‘The perfect hamburger’ is at this restaurant near Yosemite, says The New Yorker
It’s a helluva honor for a hamburger.
To have a food writer from The New Yorker magazine describe a burger at a restaurant near Yosemite National Park as one of the best foods she’s eaten in a decade – not just a year, but a decade – is weighty praise.
The burger is from The Forks Resort Restaurant, overlooking Bass Lake, south of Yosemite National Park. Helen Rosner, described as the magazine’s “roving food correspondent” and winner of a James Beard award for essay writing, called the burger “the most beautiful hamburger in the whole beautiful, beautiful world.”
A subhead atop the section dubbed it “The perfect hamburger.”
You can read her full piece about her favorite foods of the decade – including a $50 caviar sandwich – here.
The Forks burger
The burger at The Forks Restaurant costs $5.50, according to its menu online. While this is definitely a casual restaurant – there’s wood paneling and taxidermy fish on the walls – it gets 3.5 stars out of 5 on Yelp.com.
Just one catch.
You can’t get the burger right now.
That’s because The Forks is closed for the season. It’s sometimes covered in snow this time of year.
It is scheduled to reopen March 27.
Now, maybe you’re thinking it’s a little random that a Bass Lake burger is getting such high praise. Maybe you’d expect Central California’s only restaurant with a four-star Forbes rating, Erna’s Elderberry House in nearby Oakhurst, to be the subject of such accolades.
The writer of the New Yorker piece provides a little context on that. Taste is subjective, she says. One woman’s “exultant” midnight Oreos and milk is another woman’s rock bottom, she says.
One thing that might explain why this burger tasted so good to Rosner and her husband? They ate it after a pre-dawn trip from Fresno to Glacier Point to catch the sunrise over Half Dome. Eight hours later with no breakfast and hours of twisty mountain driving, they were still high on that experience.
She said: “At the Forks Resort, whose restaurant a friend had glowingly recommended, our appetites combined with the lingering tendrils of near-religious natural awe: the burger was heaven on a bun, a juicy, crackle-edged beef patty dressed with pickles, iceberg lettuce, thick rounds of tomato and onion, and a drench of tart thousand-island dressing. It was the most beautiful hamburger in the whole beautiful, beautiful world.”
And that’s the beauty of food. Though food reviewers can point you in the right direction, everyone has their own opinion and their own tastes. Like reading movie reviews, you can see what they have to say and make your own opinion.
So read the piece. And try the burger – when the restaurant reopens – for yourself.
This story was originally published January 10, 2020 at 9:53 AM with the headline "‘The perfect hamburger’ is at this restaurant near Yosemite, says The New Yorker."
