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"  In further celebration of our spanking new Eat Like A Man cookbook, Esquire convened a veritable burger brain trust on Friday afternoon over at DB Bistro Moderne for a panel discussion on the State of the Hamburger. On hand to proffer some wisdom was an all-star lineup: McDonald&amp;#039;s executive chef Dan Coudreaut, professional hamburger expert Josh Ozersky, Debragga &amp;amp;amp; Spitler co-owner Marc Sarrazin, Shake Shack COO Randy Garutti, amateur burger aficionado and merchant banker Andrew Farkas, and, of course, Chef Daniel Boulud. Our own Ryan D&amp;#039;Agostino moderated. The two-hour conversation was pretty much what you&amp;#039;d imagine when you get a bunch of burger nuts together to talk about their favorite food: grown men brought almost to the point of tears by reflections on hamburger-as-edible-time-machine to childhood/adolescence/drunken collegiate antics, ruminations on the ethics of meat eating, generalized ragging on people who eat burgers made of turkey, tofu, or other non-cow products, and some spirited and esoteric discussion about who makes the best burgers out there. In the name of starting off your weekend (grilling) right, I come bearing highlights: \u2022 The lunch menu that Daniel Boulud put together especially for the event, featuring house-made charcuterie, an Alsatian tarte flambee, his now-famous DB Burger (it&amp;#039;s stuffed with braised short rib, foie gras, and black truffle \u2014 so think Ron Swanson burger classed up about a thousand notches), all topped off with a strawberry-vanilla soda float. \u2022 Josh Ozersky and Andrew Farkas almost coming to fisticuffs over whether Five Guys makes the best hamburger in the world, or as Ozersky continued to argue, &amp;quot;the single worst edible object in the United States.&amp;quot; \u2022 The revelation that Shake Shack is shipping all the buns to their Dubai location, because they&amp;#039;ve been unable to reproduce the recipe on-site with locally available materials. \u2022 An extended, scholarly debate about the nature of a great bun, and its complex relationship with the patty. \u2022 Related, this comment: &amp;quot;Bread should never, ever be the centerpiece. That&amp;#039;s a grotesque distortion. A hamburger is a composed, designed, sculpted object in which the meat and bread are designed for each other. It&amp;#039;s an exotic dance. The job of the bun is to get out of the way, like a samurai wife. Wonder Woman used to have an invisible flame, and that&amp;#039;s what the bun is like.&amp;quot; \u2014Josh Ozersky \u2022 Panelists naming their all-time favorite burgers (other than their own): Pie &amp;#039;N Burger in Pasadena (Ozersky), Minetta Tavern and The Spotted Pig in New York (Garutti), Shake Shack and Five Guys (Farkas), The Piggie burger at DBGB in New York (Sarrazin), and Father&amp;#039;s Office in L.A. (Bouloud). \u2022 &amp;quot;The burger is god&amp;#039;s most perfect food. There is nothing better than a burger. Burgers are like sex: when they&amp;#039;re good they&amp;#039;re great, and when they&amp;#039;re bad they&amp;#039;re still great.&amp;quot; \u2014Andrew Farkas \u2022 On the beauty of the Shake Shack model: &amp;quot;When the economy went down, we saw decreases in our fine dining brands, but what happened with a place like Shake Shack is that we designed &amp;#039;em cool, the stuff tasted good, and if you couldn&amp;#039;t afford to go eat at Daniel, you didn&amp;#039;t feel a like a total loser taking a date to Shake Shack.&amp;quot; \u2014Randy Garutti \u2022 On hopes for the future of hamburger: &amp;quot;I hope someone figures out how to do for the burger what Splenda did for sugar. A zero calorie burger. I swear, Dan and Randy, if you manage to do that I will build a shrine to you in the middle of Manhattan and permentantly endow it.&amp;quot; \u2014Andrew Farkas \u2022 &amp;quot;White Castle was the BetaMax of hamburgers.&amp;quot; \u2014Ryan D&amp;#039;Agostino; &amp;quot;It was almost the Model T of hamburgers.&amp;quot; \u2014Josh Ozersky \u2022 On condiments: &amp;quot;No on can escape the ketchup.&amp;quot; \u2014Daniel Boulud \u2022 On how the McDonald&amp;#039;s Angus third-pounders came to be: &amp;quot;It was part of our strategy to give customers both value items, and something at the higher end. We planned it as a limited time offer. It was such a success, we couldn&amp;#039;t take it out of restaurants.&amp;quot; \u2014Dan Coudreaut CLICK HERE TO GET THE EAT LIKE A MAN COOKBOOK RIGHT NOW &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a10040/state-of-the-hamburger-5857768/>