Rachael Ray

The Rachael Ray Burger Bash (at least that’s what I call it. The actual name is the Amstel Light Burger Bash, but it will always be the Rachael Ray Burger Bash to me) happened Thursday night, as you probably know. It gets bigger and bigger every year, with more and more publicity. This year’s People’s Choice prize was won by Michael Symon, the Cleveland-based chef whose “Fat Doug” burger — basically a pastrami burger — moved the awe of the crowd. The judges (and don’t think it doesn’t pain me that I wasn’t one) awarded their laurels to Michael Schwartz, a local chef whom the Miami feinschmeckers know well enough to want to vote for him. Bobby Flay was the runner up for the People’s Choice prize. The fact is, there was such burger parity at play that I couldn’t even summon up much outrage at my personal favorites not getting more play. I got to hang out, eat hamburgers, say hello to people; what do I care who the crowd voted for?

And yet, I do. It’s like the Oscars. You know it’s stupid, you know the best movie never wins, you know that the history of Academy injustice is legendary, but you still want it to be fair. You want the right movie to win. And that’s how I feel about the People’s Choice award. On the other hand, this just goes to demonstrate my anti-democratic bias. The truth is, I only like crowd sentiment when it ratifies my own judgement. But this was one case where neither hometown boosterism nor Food Network brainwashing can be blamed. The judgeds like Bobby Flay and Michael Schwartz the best, but the crowd got behind a bald guy from Cleveland with pastrami on his burger. Go figure. I don’t know who to blame for this, other than Symon himself, who used one of the best prepared meat products in the world as super-charger for his burger. If everyone else used bacon, and lost the contest, who do they have to blame? I myself was in awe of the models pimped out by Bill’s, Spike Mendelsohn, and most of all Zach and Jeffrey Chodorow, the good-natured father-and-son restaurnant moguls who spared no expense in competing, despite the fact that they had no restaurant to promote. The Chods had both boy and girl models, and they were wearing less than anybody present on that chilly night, but they lost to Symon too.

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The lesson here, if there is one: you can’t ever pick the winner of the burger bash. I would have bet my weight in Black Label burger meat that Symon didn’t stand a chance. And in fact, I was already writing (at least in my mind) a narrative in which innovation had been punished and the old verities vindicated. But then Symon won and I had to start over. It’s hard to resent Mike Symon, who is conquering the world as much through sheer likability as anything else (who has actually been to his restaurant in Cleveland?) Still, I still feel like the old hamburger orthodoxies are in place, and said so in Time. Rachael doesn’t agree with me, but this conflict is one of the things that keeps our relationship so enjoyable.  What do you think?

Josh Ozersky is a James Beard Award-winning food writer, as he will tell you immediately upon meeting you. His most recent book, The Hamburger: A History (2008) is available in paperback. Listen to his “The Mr. Cutlets Show” radio program at Heritage Radio Network, or via iTunes. He writes a weekly column on food and dining for Time.