I guess I must have though I was a real wiseguy, aping Rachael and trying to have a Burger Bash of my own. And for a while, it looked pretty good. 18 of the greatest burger men and women in the world were assembled in Summit New Jersey, this past weekend, all vying to be crowned King of Burgers. And what a sight they were to see! Arrayed geometrically out across the parking lot of the Grand Summit Hotel were all the great burgers from the gastronomic capital of the world: the Black Label burger from Minetta Tavern, redolent of dry-aged beef; the little owl burger, with its amazing pizza dough bun and copious brisket mix; the herbaceous Stand burger; the incredible, double decker, sheep’s-milk-soaked “El Doble” from Alex Raij’s Txikito. And the stations weren’t manned with functionaries, dispatched out to New Jersey to make the burgers; no, the chefs themselves were there! Lee and Riad from Minetta, Michael Psilakis flipping burgers in person, Doug Rodriguez making fritas. I was dumbstruck with pride and gratification. It was truly the summit of my burger career.

And then the sky turned black and a tornado hit.

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It happened as fast as that; it was partially cloudy, then black; gale force winds shook the tents, and then sheets of rain drove the people into a huddled mass under the main tent, while the chefs held on for dear life as their grills smoked and screamed. Buns were disintergrated; and golfball-sized hailstones smashed everything that wasn’t under a tree. Heroically, I grabbed a burger, charged out into the storm, and rallied the crowd by marching back and forth under the hail, defiantly eating burgers and then, after a rebuking crack of thunder, hurling a burger into the sky. The gesture worked: the rain stopped, the clouds parted, and the sun started shining. A few minutes later burgers were sizzling again.

Was the storm karma for stealing somebody else’s burger event? Or just bad luck? No man can say. But the event was captured on video, on what amounts to an Irwin Allen hamburger movie. In this case, the images speak louder than the words.

Josh Ozersky is the national restaurant editor for Citysearch, and newly-converted zealot for Team Rachael. He writes Citysearch’s New York food blog, The Feedbag, but will be writing every week here on topics that aren’t all tied up with the comings and goings of the New York restaurant world, his usual sphere of authority. Along with meat, that is — he’s also the author of The Hamburger: A History, coming to you soon in paperback.

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