Friday, July 11, 2008

Crazy Media Day - Dutch TV and NPR



It was a packed day of media for me today. I started the day at P.J. Clarke's being interviewed by a Dutch TV crew for an upcoming segment on hamburgers in The Netherlands. After the interview, I raced over to WNYC to be on the Leonard Lopate Show. Leonard is on vacation and his replacement was Jeffery Toobin, one of CNN's regular pundits and all around good guy. The subject was hamburgers (duh) and I was joined in the studio by the nation's other hamburger expert Josh 'Mr. Cutlets' Ozersky. The 4o minute high-profile Q&A went well and Josh and I had fun taking turns fielding questions. To hear the podcast click here: 
After the radio show I headed home where the Dutch TV crew was meeting me to shoot another segment for the show in my kitchen, or as some have come to know, the Hamburger America Test Kitchen. The crew surprised me by 
presenting me with a Dutch 'hamburger', a highly processed beef patty that was sealed in a ridiculous bag. We opened the bag and were almost immediately knocked over by the putrid stench. These things smelled like rotting cat food and had the consistency of petrified pate. They tried to get me to taste one (which I did out of curiosity) and it was disgusting. I checked the expiration date on the bag and was not shocked to find that these 'beefburgers' would last through 2010. Afterwards, I rewarded the crew with a few of my excellent Oklahoma Onion-Fried burgers made of fresh ground beef from the butcher across the street.

2 comments:

Jay said...

Thanks for the link to the podcast, I'll listen to that on my next commute.

When I went to Europe with MOTO in 2004, we had a couple days off which we spent at our Dutch tour manager's parents' house. One day we made a hamburger dinner, and our hosts freaked out because they couldn't believe how great they were. Seeing that photo of Dutch "hamburgers" illustrates why they liked our American style handmade burgers so much.

They also have weird ideas about hot dogs, which you can see here: http://tinyurl.com/dutchdogs

It bothers me that this product is called "American Hot Dogs," because hot dogs in a jar is anything BUT American.

Unknown said...

His best burger ever was Dirty's? Sweet. I usually get the DH Special there. it is a patty melt with maeletd American, diced onions and tomatoes. I went to Christian's totem last Friday. They are proudly displaying your book promos.