📍Paper Plate, New York City

Paper Plate is inside a food hall that anchors an office building containing a WeWork. It's a late 2010's concept that speaks to me. It also happens to be one of the few burger places in Long Island City. I walked in to meet a friend for a weekday lunch.

It's a huge space inside the Jacx & Co. food hall. There's a bar towards the right, an omakase counter upstairs, and tables of every shape and size in the main area. The restaurants have stalls around the perimeter. Paper Plate is on the left. You order at the kiosk.

They started in Smorgasburg doing a version of what In-n-Out makes. I've had that a few times before but this time they have something new. They have their version of an OKC-style burger. An OKC-style burger is smashed, usually very thin, and into a lot of onions. The onions end up half steamed and half burnt. Most of them also come with some burger sauce.

I got a side of crinkle-cut fries. They come with a type of jerk seasoning that I found light. The thick dipping sauce was also seasoned with the same flavors. Together it worked pretty well. If you're worried about the jerk spice overpowering the burger, don't worry.

The burger comes on a potato roll with two (or your choice) patties, onions, sauce, American cheese, pickles, and ketchup. The ketchup was a bold choice. I'm not sure it changed anything other than color. Many burger sauces use ketchup as a primary or key ingredient so this could be about ingredient optimization.

The onions are not smashed into the burger but are placed on top. OKC-style authenticity aside, the burger has a decent amount of onions. They're cut in rings, thicker than I've seen on other OKC-style burgers, and still have some bite to them. They're very evenly cooked, which doesn't happen with OKC-style burgers but by design.

On their Instagram, they mention they apply mustard to the beef before they cook it. This is supposed to help beef develop more of that crust. In-n-Out does this on their animal-style burgers. Paper Plate's OKC style has more crust than their regular burger.

Authentic OKC style or not, the burger comes together into a satisfying bite.

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