Seth Gross puts the cheese below the patty on his burgers. Because the crucial burger buddy, whether cheddar or bleu, hits the tongue sooner, its flavor does not get as easily lost among the other toppings.
It’s just a simple tweak to the process: when placing the cheese-topped patty on the bun, match the gooey side with the bottom bun instead of the top. This change—which logistically is easy but conceptually is brilliant—is exemplary of Gross’s approach to burgers, beer and the restaurant industry he hopes to take a bite out of. This month, with one foot treading in tradition and the other poking around in the progressive, Gross will open Bull City Burger and Brewery in downtown Durham.
“Anybody who has known me for any length of time knows that at some point in my life, I was going to do a burger place,” said Gross. “I’m passionate about the burger and never really happy with the choice of burgers to eat. I just thought I could do it in a better way.”
Gross, who has given himself the title of Burger Flipper and Beer Tester, has been a professional eater and drinker for a while. He attended the Culinary Institute of America. He co-founded Wine Authorities (Durham), brewed at Goose Island Beer Company (Chicago) and has opened two other restaurants (Boston and Rockford, Ill.). BCBB, though, is his first attempt at restaurant ownership, which has given him cause to run up against some conventional practices.
“People have been programmed by McDonald’s and Wendy’s that a burger means a bun, meat, lettuce, tomato, pickle. Well, in our mind, that isn’t necessarily a burger,” explained Gross. Tasty tomatoes are difficult to find in the winter, so he won’t offer them at that time of year. Buns will be homemade and toasted. American cheese? Not at his joint. And don’t think for a second he would serve ketchup, mustard or relish he didn’t make himself.
The beef, the most important ingredient, is getting a serious upgrade. Partly for health reasons—he’s convinced epidemiologists will look back at the last forty years and shake their heads at all the hormone- and antibiotic-laden foods we have eaten—but mostly out of concern for quality, Gross will only serve beef from grass-fed cows. This kind of beef, as opposed to the far more prevalent corn-fed variety, packs a more hearty, meaty flavor just by itself and can make meat the focus of the burger again.
“When you ask somebody what the best burger out there is, it’s usually a burger from a place with a clever name. It’s three patties, with eight pieces of cheese, guacamole, bacon, salsa. And you say to them, ‘What did the burger taste like?’ ‘I don’t know. But man, it was this big!”
Gross just wants to keep the food and the business simple—at least for now. You can eat burgers, hot dogs and fries. If you saved room, he has made your dessert decision easy: the lone option is a lemon pound cake with ice cream, chocolate sauce optional.
The philosophy is to “do few things but do them very well,” which Gross hopes will help his establishment avoid culinary inconsistencies. Those irregularities, which he calls “the downfall of most independent restaurants,” would drive customers away from his burgers and toward those from chains. McDonald’s, he says, is a winner not because it has anywhere close to the best burger, but because whether you order a Big Mac in Durham or Dallas, Boston or Baton Rouge, “you know what you’re getting. That’s success.”
Gross has subscribed to a strategy of straightforwardness in dealing with the grilled as well as the brewed side of the business. In crafting the beer, a job he shares with Luke Studer, formerly of Triangle Brewing, he will begin with familiar types of beer, like ale, pale ale, IPA, lager and Irish stout.
“I don’t necessarily want to make kiwi-sundried-tomato-sweet-potato beers. I trained and learned very classical beers….Everybody’s trying to do some niche of something. Our niche will be traditional beer,” said Gross.
Just a month before its public unveiling, the space on Parrish Street is rough around the edges—and everywhere else. There is only the color of gray and the temperature of cold to greet the painters, who had dozens of questions for Gross one early morning in February. Do we leave the pipes black? Do you like this orange or that orange? What color for the bathrooms? “Jersey Cream”?
Whether the restaurant opens in early or late March—restaurant opening dates, from fast food to high-end locations, are extraordinarily fickle—one thing is certain: until literally the last possible minute, Gross will be occupied. From selecting the right clothing for the cooks—“Chef coats are great, but is that too pretentious for a burger joint to say? Then you’ve got short-sleeved chef coats. Is that casual pretentious?”—to taking delivery of custom-made communal tables, there is work to be done at every moment.
The week of the opening, there will be a “Trade in, Trade Up” campaign, where customers can bring in a burger from anywhere and trade it in for a free BCBB burger. Gross looks forward to seeing the mountains of inferior burgers piled up on a table in his new restaurant and to proudly proclaiming, “These are all the people who traded in for something better.”
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