the ketc…

Portland native. Had my first Stanich's burger around 1980. All I can say is the food reviewer romanticized the place. The burgers were good, but messy. Like the atmosphere. Once Perry's opened down the road (now also closed) we kind of stopped going to Stanich's.

Until earlier this year, I used to live in that neighborhood. I've been to Stanich's -- we could walk there from our house.

This whole episode is bizarre. The food really was not that good. Not by a long shot. Which makes what happened to them all the more sad.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#372

Post by cvwright »

ssegraves wrote: post #321
joezydeco wrote: post #221

Let's hear from a local about what really happened to Stanich's: https://www.metafilter.com/177718/Sometimes-its-better-not-t... "Anecdotally, I went to Stanich's a few weeks before the shutdown. They certainly weren't getting overrun with customers at that point. The place was maybe a quarter full on a Friday night, and it was filthy. Dust everywhere, dishes left on tables, stains on the floor, the crust on the ketc…

Portlander here and experienced very similar circumstances to what is described in that post just before Stanich's closed.

I was there just over a year ago, and it was pretty bad then too. We waited probably 90 minutes for burgers at lunchtime the last time we went.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#373

Post by cvwright »

saosebastiao wrote: post #368
tptacek wrote: post #135

It's hard to blame Kevin Alexander for this, because Steve Stanich played ball with the review, like most restaurants would. If he wanted to, he could have asked not to be featured in the list, and Alexander probably would have complied; otherwise, he could have done other things to make it clear to his customers that he wasn't interested in fulfilling the role the ranking carved out for him. We see this effect in Ch…

> It definitely "ruins" the restaurant, in the sense that it becomes basically impossible to eat there anymore. This just happened for me with a tiny little southern restaurant down the street from me. For about a year, I would go there occasionally and have a great meal with my SO. Never needed a reservation. Then it got a three star review from the new york times and it won the James Beard Best New Restaurant award…

Sounds exactly like the Country Cat in Portland.

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#374

Post by [deleted] »

Aeolun wrote: post #349
blt wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the In-n-out effect - people who grew up on it see it as a vastly superior version of McDs, Wendy's etc for the same price, and are understandably effusive about this. But visitors expect something profound instead of a well executed fast food style burger.

Why would you ever expect more than a well executed fast food style burger from, well, a burger. That’s literally what burger means as far as I’m concerned.

[deleted]

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#375

Post by clubm8 »

fapjacks wrote: post #336
yholio wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple fix for that is to put up a big sign that says "Tourist tax in effect" and make a $25 rebate for any regular customer or person that can prove a local address; or simply assert with a straight face to the staff they live on this and this street. It's a bit of a hassle for the locals but the place is saved. Sure, the tourists will attack you on Yelp and Instagram and accuse you of price gouging. But to hell w…

That's how it works where I live. You show your driver's license, you get the local discount.

Vegas?

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#376

Post by mikemotherwell »

tptacek wrote: post #189
mabbo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To the commenters saying Stanich should simply raise its prices: there's a price ceiling for that burger. It's not a fancy chef burger; If you have a five hour lineup for a burger, you need to raise your prices at least a little bit. You'll make more money overall, and your customers will be happy.

You can do that to a point, but if what you're serving is simply a well-executed diner burger, then, like I said, there's a ceiling. You can't charge $30 for that. Or, you can, but you'll create more problems than you'll solve. This guy ate at 330 different burger restaurants. He has a finely-tuned metric for what a good burger is (his #3 is also a neighborhood place he grew up with). He's set up to appreciate what S…

The key isn't just higher prices. It is long term revenue from people who are liekly to buy repeatedly.

My solution would be $30 for tourists, $6 for anyone with a Portland ID and a loyalty card that you get in three seconds. That solves both issues mentioned (one-off, buckelist tickers and loyalty to locals).

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#377

Post by notyourday »

tptacek wrote: post #330
notyourday wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rouge burger was not a custom meat blend. It was a rouge steak ground from steak into ground meat for the burger as the burger was ordered because there was no space in the kitchen - it was that small. But that's not the point - the list was of burgers: roll, meat patty, cheese, maybe some other stuff. The one that he raved about had gooish cheese etc. Were there also caramelized onions? It was the "we too can make a…

That's simply not true. Chef burgers and diner burgers are not the same product, which you can verify for yourself by reading Yelp reviews of the restaurant we're talking about and seeing the shocked comments from people who expected a transcendent chef burger experience from this place which only ever served diner burgers. I'd rather have a good diner burger than a chef burger, but the whole point of the story is th…

Of course they are the same product. The product is a burger. Which is why the burger from Le Bec Fin was a flop while NY Burger Company's burgers are success. On the other hand Peter Luger burger or Rouge Burger or Parc Burger are successes.

It is unquestionable that the reviewer had no clue about a good burger - he picked OK burgers in OK places that were barely hanging on which is why his review targets did poorly. Compare that to burgers ( or restaurants ) picked by the Guy on DDD - in Philly that would be Good Dog, with its Good Dog burger - nothing special except that the cheese is injected into the patty, while it was cooked well enough by people who aren't that skilled at cooking. The wait went from 10-20 minutes to 1.5-2 hours. The place continued to sling the burgers ( and other stuff ) and continued to be popular year after year because unlike the clueless reviewer at Thrillist Guy ( who has a boatload of other problems ) at least can identify a good burger in a place that won't go out of business if its business increases by 400% ( not to mention 10% that his review did -- all of those numbers are well known - Food Network has all the numbers because they do hundreds of shows based on that. The so called magnificent changes in the fortunes of restaurants after Ramsay/Mission Impossible/etc mean 15-30% of receipt increases ) Good Dog was an anomaly in that because they did 3x in business based on the show airing for nearly a year ( DDD shows do ~30%-45% boost on average boost)

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#378

Post by jkestner »

joshstrange wrote: post #64
gerbilly wrote: post #44

This reminds me of the first thing everyone asks when you tell them you just got back from Maui: "Did you go see the sunrise on Haleakalā?" And, no I have not, because I don't want to wake up at 5:00am while on vacation and drive to a crowded parking lot to watch the sunrise in the cold with 80-100 strangers. Why is it that we all have to have the same experiences?

This coupled with the articles I've seen on people on vacation all hoarding together to get the perfect picture of $insertMonumentOrSkylineHere. I remember one in particular that showed this gorgeous picture then showed what was behind the photographer and it was mob of people all taking the same picture. It honestly makes me sick. Those are the people that do thing to say they did them rather than for the experience…

Yes. Similar to my child, who's interested in the process of the "art" she's scribbling rather than the result, and forgets about it soon after. But more self-conscious, as the process of taking common photos is a social act.

What if the mechanics of camera/social photo apps rewarded people for taking original photos?

https://www.wired.com/2015/09/camera-wont-let-take-photo-eve...

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#379

Post by cozzyd »

kasey_junk wrote: post #323
bedhead wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Au Cheval is easily the most overrated burger (and perhaps restaurant) in Chicago. Hey guess what, if you make a 12oz burger, put three slices of cheese on it, place it on a buttered roll, then put pork belly, a fried egg, and mayo on it, it will taste good. And it will also make you want to freakin die the moment you're done because you just consumed 25,000 calories. But people will wait literally 2.5 hours for this…

You can now get the Au Cheval burger at lots of places easily. I do 3 greens regularly. It’s a fine burger. The real shame is that Au Cheval used to be a nice spot for a beer & burger on a street that was expensive. Still hard to find good priced, good food on Randolph.

Bonci? (Not a sit down place though...)

Re: I Found the Best Burger Place in America, Then I Killed It

#380

Post by sandov »

JimiofEden wrote: post #223
sandov wrote: post #92

Unclosable popup.

https://i.imgur.com/Fz8RwgQ.png Or you could just click the x

I didn't see it, but you got to admit that they purposefully made it hard to find by putting it there, in that color considering the background.

Even though I found the X now, I won't read the article, just on principle.

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