On this week’s Top Chef, Melissa (she was raised on a horse farm!) was nearly sent home for a crostini with too much Gorgonzola. “All you can taste is the cheese,” the judges told her. “It overwhelms the other flavors.” This was probably true. These damn judges have impossibly high standards. They want every dish to be perfectly executed in limited time, to follow the spirit of some silly challenge, and to be some kind of imaginative new flavor combination. Often I can’t really tell what the dish is supposed to taste like, much less evaluate it based on the subtle twitches and tics playing across Tom Colicchio’s big, shiny face. But I think I see what Melissa (from the horse farm) was aiming for: fancy-ass diner food. And that’s a good thing.
All the ingredients work well together. You’ve got your
- Sourdough crostini. Crunchy, tart. A good base flavor.
- NY strip steak. Hopefully not undercooked, because it’s better for the steak to add a smoky taste, rather than the less pleasant taste of intestinal parasites. Undercooking it is a rookie mistake, but it does happen a lot in diners.
- Gorgonzola. Fine, she used too much, but a little melted Gorgonzola is nothing to be afraid of. It’s not made by actual gorgons. It doesn’t taste like Émile Zola. It’s nice and pungent.
- Finally, a cranberry vinaigrette drizzled on the side. To hell with drizzling, I hate that stuff, but it’s a no-brainer of a condiment. It’s essentially ketchup for gorgonzola. But, like, good ketchup.
So, why do all these tastes work together? (You’re probably ahead of me on this one.) Because it’s a cheeseburger. Bun, cheese, beef, ketchup. Who doesn’t like a cheeseburger? Even Internet cats covet them. In fact, the hell with this crazy crostini thing, I’d just like a nice, well-cooked diner style cheeseburger right about now. That’s probably why I fixated on this minor dish in an old episode of Top Chef.
So, to put all this more succinctly,
- Cheeseburgers are good.
- Fancy cheeseburgers are good. Don’t fear the Gorgonzola.
- Whose horse do I have to farm to get a cheeseburger up in here? Melissa’s? I’m hungry. I wonder what diners are open right now. Bullet points OUT.
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