As Beef Prices Soar, So Does New York’s Burger Scene

Late on a weekday afternoon, Cafe O’Te in Greenpoint, Brooklyn was bustling with customers lunching on the restaurant’s specialty: the Hamburg steak. At the restaurant within the Japanese food and retail complex 50 Norman, the fat, well-browned ground Wagyu beef patties are served bunless. That’s how immigrants from Germany introduced the first hamburgers to our shores in the 19th century, making these, paradoxically, among the newest, and stylistically speaking, the oldest burgers sold in New York.

The Hamburg is offered in a “set” with rice, pickles, potato salad, kinpira (burdock salad), soup and a sauce choice of demi-glace or oroshi-ponzu for $35. At one table a set-ordering diner gently prodded his patty with a chopstick. In response, it fired off a perfect, shirt-splattering stream of juice, much to his surprise and, it appeared, his delight.