The official food of New York may be the pizza, but these days the foodie status symbol is the burger. Whether it’s the decadent Chicago import wooing crowds at 4 Charles Prime Rib or the unnamed burger that’s the low-key favorite dish at pizza darling Emily, burgers are king.
But Cate Blanchett is not impressed. The star who’s wiping the floor with Norse gods one minute and making ladies swoon the next thinks American burgers are weak. But when it comes to veggie burgers, her heart belongs to New York City, specifically the Lower East Side’s hole-in-the-wall joint Superiority Burger.
The actress detailed her burger lust in a surprisingly sexy interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “I’m always disappointed by the American burger because you go in and there’s no beets, there’s no caramelized onion and there’s no egg,” she says, as if those things should be on all burgers. The beets, apparently, are “really important.”
But then she swears (to God!) her veggie burger allegiance to former fine dining chef Brooks Headley, who left behind high-end Italian tasting menus at Del Posto to make “the best burger,” even the “thinking man’s burger.” We’re not sure what that means, but the orgasmic way she declares “THIS is a burger” is the proof in the pudding.
After putting a blindfold on Jimmy (“cause it’s sexy”), she declares “Bring on the burgers, boys,” which is something you should hear Cate Blanchett say.
For his part, Jimmy declares the burger “fantastic” and seems bamboozled that it’s meat-free. They also feed burgers to sailors and have a beer-chugging contest — this is truly an interview for all the pansexuals out there.
Superiority Burger’s fans also include Momofuku founder David Chang and the notoriously hard-to-please Pete Wells of the New York Times. If you’re looking to make some vegan burger magic of your own, the Superiority Burger Cookbook comes out June 5.
