The Local Grassfed Burger That Isn’t

I love hamburgers. I do. I love them to pieces. I love them simply prepared on a hollowed out baguette slathered with butter and a few sautéed onions, like they did at The Original Joe’s. I love them in fantastical versions like the battered and deep fried Buffalo burger cooked to gorgeous bloody medium rare, as they do at Swifty’s.

Don’t make me choose between Five Guys, Juicy Burger and More or even In-N-Out because as far as I’m concerned, there is room in my life for them all.

Although the more and more I know about ground beef, the less and less appealing burgers become. And this is a dark cloud that hangs over my head most of the time. Fortunately there is a ray of sunshine, and that is the rising tide of burgers available that are made from sustainably raised beef.

What it means for beef to be raised well is up for debate, but that’s a topic for another time. Because right now the bar is pretty darn low. The most important thing to me is that the animals were raised, slaughtered and processed separate from their conventionally raised counterparts. “Local” sometimes serves as convenient shorthand for this. But the miles the beef has traveled from the farm to my plate is actually the least of my concerns.

So, I’ve been very excited to try the hamburger at a restaurant on the edge of town that prides itself on its relationship with local farmers. But I’ve been twice and still haven’t had the burger of my dreams.

I know plenty of people who love Jake Moon Restaurant and Café down in Clarksville, NY. It’s in a little village about a 15-minute drive from the Delmar Farmers Market. In theory this should be my favorite place to eat in the region. It’s very reasonably priced, they make simple wholesome foods, and the restaurant subscribes to a familiar ideology. Here is the blurb about that plucked from the restaurant’s website:

Jake Moon Cafe and Restaurant is dedicated to supporting our local hilltown economy. We make every effort to buy our supplies from local providers of vegetables, dairy, and meat. In doing so, we are ensuring that the money customers spend here at the restaurant is being redistributed locally, keeping area farms viable and helping to preserve the rural character and traditional economy of the Heldebergs…Some of the local businesses from whom we purchase our supplies are listed below:
– Charles Groesbeck Grassfed Beef, Feura Bush, New York

It’s exciting, I know. Especially when the menu lists a simple hamburger without fries for around five bucks. Local grassfed burgers usually cost more. But given the simple surroundings, lack of pretense, and uncomplicated preparation, such a price for a local grassfed burger becomes more than plausible.

On Father’s Day a year and change ago, I went there specifically to give this burger a try. Except then I was denied, because in honor of the holiday the restaurant was only serving breakfast. No burger for me.

It took far too long for me to make it back in there. There are a lot of places I need to eat, and not nearly enough time to eat at them all. I’m lucky to get to the places I love more than twice a year. Yesterday I was finally able to return to Jake Moon for lunch, and I was looking forward to getting my hamburger.

But none of the local items are actually listed on the menu. There is a list of purveyors which is beside a statement about their commitment to using local food. Given that they make every effort to use local ingredients, and since one of their purveyors was a producer of grassfed beef, I was pretty darn sure theirs was a grassfed hamburger. But just to confirm if my assumption was correct, I decided to ask the waitress.

She had to check with the chef.

Now you have probably already guessed how this story ends. As it turned out, the burger was not made with local beef, so I ended up choosing something else.

Here’s the thing. I can understand that not all local ingredients are available all year round. For example, there is corn in the Red Flannel Hash. Maybe that’s local in the summer and is purchased frozen the rest of the year. Okay. I get it.

But a hamburger made without local ground beef? At a place that prides itself on making “every effort” to use local ingredients and even lists a grassfed beef farmer as one of its partners? It’s really inexcusable.

Honestly, It makes me wonder about how many people have come into the restaurant just assuming that the burger is local and grassfed, and being served something different. After having the waitress go back to the kitchen and ask about the burger, I did not inquire about the sirloin in the Red Flannel Hash. Maybe that’s local, but maybe it’s not.

And what else on the menu isn’t local? My Red Flannel Hash had beets, onions and potatoes. Maybe they were local, but maybe not. The lack of transparency on the burger makes me question everything.

This is just one reason why I continue to lobby restaurants to be more explicit on their menus. Anyone can say they are making an effort to do something their customers care about. But if you care about local foods, find a way to show me which foods I can get that are local.

And if your menu is fixed, maybe the answer is a chalkboard. If that doesn’t work, perhaps a weekly printed insert in the menu, or even a card on the table. The form is immaterial. Because if you are leading people to believe they are getting something that they’re not, we’ve got a problem.