
The burger: It should come as no surprise that the Nighthawks cheeseburger is the menu's top-selling item. "What's funny is that the second-best selling item is the raw vegetable salad," said chef/owner Landon Schoenefeld. "I guess people want burgers, and they want salad."
At Nighthawks, a neo-diner that's ruled by the catch phrase "Adventures in Griddling," the burger follows a different format than the thick-pattied, bar-style burger at HauteDish, Schoenefeld's North Loop restaurant. And that's by design.
"We wanted Nighthawks to be different, and that's why we jumped on this smashed burger bandwagon," he said. "When we were concepting the diner, the whole thin-patty cheeseburger wasn't really a thing, except for Parlour. Along came Saint Dinette, and Revival, and us. We're all doing something along the lines of the same thing, but there are subtle differences."
Starting with the approach to beef. Schoenefeld and his crew spent a considerable amount of time working out the formula's kinks, finally settling on a blend of sirloin, brisket and chuck. And butter. For every 50 pounds of beef, there's roughly eight pounds of butter.
"It's not as buttery as the burger at Saint Dinette, or Parlour," said Schoenefeld. "But there is some butter in it. That butter is the key to the smashed burgers. When it renders out to the grill, it gives the patty that wonderful crusty crust."
Yes, it does, one of the many reasons why the word mouthwatering applies to this burger. Why this particular sirloin-rich mix?
"At first we were using rib eye," said Schoenefeld. "But it was just so expensive. And honestly, I don't know if you could tell if there was any rib eye in it. So we started messing around, and we finally landed on this trio."
The patties start as quarter-pound meatballs. My favorite seats at Nighthawks are at the kitchen counter, which provide an up-close-and-personal view of cooking crew as they go through their considerable paces.