Daniel's Burger Restaurant Inspires Hundreds of Suggestions, One Jeremiad

Not the actual logo, we're afraid.Illustration: nymag.com

Nothing could have prepared us for the avalanche of suggestions that resulted from last Friday’s invitation to name Daniel Boulud’s new restaurant on the Bowery. The entries were overwhelmingly similar, with DBurger and Boulud Burger accounting for the majority. Come on, people! Do you think the intelligences behind the Dinex group were incapable of coming up with that on their own? Several readers suggested names invoking French burgers, with names like Juteux (“juicy”) or, as an homage to Pulp Fiction, Royale With Cheese. Multiple readers posited B³ for Boulud Bowery Burger, and reader Sarah Kimball even had a rough idea for a logo. Then there were the wild cards: Genevieve Bahrenburg’s True Boulud, which we liked, and Beza Lemma’s The Happy Patty, which we liked even more. (Our own entry, Bowery Dan’s Hamburger Hotel, was not eligible.)

But in the end, it was a scornful, dismissive non-entry that impressed us the most. Reader Robert B. Rogers wrote,

You want a real name for this place when it opens? It's going to be just like every other overpriced burger place in New York started by a chef who knows nothing about burgers. They'll use some hard artisan bread, a couple of cheese that don't belong on a burger, and in general completely destroy the concept of what a true American hamburger should be … Therefore I proclaim the name should be DoucheBurgery, as playful take on the term douche baggery. As I am sure it will be filled with those who would portray this term.

Since it wouldn’t be right to reward such bellicosity with a free meal, we are giving Sarah Kimball the prize for her added-value design idea and presenting a special award to Rogers: a DVD of George Motz’s documentary Hamburger America. Nobody with that kind of fire on behalf of our national sandwich should go unrewarded.