By Blake Royer 
It's difficult, sometimes, to make Brunch plans. They usually happen in a haze at 1:30 in the morning, when everyone's hungry, a bit tired, and getting very sentimental. "Oh, let's all wake up and have a big intimate meal together tomorrow!" It's a way of ensuring, in hopeful and vague way, that the night never has to end--just after a short nap, we'll all get togeth...
I was out for a "guys night," which is what happens when your girlfriend goes out with her friends and you're expected to go out with exact same people you always do. But when your friends are a fellow paupered chef and Jason, guys night doesn't quite mean poker and beer. Instead, we all met at the little restaurant that was getting some big press: the Good Fork. There is a top-hatted fello...
On Saturday morning, at the bright and early hour of noon, my phone began ringing. I vaguely remembered excited pronouncements the evening before about going for a bike ride out to Red Hook to visit the infamous ballfields , where soccer and baseball games unfold throughout the weekend, and outdoor food vendors set up shop on Bay St. to serve cheap, fresh food from south of the border (all...
It saddens me to point out that Schnack has closed. What is detailed below is a great restaurant. Hopefully they will reopen someday.
Like many, many people this week, Blake and I had better things to do. He's living the good life traveling around Northern Europe right now, eating voisilmapulla and trying to get around in Estonia with only a passable pronunciation of three words. A...
Pop Burger
60 9th Ave, b/w 14th and 15th.
Distance from Shake Shack: 0.81 miles
Travel Time: 24 minutes
This place is way too hip for its own good, and you could walk by its meatpacking district location a couple of times before you noticed that it’s not just a club. In fact, there’s just a tiny blue “pop” stuck on the door and that’s all--incognito i...
New York Burger Co.
303 Park Ave. South
Travel Time: 2 minutes
When the grease fumes clear on this little quest for Shake Shack Alternatives , there is really only one place that deserves the mantle, and that is the New York Burger Co. A block away from the shack, NY Burger Co. provides the shortest walk, shortest line, and shortest wait, which all transla...
Bruce’s Burger
33th and 7th Ave.
Distance from Shake Shack: 0.79 miles
Travel Time: 23 minutes
Decked out in full 50's dinner kitsch, Bruce's Burger tries to conjure up the good times of the care free suburbs in the middle of Midtown chaos. It's billed in neon as a drive-in, which of course is impossible considering it doesn't even butt onto a street, being t...
American Burger
100 W 32nd St
Distance from Shake Shack: 0.53 miles
Travel Time: 16 minutes
Once I'd scanned both New York Magazine's and Village Voice's online restaurant section a few times, it was time to delve into some of the less charted and less proofread parts of the web. That usually involves a good Google scan and then devolves into hour lon...
Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop
174 Fifth Ave, at 22nd st.
Distance from Shake Shack: 0.05 miles
Travel Time: 2 minutes
You want close to Shake Shack? How about half a block from Madison Square Park? Charmingly vintage, Eisenberg’s is run by a big friendly guy who takes every order and scrawls it on a paper bag, sending it down to the far end of the restaurant...
Blue 9 Burger
92 Third Ave
Distance from Shake Shack: 0.61 miles
Travel Time: 18 minutes
Of all the burgers around the area, this one probably comes the closest to replicating the style of the Shake Shack. They are both in the same vein as the West Coast burger staple, In-N-Out Burgers, which are hyper-fresh and vegetable laden. Everything is made to order,...