Wall Street Burger Shoppe

By Stephen Diamond, Jr. and Cristina Alesci



Wall Street Burger Shoppe, a restaurant that opened several weeks ago in the Financial District, offers a bar snack curiously titled “Roasted Marrow Bones.” This $12 nibble may have you wondering whether you’ve just stepped into the world of Fred Flintstone, where a certain drive-in movie theater served brontosaurus ribs big enough to flip a Stone Age car on its side.
The restaurant is housed on the first two floors of a four-story nineteenth century brick building near Wall Street. The ground floor, glistening with white subway tile walls and bare metal display cabinets, evokes an elegant meat locker, while nickeled Art Deco bar stools and a long white lunch counter festooned with glass ketchup bottles and straw containers hark back to a simple Prohibition-era diner. The nostalgia continues in the upstairs dining room, where the walls are lined with small hexagonal black and white tiles arranged in a diamond pattern. In the center of each diamond is a round brass insert that, depending on the amount of Six Points Ale you’ve consumed, resembles a skull, a smiling face, or neither. The lower half of the walls, as well as the tables, are fashioned from wide planks stamped with Burger Shoppe’s logo in black. A modest side bar, together with low-wattage lamps in ceramic wall fixtures and suspended mason jars, help give the upstairs saloon a raffish charm.
The menu, here is all about the meat. Appetizers include short rib pudding ($15), a delicious hash of pulled short rib braised in red wine and served with char-grilled bread. Although chewier than expected for short rib, the hardier texture was a bonus, allowing us more time to savor its toothsome flavor. Then there are the aforementioned roasted marrow bones, which in the words of Heather Tierney, one of Burger Shoppe’s owners, “are pure decadence.” Four center-cut veal bones are accompanied by toast and a cooked onion relish. This rich dish is not for everyone and, truth be told, we were not crazy about it. The marrow was not easy to extract and, once withdrawn, overwhelmed the onion relish and toast.
Burger Shoppe’s entrees include three kinds of burgers: the Shoppe Burger ($12), the Barroom Burger ($16), and a Kobé beef burger ($150). The Shoppe plate is actually two mid-sized burgers and are everything that a classic hamburger ought to be. (A single is available for $6). The beef is ground daily by Ottomanelli’s Meat Market in Greenwich Village and the freshness is evident in its hearty flavor. Charred on the outside and moist within, medium rare arrives not a touch over- or underdone. With cheese on top and fries on the side, this is an enticing value.
For those wishing to dine in first class, the Barroom Burger is a larger version of the Shoppe, topped with gruyère cheese, sautéed mushrooms and onions.
The Kobe burger exists, presumably, for that rare burger aficionado who owns his or her own jet, and we shall leave it to them to review it. If it is as well executed as its less opulent brethren (and we have every reason to believe it would be), they shall not be disappointed.
Wall Street Burger Shoppe also serves grilled chicken breast sandwiches ($7) for those calories counters and, for those who prefer their red meat whole, New York strip steak ($18) and the perennial steakhouse quartet of char-grilled dry filet with hash browns, creamed spinach and tomato-onion salad. Vegetarians are also thrown a bone in the form of a mushroom burger ($14), a lightly breaded portobello mushroom sandwich topped with cheese, lettuce and tomatoes, served with fries.
For residents of the Financial District who still feel they are living in the culinary equivalent of the Stone Age, the arrival of Wall Street Burger Shoppe is enough to make them cry “yabba-dabba-doo!”


Wall Street Burger Shoppe
30 Water Street
(between Broad Street and Coenties Slip)
212-425-1000
Mon – Sat: 11:00am– Midnight
Sunday: Closed (D’oh!)

Cost for Dinner: $16-25 per person, depending on drinks and exclusive of Kobé burgers.