New Bar Brings West Coast-Style Burgers To NYC, And They're Flipping Delicious

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As the saying goes, if you want something done right, do it yourself, and Matt Piacentini and Chaim Dauermann – of Greenwich Village favorite The Up & Up and co-owners of Stay Gold, a casual cocktail bar that made its Kips Bay debut earlier this summer – did just that. Frustrated with their futile search for the West Coast-style burgers of their childhood, Piacentini and Dauermann took it upon themselves to create what is quite possibly the best burger in New York City.

Here’s what they had to say:

Abigail Abesamis: Tell me more about the name, why “Stay Gold”?

Matt Piacentini: The phrase “Stay Gold” is taken from The Outsiders, which you learn comes from the Robert Frost poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” But the way they talk about it in the context of the book is that the way to “stay gold” is to stay in that perfect place where things are just right – the perfect moment between growing up and childhood. [Stay Gold] is about trying to keep that balance, staying in that perfect place.

Abesamis: Tell me about your love for West Coast-style burgers and why they're something you’re so passionate about.

Piacentini: Most people who have grown up on the West Coast would agree – or at least everyone I know agrees – that the burger is a comfort food far more than it is a destination food. A lot of it has to do with car culture and drive-ins – they’re something parents grab in the car for their kids. A burger reminds me of home, of childhood. Here in New York, everyone’s trying to make the burger this thing that’s so amazing, and that’s not what it’s about.

Chaim Dauermann: It’s a food that I grew up with and took for granted. I could rattle off a list of places I enjoyed getting burgers while growing up, and all of them served roughly the expected burger with a potato or enriched white bun, Thousand Island dressing or mayonnaise (but never ketchup), iceberg lettuce and a thin patty that’s been griddled and smashed down on the flat top.

I was confounded by the harsh reality of New York when I first moved here and found that I could find nothing that approximated what I had in mind when I thought of getting a burger. All I wanted was the modestly priced, compact and easily portable dish. If New York really has the best of everything like it believes, then it should be easy to nail down this incredibly simple thing.

Abesamis: What makes a classic West Coast-style burger superior to most burgers you’ll find in New York City?

Piacentini: It’s the same thing that makes many versions of things superior, which is going back to this idea that the burger isn’t this destination food that you’re trying to put all this ambition and energy into. The thing behind a really good burger like the one we do and the ones we grew up with is that it’s about the whole thing; every piece of it is just as important as the other. The sum of its parts need to create something that’s impossible to take apart.

Dauermann: The burger you tend to find on the West Coast is much less ambitious than a burger that you’ll find in New York. It’s a convenience food meant to be eaten on the go that’s small and portable. For the most part, when you get a burger in places like Los Angeles or Southern California, you’re getting an expected set of parts. It’s an established thing, just like how you know what to expect when you get a hot dog or slice of pizza in New York. Things go wrong in New York when someone decides they want to put their stamp on a burger with a bizarre condiment or oversized patty. All I want is the homogenous but also universally appealing burger.

Piacentini: That’s a great way to explain it. Burgers are to the West Coast what hot dogs and pizza are to New Yorkers – different geographical claims, and you know exactly what you’re going to get with each.

Abesamis: Tell me about the burger you serve at Stay Gold. What makes it, in your opinion, the best burger in New York City? How long did it take to develop?

Piacentini: It’s got a nice white bun with sesame seeds on it. It’s not too dense or crunchy on top, it’s just good and comfortably fits all the ingredients. We like to add Thousand Island dressing (though it doesn’t always have to have it) but never ketchup. A thin patty that’s been griddled so that it’s nice and crispy with its fat – not so thick that all you taste is meat or you ever have to take the temperature of it – crispy lettuce, tomato and raw onion; all those things in the proper order. If you’re going to add cheese, it’s always American.

Regarding how long it took to develop the burger, it depends on how long you count. We’ve been talking about developing this burger for 10 years. I’d say we made 20 iterations. It’s now the perfect level of restraint, and we’ve made sure there’s not too much of anything.

Dauermann: I’d say it was about two weeks of trial and error before it was dialed in with the correct bun and ingredient proportions. As for whether or not it’s the best burger – we haven’t had a better one. Is it the best burger in New York? We haven’t had all the “best” burgers, however it is the closest we have found that adheres to our memory of burgers that we’ve enjoyed and what we hope to eat in the future.

Abesamis: What was the inspiration for the food menu, and how does it complement the drink offerings?

Piacentini: The overarching goal of the food menu was to exceed people’s expectations. We wanted to have items that anyone could look at and have a clear expectation of what it was going to be, while bringing an unexpected quality to each dish. Everything on our food menu is executed with a level of care not always brought to those items, and the same thing goes for our drinks.