Custom Burgers By Pat Lafrieda. The skies just got friendlier.

En route to New Orleans (to visit Edible New Orleans over Mardi Gras weekend, naturally) we were reminded that Pat LaFrieda, the third-generation butcher shop in the Meat Packing district Josh Ozersky profiled for us last year has set up shop in the food courts of LaGuardia airport’s Terminal D. Custom Burgers by Pat LaFrieda is pretty much the best thing to happen to LGA travel since we realized we could still carry on on your own food. (Old Ronnybrook Farm yogurt containers pack a pasta lunch perfectly, and windowbox basil pesto is on point at room temperature. But we digress.) These are slender 4.5 ounce patties of the beef that’s used in the best burgers in town and soft buns: Like a 50′s drive-thru burger, except for the touch screens where you enter your choice of toppings in a little computer monitor. You can pretty much get anything you’d want, including garlic mayo, but we like plain old pickles and side of crinkle fries. You can’t do medium-rare, this being the airport, but if Pat LaFrieda is to be had post-security for just $4.75, we’ll happily have it well-done.

Google Image Search: Apparently, we're not the only ones who still dig the Bistro Burger.

This weekend, like so many other New Yorkers, we made an attempt to visit The Clock, the 24-hour movie at the Paula Cooper Gallery in West Chelsea. But the wind and the wait meant we lasted about a minute. So to make up for our feeble attempt at joining the queue, we’d though we’d pick another line to conquer, if we could find one indoors. The answer? Corner Bistro, of course, the Greenwich Village bar with the long-standing must-eat burgers at the corner of West Fourth and Jane. In these days of ever-multiplying fancypants burgers (made with grass-fed meats or in the style of Juicy Lucys or with foie gras-truffle toppings or build-your-own buns or smashed patties) it’s almost kind of fashionable to say the Bistro burger ain’t what it used to be.

Well we’re here to say that’s all wrong. It’s simple — a thick house-formed patty cooked on a broiler and served on a soft bun with L, T, O and bacon, if you go $7.25 Bistro Burger — but it’s damn juicy and damn tasty, salty, beefy bliss.

Want proof? Just check the rapidly congealing puddles of beef fat on your little paper plate when you’re done. (Little paper plate!) And as we were happily reminded by George Motz in his seminal book Hamburger America (a new version hits streets soon) the mix of sirloin and chuck (and maybe some porterhouse, the owner told Motz) is still walked over each day from ye olde Meatpacking butcher shops just a block or two away.

Another fun fact: Mimi Sheraton, the former Times food critic who recently noted she wouldn’t head to Brooklyn if she had to stand in line to eat when she got there, is probably the person responsible for creating those lines at the Bistro. Back in 1977, Motz recounts, Sheraton reviewed the place — the first such formal rave for beef and bun — and the result is now burger history. We don’t know how long Sheraton lasts at Corner Bistro, but if any food is worth waiting in line for, wethinks, it’s a damn good hamburger.

Three of these were eaten by one Edible staffer. Urp.

In the course of planning our upcoming Meat Issue — oh, don’t even pretend to be surprised — we had a little planning sesh at the massive new Bill’s Bar & Burger that opened at 6 West 51st Street in Rockefeller late last fall. The place has a wall of TVs, a page-long list of craft beers including a nicely bitter number brewed specially for them by Sixpoint Craft Ales, and more importantly can — and does, daily  – seats 400 people at one time.  Here’s what we learned, other than the fact the sliders served only at Rock Center, are awesome — though food writer Josh already told us that, right here in this video. That is that we really enjoyed, for what may be for the first time in our lives (other than some drunken late night barbecue where post-sunset pickins were slim) our patty unadorned with lettuce and tomato and onion, or even mustard, or ketchup, or even mayo. In fact, a few pickles was all that graced the “classic” burger we devoured, and that was all we needed. Incredible meat, courtesy Pat LaFrieda’s famous beefy blend, a super-soft, grease-soaked sesame-seed topped bun, those pickles, and that’s it. Or “c’est tout!,” as the French tourists no doubt exclaim after they head into Bill’s to check out a damn fine specimen of un hamburguer Americain.

Room service: The dry-aged prime burger at the Oak Room in the Plaza.

This past Christmas Eve, as per our custom, we hit the fine, fine bar of the Oak Room for a drink. Tucked inside the Plaza Hotel just off Central Park, the 1907 bar is right out of central casting in terms of holiday ambiance. (Pronounced am-BEE-ance, naturally.) Through the window there are horses and sleighs and tree-tops and the ice-skating rink; inside everyone’s on their best behavior… Though my father likes to recall a business lunch a few decades back where the wood-paneled place was populated only by businessmen and hookers.( Speaking of women, they weren’t allowed in at first; they had to wait till the bar reopened post-Prohibiton in 1934.)

Hookers or no, the Oak Room has got that kind of lush. warm glow — courtesy the turn of the last century lighting, vaulted ceilings, an emerald-toned mural of German feudal castles and yards of burnished oak — that make you order in hushed tones and wish you hadn’t left your long-stemmed cigarette holder back at home. But instead of caviar and Champagne, we ordered Scotch and the dry-aged $20 Prime burger, off a lovely fancy American hotel menu (tomato and fennel soup, a salad of stellar greens with lightly pickled tomatoes and Bucheron cheese; thin sheets of tomato-flavored crackers hit with zataar and cumin seed) recently redesigned by chef Eric Hara.

It’s always been our belief that in a city of incredible patties, the best probably lies undiscovered and unblogged: It’s likely some rarely ordered lunch entree at some random spot you’d never think to order it, like Del Posto or the John Dory. So we often take a gamble on a burger in a bar like the Oak Room, where the men who like their meat and are able to pay top price for it stop for lunch.

We’re glad we did: Well-seasoned and cooked perfectly medium rare, this massive slab of seared ground dry-aged beef was indeed  juicy, tender and flavorful, and came slathered with salty-tart blue cheese on an excellently chewy seeded pretzel bun that was soft but sturdy enough to hold up to the plentiful juices of the burger and nicely garnished martini-style with a green olive and a cornichon. (Plus we always dig the hotel-style tray of condiments, meaning our own little jars of mustard, ketchup and mayo plus a housemade remoulade.)

It looked so good, in fact, that the table of Japanese tourists next door had to order their own after staring at our first bites in envy. And it may not be a honey-baked ham or roast goose, but at the Oak Room, a burger and fresh-cut salty fries with a glass of fine Scotch is, to us, a fine way to celebrate the holidays.

What better dish to order on a day dedicated to beer?

What It Is:

Like its burger, the lyrically named Sweet Afton oozes both tradition (it’s an Irish style pub, after all) and progress, much like the neighborhood of Astoria where this gastropub and its part-owner, Ruairi Curtin, dwell. The progress part: In the year since it opened, Sweet Afton has quickly materialized into an unpretentious bar and restaurant dedicated to the quintessential locavore. The beef in the burger is from LaFrieda, while the Dirty Pickle Martini is their signature cocktail and also their number one seller, its unique flavor derived from McClure’s Pickles, a family-run production based out of a Brooklyn basement. Each batch of pickles comes with its own unique spicing, the result of which is a deliciously inconsistent drink. If pickle brine sounds less than palatable, try the Red Lemonade, made from citrus vodka, simple syrup, lemon and cranberry. The subsequent sugar kick, Curtin insists, “will wire you to the moon.” Of course they also have Kelso Nut Brown Lager on their beer list, so if you go there for the burger tonight, you’re can get extra Eat Drink Local bonus points for trying the third ingredient of the day, local brown ales and lagers.

Why We Love It:

It’s the quality of ingredients that refines Sweet Afton’s no-frills burger, as well as their mac and cheese topped with a molten crust of Irish Cheddar, Muenster and Gruyere, and their increasingly popular beer-battered fried pickles: More than 20 gallons sold each week! Owner Ruairi Curtin stocks his kitchen with regional cheeses from Murray’s on the Lower East Side and the finest meats from the West Village’s renowned beef purveyor, Pat LaFrieda. Sweet Afton’s high standards transcend the plates alone, distinguishing the creative cocktails, some of which are concocted from citrus and tealeaf-infused vodkas made on-premise. Also on tap is a rotating selection of carefully chosen local brews, so throw back one (or two, or three) from the current kegs, including Kelso’s of Brooklyn or a Red Wagon IPA from Fire Island.

Where to Find It:

Curtin opened Sweet Afton in Astoria because he craved a local bar around the corner from his home — a place to hang his hat. Stop in and hang yours at 30-09 34th Street, between 30th and 31st Avenues in Astoria; 718.777.2570.

Send This Guy Your Burger Visions: Hamburger America Director George Motz –Shown in Front of Hackensack, N.J.’s Famous White Manna–Also Co-Directs NYC’s Summer Film Fest. Photo courtesy NYC Food Film Festival.

Like of many of you Edible readers out there, I suspect, I’ve always obsessed about food, whether it was in the context of dinner, religion, cultural commodity, politics, comedy or art. So naturally when as an undergrad I was taking an old-fashioned 16mm film class, I made a movie about burgers. I cast my chubby, long-haired boyfriend at the time as the cook, mainly because he didn’t know how to cook. And then I filmed him making a burger.

It was very grainy and very amateur on all counts. I was awkwardly holding my camera, he was clumsily frying up a giant patty in a cast iron skillet, smashing it down in the pan (that’s a no-no) sliding it shakily onto a giant bun, then topping it with lettuce, tomato and onion and taking a sloppy bite as “It’s Only Love” by ZZ Top played in the background–the sole soundtrack.

Sadly I lost my meaty masterpiece many burgers ago, but if you’ve got some work of art about asparagus or turnip farmers or shopping carts as pop-up campers or cooks who follow 100-year-old recipes, the Fourth Annual NYC Food Festival is accepting applications for this year’s food film showcase, which will run from June 23rd through the 27th, mainly at Water Taxi Beach. You have until March 31st, whether you shoot with film or with Flip.

In past years the movies–short, long, professional, amateur–have been outstanding, but I also like it because it’s a project from two dudes who love burgers, too: Harry Hawk, who sells plenty fine patties at Water Taxi Beach, and George Motz, who makes movies himself, including the documentary Hamburger America. (And who Edible also beat on The Mind Kitchen, the new Heritage Radio Network gameshow.)

Meanwhile, as we wait for more details on what will make it into this year’s festival–hopefully there’ll be an Edible component, though it’s still in the works–we can dream of co-ed burger creations and listen to “It’s Only Love,” courtesy ZZ Top.