From the desk of Luis Carrión on Tuesday, June 16th 2009 at 17:35

BURGER CITY: A DOWNTOWN BURGER

Downtown restaurants have a way of creating loyalty among the throngs of office workers seeking a bite during the lunch rush. If you happen to work (or live, for that matter) in this part of the city, and you enjoy a good burger, chances are you’ll eventually become a loyal customer at Burger City.

Tammy Jorde works around the corner at Pima Flood Control, and is typical of the office-worker crowd that ventures into the streets at lunch on any given weekday. “Because we want a basic burger… that’s why we come here,” she said when we asked what brought her here. According to her this is the only place in the downtown area where you can get a decent burger, and she appreciates not having to drive all the way to the Wildcat House.

On most days it’s Amanda Fogelberg who directs the frenetic pace in the kitchen at Burger City. “There are high end burgers, and there are low end burgers,” she says, “but we’re trying to do something a little bit different.” What is “different” about these burgers are the ingredients. “We try to make it a little bit more unusual, like prosciutto or asiago are a couple of things you normally wouldn’t see… panko bread crumbs on a hamburger are pretty uncommon.”

Burger City is also “uncommon” in that it operates as part of the revenue stream for a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Artists. Tig Collins is the executive director of the non-profit agency called Artfare, and she says that this restaurant is a creative business enterprise designed to help and promote artists and their work.“We provide safe, affordable art-type space, equipment, instruction for a broad range of (artists) 24 hours a day,” she says. “All of our employees are actually artists trying to earn a living at their work. As we know it is a difficult time for art works to be sold, so to offset the expenses they work here at the restaurant.”

Everyone working here at Burger City is an artist of some sort. There are photographers, painters, sculptors, and chefs… all working as part of the overall mission of Artfare. However, this is hardly noticeable when you walk into the restaurant, where the burger, and the artistic preparation take center stage.

“I love the interior, I love the decorations, and I love the fact that it’s helping out the arts,” says John Allison. He was visiting Burger City on his lunch break from his Pima County office job around the corner. “And I love the fact that it only has hamburgers on the menu.” He also says that even though he’s pushing fifty he never really got rid of “that hamburger fixation” and he’s here in his lifelong quest for the “perfect burger.”

Perfection in a burger seems like an honest enough pursuit, and that is the task at hand in the kitchen. “I like to see the creative side of what you can do with food,” Fogelberg says as she sculpts the finishing touches of a Zorba Burger. “Either present it in a way that maybe they haven’t seen or they haven’t tasted yet.”
You can watch the story on Arizona Illustrated on Thursday.

[burger2]: http://media.azpm.org/master/img/bdy_img/BURGER2.jpg "burger2 "

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