Hello reader (reader as in only one person coming to this site – thanks mom!). This year’s Thanksgiving was of a different breed for the Censani family. For the first time in 3 consecutive years, I was not in charge of the turkey. My family could sleep safe and sound at night knowing I wouldn’t give them salmonella from over-brining my turkey for too long. Instead, I chose to make a comfort food side, specifically a lovely green bean casserole.

I used Alton Brown’s Green Bean Casserole and it ruled. The 97 pound skillet was hauled from my Brooklyn apartment to the Bronx on three trains and was totally worth it. It wasn’t a pain to make and the results were delicious.

Overall, it was our typical Italian Thanksgiving. We had some antipasti, we had more sides than 10 people could possibly need and numerous dogs running around with sad eyes for some Thanksgiving food to be tossed their way.

Someone give this Bill fella a pat on the back. From the gents who run Blue Water Grill comes a new burger joint resurrected in the spot where Hog Pit once stood. Barely open for 2 weeks, I’ve already ventured here four times for some beer and burger action. The initial rumblings and early reviews stated Bill’s burger rivaled Shake Shack’s “smash technique” of griddle burgers. I can attest that their burgers are fantastic, but Shake Shack still has that certain je ne sais quoi. Maybe it’s the special sauce.

Bill’s Classic with American Cheese is their standard burger. It has deliciously crispy edges to the 5oz. patty and is presented on a sesame seed bun that does an ample job containing the juices. The burger is moist, delicious and the meat certainly is one of the best I’ve had in this city.

One of the other burgers on the menu is their double decker, called The Fat Cat. This bad boy is served with caramelized onions on an English muffin and early reviews have said the small bread does little to support the monstrous amount of meat this burger contains leading to a soggy mess. I’ve had this guy twice and will agree with those sentiments the first time. For this review however, my muffin was toasted on the well done side and as a result didn’t transform into a wet paper towel. I think they should stick to serving it this way or offer an option on a regular sesame seed bun.

Disco fries as I recall them are typically served smothered in brown gravy and mozzarella cheese. Bill’s flips this formula and serves it coated with Cheez Whiz instead. I do not object to this and enjoyed their substitution immensely. I mean, look at that cheesy goodness.

Going the distance, I tried their fresh key lime pie as a finisher. Not expecting great dessert from a burger bar, I was pleasantly surprised by the sweet key lime and fresh graham cracker crust. I was really really good.

Overall, you’d be a fool not to tackle Bill’s Bar & Burger. The burger is on par with Shake Shack without the insanely long lines that merit a video feed on their site. I’ve also tried their other burger that is a take on the In-N-Out burger and while equally as good as the Classic, I’m not sold on their special sauce they put on it. Still, I applaud Bill’s Bar & Burger’s wait-and-see approach. They’ve studied what makes these classics so darn good and have refined the technique and made it their own. Go eat at this place immediately.

One of my coworkers was kind enough to hand me a ticket to Food Network’s Wine & Food Festival Burger Bash. I schmoozed with Food Network celebrities, ate insane amounts of mind-blowing burgers and wrote a post about it for Food2.

Check out the post on Food2 people!

Oh and I took a photo with Giada. Yeah, it was pretty great for her.

Earlier this month I journeyed to Morocco with my good buds Julia, Monique and Patrick. We chowed down on many foreign meals I haven’t even known of before. It was quite the experience for your burger buddy writing this blog. We were there for about 6 days and spent one night in Madrid on the return back to the States. Let’s get started!

Walking around the Medina in Marrakech we saw a delicious looking sardine shop and decided to have an afternoon snack. I forgot the exact number but 6 of these big guys and an Arabic Coke only cost us twenty cents.

On our first night in Marrakech, we had a lovely rooftop meal at a Riad hidden deep in the convoluted Moroccan street system. We had an epic multi-course meal with the Chicken Pastilla (above) being one of the finest.

The next wave of food was a onslaught of plates that housed candied tomatoes, pumpkin with almonds, eggplant and many other dipping sauces. My meal for that evening was Lamb Tagine which, for lack of a better term, was epic.

The next day’s hike began with a trip to a garden that was home to an alarming amount of cacti. Afterwards we went to a hammam (Turkish bathhouse Moroccan style!) which suffice to say, I will not go into the experience here since words can only be uttered in person to do the story justice. Needing to cleanse my soul and stomach, I had a lovely gathering of lamb chops and provencale tomatoes at a nearby restaurant.

That night we went back to the Medina where food stalls litter the entire formerly empty square. We first started our feast with some soup.

The fava bean and lentil soup selection, while limited, tasted delicious. They gave us a huge chunk of bread to soak up the juices and some mint tea to cleanse our palates.

We next headed to a meat vendor since we needed something a little more unhealthier. We ate these tiny sausages with super sweet dipping sauce and of course, the same bread from before.

That horror show of a photo above is what you might think it is, sheep’s brain. Patrick wanted to tackle the delicacy and while initially hesitant, I complied. Honestly, the sheep brain tagine tasted very good. The texture was mushy, had a nice consistency and reminded me of beef stew. The only difficult thing while eating was staring at those heads in front of us and watching the guy to our right eat the brains raw. Come on dude.

Then we had ice cream!!!

The next day we hiked up to a waterfall outside a Berber village. At said village though, first we had a delightful lunch.

This tomato salad was a nice light start to a Berber style Moroccan lunch.

Not feeling too hot that day, I picked on Julia’s veggie tagine prepared in the style of the Berbers. The hike was long and full of awkward rocks but the waterfall was beautiful.

The next day we left Marrakech and headed to La Pause, a desert resort for the entire day. They had two adorable dogs who loved to follow us around and sleep everywhere we hung out. Below is a photo of sleeping Dingy.

For lunch at La Pause we started with a fantastic salad. I mean, look at that.

I had a beef tagine there with dates, pears and almonds on top. The pears gave it a nice sweet flavor I wasn’t expecting from a tagine.

We ended our meal with some lovely chocolate bread casually topped with nuts. I couldn’t capture any pictures from our meal that night since the lighting was far too dark for any images to do that meal justice.

The next day we departed back to Marrakech and hopped in a cab to journey to Essaouira (pronounced ess-sa-wee-ah, something we never got right). Known as the port city in Morocco, this place is the place for seafood. So what’s a food blogger to do? Photograph it and poorly explain to you how it was! Let’s go!

We heard the street seafood is excellent at Essaouira and it didn’t disappoint. You select which fish and crustaceans you’d like and they grill it for you. You can see part of our massive selection above.

We kicked our meal off with this lovely looking salad.

They tossed in these shrimp for free with our meal.

Above are spiny lobsters and sardines. The sardines were good but not as flavorful as the sardines we cherished on day 1. The spiny lobsters were a bit of a chore to eat. The shells were super prickly (as their name would indicate) but the resulting meat was small compared to the effort involved.

The sea bass was fantastic. I mean, that photo just looks so good. I wanna eat that photo.

We walked around the fisherman area for a bit and watched some fish and currency exchange between hands. Patrick and Monique later came back to this area the next day and bought some fish so that the street people could grill it for them.

That night’s dinner we went to Cafe Elizir and boy were we impressed. Everything from the neat and quirky interior to the service totally impressed us. Some standout shot selections from the meal were my sea bass and Patrick’s chicken tagine.

I was mostly out of commission the entire next day since the stomach bug I’ve been warding off had gotten the best of me but I was feeling healthy enough to venture out with Patrick and Monique that night for dinner.

I ordered the prix fixe which started off with this delicious and well plated shrimp tempura.

My entree wasn’t very Moroccan which was a nice relief from all my other meals I’ve been having to this point. I did make sure to keep it seafood while at the port city though. I ordered the Melo Meli noodles with baby shrimp. It had a sweet tangy flavor and was a nice light main course.

Monique had ordered this awesome risotto and whole shrimp plate that looked like a knockout.

The next day we flew to Madrid for our last day of vacation. This is a typical window in Madrid. Those people love their ham.

From a recommendation by a friend, we were told to head to La Finca de Susana. Culinary students man the kitchen and the food was insanely reasonable for the quality we were given.

The best appetizers were Julia’s heirloom tomatoes with mozzarella and Patrick’s Spanish sausage bocadillos.

My spare ribs Finca style were super sweet and candied. They fell immediately off the bone and the cinnamon couscous next to it was a nice addition to its flavor.

Biscuit ice cream with raspberry sauce. I almost didn’t want to share it.

Patrick ordered this thing based on the waiter’s recommendations. We still have no idea what it was called since it was named after a random person but the custard on top and the rest of the flavors worked so well together that it easily won best dessert that meal.

The final day we decided to have one last lunch before boarding our plane home. Julia ordered this lovely salad which had a great plating to it.

Patrick ordered what the menu had called “meatloaf” as his appetizer but was presented with this instead. While odd looking, the flavor was outstanding, with soft bread on top blending well with the ground meat under it inside that nice crispy outer shell.

This weird looking meat patty doused with sauce was my main course. While unappetizing looking, the flavor was exquisite. It was bung (meat I think), with a rice pilaf. Patrick ordered the same while Julia ordered the rabbit and frites and Monique had some fish.

Overall, my trip to Morocco gave me a wonderful opportunity to try some exotic dishes in a land completely foreign to me. I bought a new Canon fixed lens for this trip and was very pleased with the food and other shots I captured with it. To view the rest of the non-food related photos from the trip, you can click on any of the pics above or check out my flickr photo set.

Cuban Sandwich at Havana Outpost. This + Frozen Margaritas = The Bomb.

Even though this is my first punny title based off a John Grisham novel that was made into a full length feature film featuring none other than Sandra Fuckin’ Bullock, I come here with some very very serious news. You see, I eat falafel a lot. Like, at least twice a week and usually from Oasis falafel cafe right off the Bedford L stop. This day (a few weeks ago), my coworker buddies wanted to try this staple in the west village. I must attest: this was the best falafel I have ever had. Move over Mamoun’s.

The place was so packed, something I think is quite constant, that we ate on the concrete outside. We all rocked the Mixed Falafel Platter. I contains all three of their falafel flavors (green, red and harissa) and this lovely dish is accompanied by hummus, tabouli and israeli salad. The salad rocked my socks off. The spicy harissa was my favorite of the falafel bunches and the 3 sauces they included allow you to combine whatever spices your chickpea lovin’ heart desires.

Yeah, I know this post had 0 meat in it but I loved this place so much I just had to highly recommend it.

Oh hello. Hi. I made a post. I had a burger at Park on 10th Avenue today for lunch with Eli, Matt and Julia. It was delicious. My medium-rare goodness came topped with gruyere and bacon served on an English muffin. The burger was deliciously seasoned and extremely moist. The bottom muffin however, could not deal with the juices oozing from this messy beast and thus became a sad, soggy piece of bread. The bacon was thickly cut and had a great flavor with the meat. If only the bun was more substantial and held everything together better I would be singing this burger’s praises. The fries were tossed with rosemary and if you are a restaurant and aren’t doing this, you are an idiot. They were slightly undercooked but I was willing to overlook that fact. The burger was $11 with a buck each for the toppings. I’ve had a lot worse for $13 in NYC and while messy, I must say I savored every bite.

Those were the first words I uttered aloud when I saw the photos for this whole chicken in a can (via food network humor).  I don’t know who I feel more sorry for, the employees at Sweet Sue for churning out such a diabolical product or the sad semblance of a child in that photo anxiously awaiting to devour it.  Once she finished cooking it (15 minutes @ 475 degrees), it still looked raw.

For the struggling anoxerics out there, just print this out and stare at it (just like those virgins with their STD books!). To the rest of you, sorry for posting this around lunchtime.

First off, my apologies to the 3 of your who have this site in your RSS Reader.  To say I’ve been lazy with this site is an understatement.  I could mention how my full-time job got super busy or mention the few side projects I’ve been working on, but that wouldn’t detract from the fact that I have been neglecting my duties here.  I am sorry. There, I said it. Let’s move on shall we?

I am not a wordsmith as you know, instead relying on my fancy pictures to do the food I eat justice. As you also may know, my simple food descriptions like “awesome” and “delicious” do absolutely nothing when it comes to reviewing a restaurant. It’s become all too clear that I should have taken more English writing electives in college.

I went to Co. with my coworkers today and finally brought a camera with me when out dining.  Granted it was with my Canon 20D from work and the crappy stock lens it comes with but it’s better than no pictures or blogpost at all (right? right?!!). Rather than explain my delicious meal, I am just going to post the images and captions of what exactly we ate.  It was awesome and delicious though.

Butter Lettuce Salad: Roasted butternut squash, pumpkin seeds, lemon and olive oil

Radicchio Salad: Shiitake, taleggio cheese, balsamic and olive oil

Stracciatella: Crushed tomato, black pepper, stracciatella, arugula

Flambe: Bechamel, parmesan, buffalo mozzarella, caramelized onions, lardons

Popeye: Pecorino, gruyere, buffalo mozzarella, spinach, black pepper, garlic

It was great. Go to Co.

Good buddy and coworker of mine Emily Silman just offered me a reservation on Monday to Momofuku Ko! Getting a reservation at Ko is harder than a comic book nerd on line for the Watchmen movie. Seriously, you need to login a week prior to get a seating at the counter-only restaurant. 7 courses of pork here I come.

Full report on Tuesday!

UPDATE: So I emailed Ko ahead of time to see if photography was allowed and they said no! Sadly I cannot capture this evening’s events with my lens and I am bummed but still excited as heck for some pork buns.