A Week Of Cocktail Burgers Pt. 4: Angie Mar's "Rob Roi" Burger

Angie Mar, chef and owner of the Beatrice Inn in Manhattan's West Village,  works with meat the way Charlie Parker worked with a saxophone, or Michelangelo worked with paint.  From tartares to steaks to vegetables roasted in bone marrow, her creations are the the talk of the town -- at least the carnivorous wing.  Her dry-aged burger with d'affinois cheese is legendary among New York's burgerphiles, so tapping her talents for the Manhattan (Burger) Project was a no-brainer.

Mar's isn't technically a Manhattan Burger, since both the burger and the cocktail she pairs it with use Brenne Whisky, a delicate French single malt aged in cognac barrels.  The cocktail, a Smoked Manhattan (or as I like to call it, a Rob Roi), uses a cherrywood plank that's flamed with a blowtorch, with the resulting smoke captured in the cocktail glass.  The 8-ounce Rob Roi burger is equally unorthodox -- dry-aged for 90 days, it's slowly infused with Brenne throughout the process.  "It's a technique that nobody's actually doing in the United States," she says.  "I don't think anyone knows how to do it yet.  It was a technique that I learned when I was in Paris."

The great Angie Mar at work on her Rob Roi burger, with food/drink photographer extraordinaire Gabi Porter capturing the action (and me capturing her doing the capturing).

She uses Brenne, along with Carpano Antica vermouth, for a reason: "It's aged in cognac, so it's got a sweeter, rounder flavor.  One of the things that I really love about the food we do here is it's kind of got masculine and feminine influences, so even though we're using aged beef and things you would think are traditionally really masculine, a lot of times we pair it with things that are very feminine.  Having those kinds of flavors I think is really interesting.  So that's one of the reasons why I love this whisky.  We would never age our beef in whiskey that we wouldn't want to drink, because it concentrates the flavors so much, you know?"

Mar likes her burgers grilled: "This is gonna eat exactly like a steak, because that's exactly what's in them. I'm a little crazy when it comes to burgers, you know, because they have to be perfect, otherwise what's the point?"  She uses onions grilled and finished in a pan with bone marrow and vermouth, and a cherry ketchup/relish hybrid that's cooked down with bone marrow and finished with white wine vinegar, Dijon and whole grain mustard, and Brenne.  For the cheese she chooses Talleggio, as opposed to the D’affinois that she uses on her more traditional (but no less delicious) burgers, "because it's funky, it plays off of the funk of the beef."

Et voila! The Rob Roi Burger in all its glory.

Served on a hearty and buttery brioche roll, Mar's Manhattan Burger is a complex masterpiece that requires contemplation in the same way as a fine sipping whiskey.  The sweetness of the onions and the cherries play off the earthy funk of the dry-aged beef and cheese; the whisky-infused meat has a complexity that's rare in almost any dish, let alone a burger.  This is comfort food that's challenging, in the best possible way.

The Rob Roi burger, dissected. Is that not a thing of beauty?

(Angie didn’t provide a recipe, but hey, it’s not like you can just go to the supermarket and by 90 day aged beef that’s been infused with whiskey. However, if enough of us pester her on social media, maybe she’ll put it on the menu at the Beatrice Inn, which is currently doing takeout and delivery in NYC. To the keyboards!)