cover image The Burger Meisters: America's Best Chefs Give Their Recipes for America's Best Burgers Plus the Fixin's

The Burger Meisters: America's Best Chefs Give Their Recipes for America's Best Burgers Plus the Fixin's

Marcel Desaulniers. Simon & Schuster, $20 (144pp) ISBN 978-0-671-86538-2

Working in cahoots with more than 40 graduates of the Culinary Institute of America, chef Desaulniers (himself a Culinary Institute alumnus) visits and revisits the humble burger in this compact and amusing book. Jenifer Lang, for example, owner of New York City's Cafe des Artistes, suggests hamburger a la Lindstrom--a rich, Scandinavian-influenced concoction calling for beets, potatoes, fried onions and dilled sour cream. Carolyn Berghoff, a Chicago caterer whose family has been well known in that city for generations of cooking, serves up the Chicago beer burger. Other hamburger accents include Italian; American Southern; and even a ``rabbit burger'' (contributed by Robert Dickson of Charleston, S.C.). The opportunities are lavish and beguiling, if sometimes a bit rococo. (June)