FIFTEEN minutes into a half-hour wait at Shake Shack’s pickup window, praying for a sex toy-like gizmo to buzz the news that my order was ready, I asked the guy next to me how long he’d been on line at Danny Meyer’s preposterously popular kiosk in Madison Square Park.
“This place used to be a lot more together,” he replied, unwilling to say exactly how much time he’d spent obtaining “Vienna dogs” marginally better than the frankfurters available without a wait just outside the park.
“Now it’s like this – and let’s face it, it’s not like the food is . . .”
I’ll finish the sentence for him: It’s not like the food is remotely good enough to justify a standard, one- to two-hour wait. For me that day, it was one hour, 15 minutes – 45 minutes on the ordering line and 30 minutes more at the pickup station.
At least the ordeal did not include a babbling woman behind me who, on another day, plied me with her life story like the airline seatmate from hell – but it did feature giggling tourists from Alabama who’d been steered to the Shack by a magazine and had no clue what disappointment lay in store.
I asked myself, not for the first time: What am I doing here? What are we all doing here?
Since Shake Shack opened for its fourth season, I’ve made numerous pilgrimages in a spirit of socio-culinary curiosity.
What compels New Yorkers to stand in Soviet-style, multiple lines under a broiling sun to procure a hamburger that’s an also-ran at best?
What’s the appeal of tiny beef patties most customers consume in five minutes, thanks to their famished state after waiting longer than they would at an airport?
How masochistic are New Yorkers that they’ll go even after seeing live Web-cam images of the snaking queue that awaits them?
Maybe the secret is the cute Shake Shack kiosk, an ivy-covered homage to a lost American age when summer meant vanilla shakes and strawberry blondes under canopies of green.
Maybe it’s the Shake Shack monopoly: It’s the only food stand in Madison Square Park, once a dangerous dump but today safe and beautiful (thanks in large part to Meyer’s efforts; as a prime mover of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, he steered the public-private partnership that turned it from a rat-infested drug zone into today’s inviting oasis).
Or maybe it’s the Meyer mystique. To his fans with a cultlike fervor, the creator of Union Square Café and Blue Smoke can do no wrong. They have bafflingly deified the feeble Shackburger as the “best burger in N.Y.” (according to New York magazine) and maybe the best in the solar system (the South Beach Food and Wine Festival).
Now, a fast-food product served outdoors can be worth a long wait when it’s unique – like Midtown’s famous Hallo Berlin sausage cart.
But nothing at Shake Shack is out of the ordinary in conception or quality – certainly not its crinkle-cut fries, which are not only transfat-free but potato taste-free as well.
The signature item is the Shackburger. In a town full of scrumptious burgers in myriad styles, Shake Shack sends out a 4-ounce pittance of mismatched sirloin and brisket, with a squirt of fat to prevent its turning into a brick.
The beef is ground at Meyer’s Eleven Madison Park across the street – gilt by association with one of the city’s finest restaurants. Cooked only one way – medium, which too often means medium-well – it’s topped with cheap American cheese, a mayo-based sauce, lettuce and insipid tomato slices inside a lightly-grilled bun.
The watery topping boasting of a “secret” formula is sissy stuff compared to the thick slop at Wendy’s across the street, but it does the same job: It imparts mouth feel and blurs the meat’s underlying innocuousness.
When the griddle is clicking on all cylinders, the Shackburger attains a modicum of flavor and a reasonable compromise between tender and chewy.
But the overworked kitchen is erratic. Shake Shack’s fans claim searing keeps the juice in, but there’s been precious little ooze in any Shackburger I’ve had. When the kitchen misfires, the result is the dry hockey puck of any poolside concession.
Eating and drinking in the park is one of summer’s pleasures. But the not-so-dirty little secret is that you don’t have to buy from Shake Shack to sit at the little green tables.
The spicy Southern menu at Live Bait a few steps away is available for takeout, for example. Next time I want lunch in Madison Square Park, I’ll have their burger that throws in andouille sausage for good measure.
Of course, I won’t expect to see a long line form behind me.