City's priciest is big, meaty and exotic - Saab Ken

Super-sized and super-expensive, the DC Burger at Vancouver Diva at the Met restaurant, at a stratospheric $34, is the priciest in town

And what do you get for a $34 burger? House-made cheese bun, five ounces of ground flank steak, two ounces of foie gras, two ounces of a mixture of short-rib meat and portobello and oyster mushrooms, truffle aioli, tomato and shallot fondue, along with gaufrette potatoes (waffle-cut) and tempura Cipollini onion rings.

It's a status burger -- the more designer, the more expensive, the better.

The trend started in 2001 with the DB Burger at New York's DB Bistro Moderne, one of the city's hot spots run by celebrity chef Daniel Boulud.

The Guinness Book of Records has declared his burger the most expensive in the world. It ka-chings in at $29 US, or about $40 Cdn. During truffle season, between December and March, the bistro offers the DB Burger Royale, which costs $50 US, or $99 US for the double-truffle version.

The DB Burger created a "burger war," with other restaurants offering even more expensive burgers with designer ingredients. Diva at the Met freely admits its burger -- created by and named after its chef Damon Campbell -- was inspired by Daniel Boulud.

"The DB Burger created a splash and everyone loved it," Boulud's publicity manager Gail Simmons says from New York City.

"There's a reason for our prices. It has about 40 different ingredients. When a steak house started making a burger with Kobe beef for over $40, Daniel thought, well, it's truffle season so we'll add a layer of truffles, and thus began what the press likes to call the burger wars. It was the busiest week of my life." (Fresh truffles cost the restaurant about $350 US a pound, she says.)

Surprisingly, Diva's DC Burger is mostly ordered by women. The restaurant has been selling three to five DC Burgers a day since it started offering them about a week ago.

"It's been all women. No men," says publicist Judy Ahola, a petite woman who's tried it herself. "Um, I ate probably three-quarters of it. It was delicious and I really tried to plow through it."

Asked about the calorie count, she replies honestly: "It's certainly higher than the Big Mac."

Marlee Wright-Elles, a fine wine consultant for Mark Anthony Wine Merchants, is a fan, too. "When the flavours combined, it was just amazing," she says. "I ate it with a knife and fork, though, because if I put it together, my mouth wouldn't have fit around it.

"I thought the presentation was lovely and I would have liked to have eaten the whole thing but I might have fallen asleep in the afternoon. I finished about three-quarters of it."

Asked why she chose it, she said, "it sounded amazing when it was described."

The famous DB Burger at DB Bistro Moderne contains three ounces of shredded short rib meat, preserved truffles, foie gras inside seven ounces of ground sirloin steak between a parmesan and poppy-seed bun. It's served with pommes frites or pomme souffle.

Says Diva at the Met restaurant manager Robert Herman: "The Diva kitchen has a playful side to their repertoire. . . . The food trend of remaking classics and adding a touch of the restaurant's personality is alive and well."

Copyright The Vancouver Sun 2004

Contributed by SaabKen