The Chef’s Burger

By ERIC BARTON

The Power & Light District‘s public-relations types know how to get press coverage. Instead of revealing the entertainment district’s new tenants all at once, they’ve let announcements trickle out. It keeps the district in the news and makes sure that even Chipotle gets some ink. So today’s press release about four new tenants was nothing new, especially considering that one was a Sprint store and another was a Caribbean-style nightclub described as “a vacation from ordinary nightclubs.”

But way down near the bottom was a short bio of chef Rob Dalzell, who’s behind three Crossroads stalwarts: 1924 Main, Souperman and Pizza Bella. According to the release, Dalzell plans to open a burger joint called Chefburger in the P&W District. His bio mentions that Dalzell got his burger chops flipping patties at a place called Taylor’s Automatic Refresher in St. Helena, California.

There are some meals you’ll remember forever, and I had one of them at Taylor’s Refresher.

The day before I ate that burger, my wife and I spent a friggin’ week’s pay on a meal at the world-renowned French Laundry. Yeah, that nine-course lunch was amazing. But we spent a mere $26 at Taylor’s and had an equally memorable meal.

We’d read about Taylor’s Refresher in a guide book. The burger joint in St. Helena was near the state park where we were hiking, so we stopped on the way back. It’s just a roadside burger shack with a walk-up window and picnic tables in the backyard. And though the menu had items such as an ahi tuna burger with wasabi mayo and Asian slaw, it was the plain old burger that I can still taste.

It wasn’t any secret ingredient that it made it so damn good, just a freshly baked egg bun; crisp veggies; a special sauce that I think was just Thousand Island dressing; and one fat, perfectly cooked patty. It came wrapped in paper, and we got onion rings and sweet-potato fries on the side.

I spoke with Dalzell this morning, and he said Taylor’s put out a great burger in part by hiring great chefs. Taylor’s paid better than most of the gourmet restaurants, so chefs who were plating venison at the French Laundry were also working on the line at Taylor’s. “We just learned a respect for quality ingredients there,” Dalzell recalls.

At Kansas City’s new Chefburger, Dalzell says, customers will build their own sandwich using a brown-paper-menu checklist. The burgers will cost between $4 and $6.

But if they’re anything like the burgers at Taylor’s, I’d pay a week’s salary for one.