An excellent burger at Borough and an annoying New York Sun crossword puzzle

Last night I decided to check out Borough for my birthday dinner with my family, primarily due to the fact that New York Magazine ranked it as one of their favorite new burger places of 2007. My goal is to hit every spot on that list, although it's going to be an uphill battle for the other burger joints, because Borough set the bar pretty fucking high.

That's right, Borough's bacon cheeseburger not only lived up to the hype; it surpassed it. In addition to being one of the best burgers I've eaten in quite some time, the entire restaurant was spectacular. The food aside from the burger was also outstanding (I had the matzoh ball soup, fried calamari and some fried pickles), the tap was made up exclusively of microbrews from New York State (I tried the Checker Cab Blonde Ale, which was delicious), the ambiance and decor were perfect, our waiter was impeccable and the entire staff was incredibly gracious, with the hostess and manager coming by several times to ensure we were enjoying our meal and also seeming genuinely excited that I had chosen to celebrate my birthday at their restaurant. In fact, they even brought out three separate dessert plates on the house at the very end.

Now that's how you treat your patrons. It baffles me that someone could have had such a negative experience here, as everyone in my party loved the restaurant. If anyone reading this is looking for a great recommendation, you simply can't go wrong with Borough.

As far as the second point of business of this blog post, I call bullshit on yesterday's New York Sun crossword puzzle. I expect my Thursday puzzles to be challenging, but not full of theme answers that I don't even have a prayer of hazarding guesses for. Who under the age of 50 not only knows anything about Katharine Hepburn's film career, but can recall the first and last names of several characters she played in movies that came out 800 years ago?? Sure, you could make the argument that I should have been able to deduce the long answers from the across fill, but even those clues were causing me fits. Altogether a frustrating puzzle for my birthday, and I generally expect more relevant content from Mr. Gordon. At least Shortz had my back yesterday and gave me something reasonable for a Thursday.