Phebe's Hamburger, circa 1977

2006 Tasting Menu Awards

This is a hamburger you will never have. I know that’s a bit unfair, since I believe we’re all supposed to be writing about taste sensations you can go out and try but the fact remains. This is a hamburger you will never have. If it’s any consolation it was a hamburger I rarely had.

 

This is also a city you will never have, at least not again. At least not from what I hear. This was a New York when the idea of a resort on Rivington Street was ridiculous. Rivington Street was a last resort, for junkies, that is. Wylie Dusfrene would have had a hard time walking down Clinton Street much less opening restaurants there. Avenue A was sketchy, B-D were downright frightening. There were still poor people in Manhattan. It was still possible for young, un and underemployed people to live in New York There was new music going on everywhere, artists were breaking out of the pop mold and helping fuel the energy going on on stages at CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City. New York City in 1977 was alive in a completely exuberant way that matched my own youthful enthusiasm perfectly.

 

At 13, when I quit school and moved out of the house to pursue rock stardom my two main concerns were where to sleep and what to eat. And although New York was still affordable, it wasn’t quite so affordable that a 13 year old could rent an apartment, even in the company of his 14 and 15 year old best friends. I thought about this a lot during my 5 years of managing apartments in SF’s Tenderloin. We’d show up to a place, Village Voice in hand, piping, “We’re here to see the apartment.” Punk rock had not yet become the mainstream movement it did in the 90’s, or even the very cute thing it appears to be now as evidenced by the “punky Chips Ahoy” commercial I saw the other night. Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” hadn’t been released yet, much less would it be considered appropriate for an ad for Royal Caribbean Cruises for many a year and so the sight of 3 midgets in their black leather jackets, festooned with badges, safety pins and surely dirt, must have been at best amusing for the various supers we annoyed.

 

So, a lot of my time was spent thinking about sleeping and eating and even though at the time I didn’t care much for Talking Heads, their album title “More Songs About Buildings and Food” could have defined my adolescence. The sleeping was taken care of by kindly friends, temporary girlfriends, hallways and seats in Penn Station, the back room of the Blimpie’s on6^th Avenue and a few times I fell asleep in the middle of sets by bands I really wanted to see.

Food was sometimes provided by the same kindly friends and temporary girlfriends but the appetite of a teenager is pretty boundless. I started to refine cooking skills learned earlier, at home. I learned how to pull things out of strange refrigerators and make something at least edible, if not always entirely palate pleasing. Fortunately the New York City of my misspent youth had any number of cheap eateries to keep me going. A Greek diner on every corner, countless Chinese/Cuban places (for me the original “fusion” restaurants), hot dog and pretzel vendors, this nameless, renegade soul food restaurant in an apartment where it was rumored Paloma Picasso ate frequently, Leshko’s on Avenue A, serving Ukranian delights, B&H Dairy on 2^nd Avenue, Stromboli Pizza on 1^st Avenue, a meal or two at Luchow’s on 14^th. Hell, Max’s Kansas City had a restaurant and during the day it was a regular bar with a happy hour and free food. Our friends, The Fast, were managed by Tommy Dean, the owner, and we’d often drop by on the pretext of watching them rehearse and load up on free chicken wings. But I digress.

Phebe's is on the corner of Bowery and 4^th Street. It is, amazingly, still there. It appears to be much more of sports bar now and while I can’t say whether the menu 30 years ago was the same as it is today, I don’t think so. The real attraction for me was its proximity to CBGB’s and that it stayed open until 4am. If it hadn’t been so expensive (for a 13 year old on a budget) I’d have been there nearly every evening.

So tell me about this damned hamburger you’re thinking. Ok, I’ll try. The first thing that stands out is the bun. They served the burger on English muffins, which I still think is the perfect burger bun. It’s somewhere between chewy and soft, with plenty of holes to absorb the ketchup and mayo mingled juices from the meat. At the time I wondered about the genius who thought of serving the burgers on muffins but now I’ll bet they also served brunch and needed another outlet for those muffins after all the Eggs Benedict had been served. The meat seemed perfect. A thick patty, loosely held together. Pure meat luxury. Strangely I can’t remember any cheese.

 

But what really mattered was that if I were having a burger at Phebe’s all was right with my world. I wasn’t worried about where I was sleeping that night because by 2 or 3 am if I was at Phebe’s I had already figured that out. I wasn’t worried about money because if I was at Phebe’s I obviously had an excess of cash, enough to blow on a pricy, succulent burger. If I had such a windfall it usually meant we had just finished a gig and had split the dough which meant that I was sitting down to a feast with friends, flush with the glow of performing, and being a teenager in the best city on earth at the best possible time for me to be there.

Comments

[sam]

This is an inspired entry.
great idea. Thanks for the memories.

[Kudzu]

Okay, haddock -- how about that book?

I may never have a Phebe burger but I have some damned fine writing about a pause in time, a distilled portrait of the alphabet avenues and an exuberant, if very hungry, youth.

Thank you so much.

[Tana]

Sweet post indeed.

[mary g]

Lovely post--it made me nostalgic, even though I'm about 15 years older than you.

[Chubby Hubby]

God, I spent way too many a drunken night in Phoebe's in the early 1990s. It's one of NYC's classic dive bars. Never knew they had burgers though -- for me, the best dive bar burger was at Corner Bistro.

[johng]

I had a few Phebe's burgers back in the day - late 70's, early 80's. Don't remember them being served on Englsh, or being any good. My favorite at that time was the burger at Prince Street Bar, which inexplicably also had satay on the menu. There was a time in the late 80's when you could have a burger at Phebes downtown, then hustle uptown for another at Phoebe's on Columbus, a ferny place named after a Labrador retriever. Speaking of Prince Street Bar, it brings back a memory... rolling out the door of that place at 4:00AM, mind numbed by liquor and NY cold, walking down the street arm in arm singing Beatles songs at the top of our lungs, and the girls talking drivers guys loading muffins and danish from a nearby bakery into their trucks to give us a dozen overly sweet, warm-from-the-oven corn muffins to eat as we toddled home.

[haddock]

Don't know that I would call Phebe's a dive bar. But then again I hung out in some real dives.

I also don't believe I was capable of discerning a really good meal at the time so Phebe's burgers might not hold a candle to Prince Street, or Fanelli's (another burger fave). Hunger, as they say, is the best sauce.

[Robert]

That was an awesome post. Food memories are incredible things, aren't they?

[Robert R.]

Bravo! This was one of the best stories that I have read in a long time.