Burger News: goodburger--New York, NY

Dear Readers and fellow busters of burgers,


The press release, below, showed up in our inbox--courtesy of Ashley at AMP3.  We have not yet reviewed goodburger, so if anyone has tried this, please let us know.

For Immediate Release:

January 24^th, 2011

Tom Galis Knows How New Yorkers Eat

New York, NY— New York City restaurateur Tom Galis's goodburger chain is one of the city's favorite burger joints. His goodburger was recently voted one of the three best in New York City, but now he will be making a few changes to create, if possible, an even tastier goodburger with brighter and crisper green leaf lettuce, a thicker, juicier roma tomato, and a tastier bun. This is all part of goodburger’s ongoing mission to bring customers the best inexpensive burger in NYC, as well as other great, fresh foods.

So who is the man behind goodburger?  Aside from New York food industry insiders, few know Tom Gialamboukis (Tom Galis as he is popularly known.) Yet his is a quintessentially New York success story, rooted in every aspect of the city’s fast food and quality casual food business. And he, more than many realize, has played an important role in shaping the way that New Yorkers eat. In addition to being the proprietor of the popular and successful goodburger chain (yes, “Home of the Goodburger”), if you’ve eaten in a Café Metro, Oxford Café, Food Merchants or Food Exchange, chances are that it’s one that Tom Galis created. Tom has opened some thirty eating establishments in the city over the past dozen years; he named Fresh and Co., founded Crave Sandwiches, and recently brought Peter’s Since 1969 Rotisserie Chicken to Manhattan. Just to firmly establish his New York City street cred beyond any doubt, Tom got his start selling hot dogs from his family’s cart in Times Square.

With the launch of goodburger in 2005, Tom helped kick off the current frenzy of quality inexpensive burgers. The New York Times and others raved, and goodburger began a rapid expansion with a total of six restaurants now open in Manhattan. As he has developed and expanded his burger domain Tom Galis has maintained strong opinions about how to cook a great burger and how to run a great New York burger joint.

Tom may grind his own beef, but he doesn’t mince words when it comes to how a burger should be cooked. “Cooking on a open flame the way we do it at goodburger is the only way to get the best taste from a burger,” he says. “Plus it melts off fat that people don’t need to eat while allowing that fat to flavor and tenderize the burger. I just don’t get people who insist that griddle frying burgers adds flavor. Sure that adds fat, those burgers are cooking in puddles of fat, and that imparts a different greasy flavor, but it’s not proper beef flavor. Also, those mashed-on-the-grill burgers are too thin to be cooked to order the way we do. When you ask for ‘medium’ at goodburger, that’s what you get.”

Of course the primary reason for Tom Galis’s success with goodburger is the quality of the food and the thought he puts into presenting what he and many fans believe is not just a good burger, but the best inexpensive burger in New York City. Tom knows that it all starts with the ingredients and he sources, selects, butchers and grinds his Hereford beef at Pat La Frieda’s famous facility. All ingredients in his restaurants are as fresh as possible and everything is made to order: they don’t even own a microwave oven. The shakes are made the old fashioned way with real ice cream, and goodburger even makes its own root beer, and lemonade in-store, as well as good old-fashioned egg creams, Lime Rickey’s and Arnold Palmers.

Tom’s concern for offering foods that are of the highest quality, and prepared in the most intelligent way carries through goodburger’s entire menu. Their grilled chicken and turkey burgers are made only from fresh antibiotic-free Bell & Evans poultry. Their veggie burgers and crabby patties are made from fresh veggies and fresh crab. Tom even cooks his shoestring fries in 100% pure canola oil (and did so before it became law), and all the goodburger restaurants are green certified.

Goodburger is a truly New York City owned and operated business, it recently finished in third place in the Midtown Lunch poll of Best Hamburgers Under $10 in New York, behind only national chain, 5 Guys, and media darling Danny Meyer’s nationally-expanding Shake Shack. “We’ll stand out on taste, and we compete on price,” says Tom Galis, “and we think that will speak for itself. We intend to catch them and end up first next year!”

For more information about Tom Galis and goodburger please visit: www.goodburgerny.com.  For any press inquiries please contact Ashley Lutzker at AMP3 Public Relations via 646.827.9594 or goodburger@amp3pr.com.