The Windsor Dies on Thursday!
If you’re on the beef beat at all — and trust us, with the burgermania of the past two years, we haven’t missed a minute of meat news — the name La Frieda will be very familiar to you. If not, here’s a little backstory: La Frieda Meats is a New York-based meat purveyor that has made its name whipping up special proprietary blends of ground beef for Manhattan’s most noteworthy burger havens, like Spotted Pig and Shake Shack (for the long version, read this New York magazine profile). La Frieda also sells their own house-blend burgers (Update: we hear both Continentals have been using La Frieda burgers for six months now), but no one in Philly has signed up for a custom-blended La Frieda burger. Until now.
Jonathan “Jonny Mac” Adams, chef-owner of Rittenhouse’s Pub & Kitchen tells us that after a year and a half of negotiating, wheedling and, eventually, tasting with Pat La Frieda, he’s finally landed his own custom ground beef blend for Pub & Kitchen. He invited us over to P&K for a sneak peek of the newcomer, which will be known as: THE CHURCHILL.
It is 8 ounces. It has dry-aged beef in it and that’s all Adams is going to tell you about the beef blend. It is glazed with bone marrow butter, topped with fried onions and served on a Metropolitan brioche. And it is replacing the Windsor burger, which has many, many fans: in the two years since Pub and Kitchen, opened, they’ve sold over 30,000.
The price: $18. Adams is offering a second burger, also a La Frieda blend (but not the P&K signature blend) for $11. This blend has brisket, short rib and clod (which we just learned is part of the chuck, thanks to Aliza Green’s indispensable Field Guide to Meat). For that burger, you can add your own toppings (cheese, egg, bacon, etc.). “Everybody likes their burger a different way,” says Adams, “so we’re giving them that option.”
What does it taste like? It’s rich, tangy (that’s the dry-aged beef) and … fluffy. The meat is loosely packed (thanks to a signature La Frieda technique called feathering) and breaks apart in your mouth, just so. But it maintains its structural integrity on the bun.
If you want to try it for yourself, it will be on the menu starting this Thursday, October 7. As Adams says, “The Windsor dies on Thursday.”
Long live the Churchill!
Pub & Kitchen,1946 Lombard Street, (215) 545-0350, thepubandkitchen.com
*Photo courtesy Kirsten Henri
