Shake Shack

NYC, Part II ¹

This photograph of Danny Meyer’s original Shake Shack in Madison Square Park was taken about 1500h, Mon 24 Oct 2011. It was a nearly perfect autumn day: 65°F, completely clear skies and – as you can see – open tables. What you can’t see, however, is the “A” queue stretched back so far that for people at the end of the line the restaurant was not so much a real place as it was a vague metaphysical concept somewhere over the horizon.

Of course queuing up is what you do in NYC. Want to get into the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Queue up. Want a grande latte at Starbucks? Queue up. Want to go to the top of Rockerfeller Center? Pay USD 25 and queue up. Want to go to the bottom of Rockerfeller Center? Queue up. There is a branch of mathematics known as Queuing Theory and I’m quite sure that there are not just papers but entire scientific conferences about the lines in this city.

Your humble narrator is, of course, aware of the adage “Good things come to those who wait,” but he is also aware of the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote “How much of human life is lost in waiting?” and the A line was just stupidly long.

This is all academic, however, because we actually eat at a different Shake Shack several hours earlier. So let’s back up. After spending the morning wandering the Upper West Side doing decidedly untouristy things like taking pictures of the Dakota entrance, visiting Strawberry Fields and looking at dinosaur bones at the Natural History Museum...

Strawberry Fields, Central Park²

...we came upon this:

UWS Shake Shack, 366 Columbus Ave/77th Street

We had every intention of eating at the Madison Square Park location, but it was lunch time and we were hungry and, well, it was just right there.

Despite the lunch-time mess it took us a surprisingly short time to navigate the line and order. I was handed a receipt and a pager³ (#200) and as all the tables were occupied, we found a spot standing at the tiny Counter of Shame in the very back of the restaurant.

After waiting for what couldn’t have been more than 10 mins my brother was paged and I was left to guard our spot against waves of marauding infidels diners.

Then something miraculous happened. On the way back with my order a table opened up right in front of me and in a single unconsciously reflexive cat-like move I slipped into the chair. It’s as if the culinary deities above, recognizing my overarching awesomeness,⁴ had rewarded me with a proper table. I was about to eat at Shake Shack for the first time and I was going to do it sitting down.

This is the part where, if I was a real food blogger, I would wax rhapsodic about the culinary details and include some photographic food-porn of my lunch.⁵ The review: it was pretty good.

When we got up it became instantly apparent that several groups were coveting our table. Behind us was a group of college-aged guys (w/o food, just pagers, BTW) making a move and now occupying the Counter of Shame was a Mom and her young daughter just about to eat. I stood up physically blocking the asile and looked directly at Mom. With the breathtaking alacrity of a native New Yorker she and her daughter grabbed the table. The college kids never had a chance. I’m pretty sure there is now a special place in Heaven for me.

While were on the subject here are photos of several other places we didn’t actually eat at:

Per Se ⁶

1. As before, unless otherwise noted, all of these images were taken by my brother

2. Notes on the images. Top: The Imagine mosaic (with the poorly kerned MA pair – but let’s not be cynical) was based on an old mosaic that Yoko Ono had spotted in Naples. Delighted by her choice, the city of Naples sent a team of artists to Central Park to inlay the mosaic. Bottom: After a forensic analysis of the original high-res image your narrator is fairly confident that the lone hippie girl is rolling a joint.

3. Specifically a JTech Communications Restaurant Tough^TM GuestPass^TM pager with a custom Shake Shack insert. The last time I was handed a pager like this was in the outpatient radiology department of a local hospital waiting for my wife to get a MUGA scan. The point here is that I don’t have a particularly fond association with these types of pagers.

4. Or maybe it was just pity. Whatever.

5. OK then, here are a few details. The Shake Shack patty is a 4-oz coarsely-ground proprietary blend of Angus chuck, short rib and brisket supplied by Pat LaFrieda butchers and cooked to medium (not well – thank you) using the smash and scrape technique on a Miraclean griddle. The bun is a grilled, lightly buttered Martin’s bakery potato bun. The fries are crinkle-cut Yukon Gold potatoes deep-fried in soybean oil.

In the interest of full disclosure my order was a single cheeseburger, regular fries and a small Coke. (USD 8.55 + 8.875% sales tax, i.e, one of the cheapest meals I had in NYC; ~1040 cal.).

6. Thomas Keller’s Per Se – an East coast version of his French Laundry – is, according to the Pellegrino list, ranked the 10th best restaurant in the World and the second best in the US (behind Grant Achatz’s Alinea).

8 Nov 2011 ‧ Unclassified