The Burger Fiend: West Coast Especial

Greetings, fellow fiends.

Your affable Fiend is reporting live from the Bay Area...and has been hitting the burger scene quite often this little trip stretching from San Fran to Sonoma/Napa wine country.

Once back in the Chi next week, all photos and reviews will be posted as soon as possible. Aside from exploring some wonderful vineyards and restaurants, here is a running list of venues that have offered some excellent burgers thus far:

Slow Club (San Fran)

Taylor's Refreshers (St. Helena - Napa)

Brix (Oakville - Napa)

Furthermore, the Fiend will be attending the 2009 Build a Better Burger competition tomorrow, sponsored by the Sutter Homes family vineyards in northern Napa Valley. The line-up of burgers, both beef and alternative, look pretty stellar indeed. More to come on that front as well, so stay tuned.

Keep on burgerin'...

-The Fiendster

Fiend on the Run

Wow, it's been more than a month since your affable Fiend has posted, not due to negligence because i've definitely been hitting some burger joints around town, but culinary school has definitely been impeding my progress to a certain degree. Exhausting.

Anyways, I have some new found inspiration in the following September cover story BurgerBonanaza issues of Saveur and Chicago Magazine.

The Chi Mag piece shares a very similiar list o' favorites to mine, give or take a few, but nonetheless has effectively kick-started Pavlov's reaction 10-fold.

The Saveur issue is simply an classic chronicling of burgers throughout the ages, including an extremely impressive disply of information surrounding the "fixin's" including bun varities, condiments, toppings and the such.

I was also impressed by the unrelated, but absolutely appropriate pepper profile article and its magnificent corresponding photo catalogue, though Saveur never ceases to amaze in the pictorial arena. Todd Coleman's sidebar was most definitely eyebrow raising too.

Back to the cutting board for the Fiend though. I have a break from school, so the current wishlist includes: Naha, Duchamp, Yoshi's, Moody's, Duke of Perth, Sixteen (turkey burger for the next efete.net piece) and probably something else cool that you don't even know about.

New site attributes still pending.

Cheers.