Brooklyn foodies are gathering at gertrude's, a beloved bistro in Prospect Heights, to enjoy the restaurant's biweekly Burgers with Buddies event, where guest chefs from across Brooklyn serve up their twist on the classic dish.
This week, Matt Almquist, chef de cuisine of Roberta’s in Bushwick, debuted his Peach Queso Burger, which featured a dry-aged short rib burger patty, arugula, onion, dill pickle and a sugar rush peach queso.
Almquist said he was looking to create something “a little over the top" with his burger.
The burger’s foundations are two Martin’s potato buns, which hold together the saucy monstrosity. The star of the show is the queso, which derives its flavor from a Mornay sauce base, dry aged beef fat, fermented aji dulce, piparra and sugar rush chiles, along with fermented peach juice.
“We pour the cheese over the whole thing before we put the top bun on so it's really hopefully decadent and rich,” Almquist said. “I want people to be satisfied and the great thing about a queso sauce is that you can put it on a latke and fried potatoes and queso are pretty good together.”
Although the peachiness was faint, the pickles, onions and arugula helped counterbalance the richness of the queso and the sweet bun. The patty itself seemed caught in between a competition of two strong flavor profiles, and lent itself more to being a textural component than a new flavor on the burger.
The burger held together surprisingly well and the citrate in the queso kept it gooey, not runny.
Gertrude’s defines itself as “Jew-ish” and its menu combines chef Eli Sussman’s Jewish heritage with French bistro classics. For example, the bistro's salade niçoise is made with smoked trout instead of the traditional tuna.
“When you set out to open a restaurant, it's really difficult to be everything to everyone,” Sussman said. “But, I actually think that we're doing quite a good job here of being almost everything to everyone.”
Dennis Caughlin and Hara Connell, who popped in for Connell’s birthday, are regulars at gertrude’s.
“I'm also Jew-ish so I can relate to the menu in a good way,” Connell said. “We often like to come and sit at the bar and split a burger and a pretzel.”
While Connell went for her go-to gertrude’s burger, Caughlin ordered Almquist's creation, which he called "a delicious, special burger,” ranking it an 8.8 out of ten.
On the other side of the restaurant, siblings Kurt and Mark Burger, were celebrating Mark’s 30th birthday with, yes, a burger.
The two have come in at least 35 times for the bi-weekly event, noting that the food and lovely staff keeps them coming back for more.
Emily Tripp, the general manager of gertrude’s sister restaurant GERTIE, said the Burger brothers have “a better grasp on what burger night means at gertrude’s than even the staff does… [they’ve] probably worked more burger nights than I have.”
“Every night is burger night for me,” Kurt Burger concluded. “But it’s always better when it’s spent at gertrude’s burger night.”
Burgers with Buddies at gertrude's, at 605 Carlton Ave., continues with Patrick Brutto of Faccia Brutto on Feb. 17, Telly Justice of HAGS on March 3 and Stefano Mariotta of GERTIE on March 17.
