King of Burgers

On a whim yesterday, after our personal training gym workout (and feeling like we could sacrifice a few calories), we decided to pig out and have burgers for dinner. De Burg is a casual Singaporean burger joint which is currently located in a coffee shop at Bukit Merah (in the area of the flatted factories where many automotive garages are located). They used to be at the Ghim Moh housing estate and moved to their current premises a few months ago. We ate at their Ghim Moh stall once and liked it, and were keen to try out their new place.

De Burg markets itself as a old fashioned burger stall, though they have vegetarian burger options and Italian gelato. They don't sell drinks though, and you'd have to get them at the adjacent drinks stall. Their burgers are hand formed and they don't use binders to put their Australian beef patties together. Each patty is individually seasoned and grilled after the order has been made. You order at the counter, get a plastic electronic disk which will buzz when your order is ready (just like Shake Shack - see below) and look for a seat at a table (common seating shared by all the stalls in the coffee shop).

I ordered the basic cheeseburger, and my wife had the cheeseburger with bacon. We don't like burgers which are too fancy and stacked up too high, and my ideal burger is one where I can pick it up with my hands and eat it without making too much of a mess. The meat was very juicy and tasty and I couldn't taste the binders (which they don't use here) or any hard bits of ligament or trimmings which are common in burgers elsewhere. The fries were also very nice; thick cut, crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. But what really stood out was the bun, which was very good.

But the question was, how did this compare with the famous Shake Shack in New York, which we visited recently (and we still cannot stop talking about the burgers there)? Shake Shack is a bit of an institution in New York, and has gathered quite large following. Apparently in warmer weathers, people can queue up for an hout just to get one of their burgers (which defeats the purpose of burgers being 'fast food'). We are not claiming that we think Shake Shack has the best burgers in New York (God forbid! Americans are very sensitive about their burgers), but as an infrequent visitor to the city it is probably the most prominent of the casual burger joints which were accessible to us. Some of our friends have told us that the small burger joint at Le Parker Meridien on West 56th Street is better but we didn't get the opportunity to try it.

Shake Shack is part of the Danny Meyer food empire in the US, with Michelin starred fine dining restaurants like Eleven Madison Park, Gramercy Tavern and the Modern as well as hip cafes like Untitled. They have quite a few Shake Shack outlets in New York, the most famous of them would be the one at Madison Square Park. It was quite cold during the time we were there but we could imagine that in nicer weather it would be quite pleasant to have a burger in the park.

Despite having a photo of the Madison Square Park Shake Shack, we didn't actually eat there. We came across it after coming out of a very heavy lunch at Eleven Madison Park (which was just across the road from the park) and as tempted we we were, we just couldn't have a burger at that time (there wasn't much of a queue too at the time, which was a pity). It was the next day when we finally got to try the famous burger at another outlet on the Upper East Side and again a few days later on the Upper West Side. Operating pretty much like a fast food outlet, orders are placed at the counter and an electronic tag is given which will buzz when the order is ready to be picked up at the counter (we think De Burg could have picked up this idea from Shake Shack).

And our verdict? The burger was indeed very good. We liked that it was small and easily handled, and packed in a paper sleeve which made it tidy to pick up and eat it. The bun was soft and thin, and the beef patty (they grind and hand-form the patties on each day itself) was tender and succulent. What stood out for us was the freshness of the lettuce and tomatoes in the burger, which were surprisingly crisp and sweet for a fast food burger (it reminded us of the Freshness Burger in Tokyo). We also loved the milkshakes there (nothing like a burger and a milkshake to bring back memories of our childhood). The fries were a bit of a letdown as they were a bit soggy and not particularly nice, and the additional hotdog we ordered was unremarkable.

So how did De Burg stack up with Shake Shack? We think both had their strengths and weaknesses.

Shake Shack's burgers are smaller and more manageable, have fresher vegetable fillings and great milkshakes. On the other hand, you'd probably need more than one burger to get your fill at Shake Shack, and the fries aren't great.

De Burg's burgers are larger and it's harder to eat it standing up and not over a plate. The bun is better and the fries much nicer as well.

Either way, both of them have great beef patties and make great burgers and now having found the new location of De Burg, we are comforted to know that we don't have to travel halfway across the world to Shake Shack when we are craving a good but simple 'roadside' burger anymore.

De Burg
191 Bukit Merah Lane 1, #01-40, Singapore

Shake Shack
- Upper East Side, 154 East 86th Street, New York
- Upper West Side, 366 Columbus Avenue (at 77th Street), New York
- Madison Square Park, Madison Avenue and East 23rd Street, New York

Food as Art

The primary criteria of the enjoyment of food is of course its taste, but modern chefs are putting increasing emphasis on the visual impact of their food, both in the innovative creation of the food itself and the arrangement of food on a plate. An ability to do that sets a chef apart from the others, because it cannot be easy to focus on cooking the dish well, and serving it quickly enough before the dish gets cold, yet putting in some thought to put the dish together in a manner pleasing to the eye.

For the fun of it, we've put together a full menu of some of the prettiest and most creative things we have eaten.

Amuse Bouche

 La Ciau del Tornavento's Tempura Leaf

Amuse Bouche
Piazza Duomo's Mashmallow of Swiss Chard

Appetiser
Le Jardin de Joel Robuchon's Salad of Tomato and Basil

Soup

Hibiscus' Royale of Crozier Blue, Caramelised Hazelnuts, Warm Veloute of Brocolli and Almonds

Appetiser

Astrance's Cepes Mushroom Tart

Appetiser
Hajime's Mineral - 66 vegetables of season and light emulsion <mineral of shellfish>

Entree 

Andre's Texture: potato in different ways, with squid, petit pois and chili flakes

Entree
Eleven Madison Park's Lobster and Leek


Entree
WD~50's Monkfish, Smoked Barley, Beet-mustard, Nori

Cheese Course
Le Meurice's Tomato and Mozzarella with Basil 'in a modern freshness style'

 Pre-dessert
Cuisine Michel Troisgros' Almonds and Red Berries 'Soup'

Dessert
Cepage's Clementine

Dessert

L'Osier's Strawberry 'Burger' 

Mignardises

Guido's White Macaroons

Interestingly, looking back to the photos above, it appears that the types of food least often 'dressed up' are red meat, foie gras, oysters, truffles and chocolate. Could it be because these foods can in their purest form get diners excited?

The perfect shot

All these years, we were never very serious about photography. In fact, there was even a time when we went on some holidays and did not even take any photos of the places we visited. But with the advent of Facebook, suddenly everyone, ourselves included, wanted to post photos of anything whatsoever, but especially holiday photos, to share with their friends and family. Hence, in 2009, we started to take photos again so as to post them on Facebook. And because we love to eat and many of our holidays revolved around food, naturally many of the photos we took were of the food we ate at the different places in various parts of the world we visited. After a while, we realised that Facebook wasn't the best place to share our food photos (as a large album on Facebook takes a long time to load, and adding long descriptions and commentary about the photos on Facebook was awkward) and the logical conclusion was to put our photos and writeups in a standalone blog. From that, Who took our cheese puffs away? was born.

We started out using our camera phone (our Nokia N95) years ago, and then invested in our first DSLR, the Nikon D60. When we started expecting our food photos to look better, we upgraded to the Nikon D90. This is a great camera capable of taking the best shots, but soon we felt constrained by its sheer size and the difficulty of lugging it around for dinners. Moreover, it was a bit too conspicuous taking photos with such a large camera in a dining room full of other guests. So we 'downsized' and got a mirrorless sytem camera (Sony NEX-5), which is also a great camera and can fit somewhat into my jacket pocket. For almost 2 years, the NEX-5 was our trusty road warrior, travelling with us to all the restaurants and taking very good photos. However, during our recent New York trip, we realised that many fine dining New York restaurants generally have very dim lighting at night (probably to create a more cozy ambiance). And our NEX-5 was no longer going to cut it. As a result, we started doing some research on what kind of camera would suit food photography best, taking to account the need to take photos in a very low light environment and also sometimes in a discreet manner (so as not to startle or annoy other diners).

Instinctively, we were only considering the mirrorless or four-thirds systems (not the DSLRs because of their size and certainly not the compacts because, well, we were snobs for large sensors). At that time, it seemed like the new Sony NEX-5N would be the best choice (even more so than the NEX-7 because the NEX-5N supposedly performs better in low light). But at lunch one day with a friend (who also had an NEX-5), I was urged to take a look at the Leica D Lux 5. A compact? I sniffed.

But after doing more reading, the fatal allure of the Leica brand started to wrap its tentacles around us. The Leica lovers seemed a breed apart from the rest of those who use cameras, like as if they were superior. The Leica 'red dot' has such brand premium that a Panasonic LX-5 compact camera when rebranded with the 'red dot' can sell for double its price (and people on the Leica forums will defend with their lives the assertion that the D Lux 5 is superior to the LX-5). As it turned out, the Leica D Lux 5 did fit almost all our criteria for a new camera specially for food photography:

(1) it was reasonably small (slightly smaller than the NEX-5);
(2) it could take macro pictures from up to 1cm away from the subject (which is an amazing feat);
(3) it was noted to be one of the best low light cameras;
(4) its manual functions were quite easy to use (unlike the NEX-5);
(5) it can take photos silently (which is a great plus since the DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have the shutter click which can annoy other restaurant guests); and
(6) well, we are suckers for cult brands.

The downsides were that:

(a) it was still maybe 80% bigger than the Canon S100 (which we considered too and is a great compact);
(b) it did not have a CMOS sensor; and
(c) it didn't have the start-up and image processing speed of the DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.

At the store, I was almost waylaid by the Leica X1 instead (which had a CMOS sensor) which cost 3x more, but fortunately decided against it as it was bigger than the D Lux 5 and supposedly wasn't as good in low light. So the D Lux 5 it was (though it is quite likely that we'll be back for the X1 some day - it's a gorgeous camera).

Check out our new toy: Leica website

We tested it last week at Joel Robuchon and were quite impressed by the results, though we have a lot to learn before being able to unlock it's full potential. What was immediately apparent was that it seemed to have better stabilisation function and could take really close up shots better than the NEX-5.

Oh yes, one more thing. Our new D Lux 5 came with a free Adobe Lightroom 3 which is a brilliant photo editor (it is slightly better than the Aperture 3 which we were using previously). From that, we were inspired to take photos in RAW and convert them into JPEG after editing. So we'd expect that there will be some improvement in our photos from now on.

Smiling Lion Muses..

It has been a year-and-a-half since we started blogging at Who took our cheese puffs away?, during which time we have put out more than 100 posts on the various restaurants we have had the privilege to eat at during the past few years. Initially started as a more viable alternative to Facebook for sharing holiday food photos with our friends and family (since Facebook was taking far too long to load up photos in large albums and lacked an instinctive interface to write about each photo), our blog has gradually become a passion and hobby of ours, and has complemented the development of our love of eating as well.

We were/still are novices at photography and have no experience at creative writing, and our humble attempts to catalog the photos and recollections of our meals at nice restaurants remains primarily a tool for us to relive and remember the great, the good, the ordinary and the downright awful breakfasts, lunches and dinners we have had during our travels but also increasingly those we have back home when we have a meal out. In addition, it became a medium for us to share restaurant experiences with our friends who otherwise would find it tedious listening to us drone on about them whenever we meet up. 

As the content of Who took our cheese puffs away? grew, it became harder and harder for us to introduce posts which do not reference a meal specifically but contain our general thoughts, ideas or reminiscences into the blog without disrupting its flow. Also, as we are food porn addicts and have short attention spans, we realised that when looking at other people's food blogs, we rarely ever finish reading them and just zoom in on the photos for our fix. Hence, it is for this reason that we have decided to leave Who took our cheese puffs away? as a food porn website and start this new blog, as a sounding board for our random muses, quirky views and controversial proclamations as well as memories and photos of certain meals or food which don't fit so well with our other blog.