An Elusive, Thoroughly French Cheeseburger
The burger at Raoul’s ($19) is indeed as difficult to secure as has been rumored. You have a slightly better chance of ordering one of the twelve on offer nightly at the classic Soho bistro during these dog days of summer, when much of the city is out of town. Because only a dozen are offered nightly, exclusively at the nine seat bar, the burger is often a mere memory by 8 p.m. It is so good that this would likely have been the case if only regulars knew about it and the Internet didn’t care about hamburgers. But of course the Internet cares about burgers only slightly less than it cares about cats and when my dear, departed friend Josh Ozersky boldly proclaimed it the best burger in America last year, it pretty much insured that eating it would only ever be a late afternoon proposition. Ozersky had a an epiphany when eating it that washed away his "rigorous hamburger puritanism" and swept aside his "rancorous animosity towards any burger that isn't topped with American cheese and doesn't come on a white squishy bun." He had "at last been won over by a gourmet specialty burger."
