The plaintiffs attorneys immediately objected on grounds of relevancy in a trial trying to determine whether the Dupont burger joint is, legally, a private nuisance.

Judge John M. Mott promptly stepped in and suggested it wouldn't be out of place for Steptoe to contact the government to seek remedies for a situation that it deemed a nuisance. But Mott wondered if Adler was trying to make a different point, perhaps that Steptoe was being "heavy handed" toward its neighborhood. Adler took that opening and ran with it.

"This was a coordinated and well-thought out and detailed...I'm going to say crusade" against Rogue States, Adler said to Mott in the bench trial.

Adler proceed to get plaintiff attorney Deborah Baum or Falcone to acknowledge that Steptoe had contacted the following people or agencies once the law firm decided Rogue States was the source of its problems: Jack Evans, Mayor Adrian Fenty, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, the D.C. Fire Department, the D.C. Health Department, the Golden Triangle BID, and even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Then Adler asked Falcone if Steptoe pulled Rogue State's certificate of occupancy permit to see if the restaurant was operating properly.  Falcone testified that Steptoe did.

Falcone also said under oath that he had established a monitoring group to be the "eyes and ears" for Steptoe on the burger-fumes front. Falcone said he either requested or just assumed certain people on every floor of the Stepotoe building would serve as reporters, noting any incidences of perceived burger odor.

Finally, Adler asked Falcone is there were ever incidences when someone reported smelling burgers fumes at Steptoe but he could not confirm them with his own nostrils.

"Yes," Falcone said. But then he added under cross-exam, "I really don't have a great sense of smell." He also noted that sometimes 10 or 15 minutes may have elapsed from the report to his investigation.

File this under Fightin' Words.

Burger-meister Josh Ozersky posted this on his Twitter account earlier today:

Also: Five Guys is as bad a burger as there is. Their fans are basically the fast-food equivalents of Juggalos. I don't get it.

For the uninitiated (like me, until five minutes ago when I Googled the term), Juggalos are the rabid followers of Insane Clown Posse, the ultra-profane Detroit rap duo. Folks have compared Juggalos to gang members. Phoenix New Times wrote this about Juggalos in its area:

Metrocenter is one of Phoenix's two main Juggalo hangouts; the other being the Monstar Shop at Camelback Road and 35th Avenue. Mall security, shopkeepers, and other kids revile Juggalos, and it's easy to see why: They're grubby, self-proclaimed white trash with lip rings, baggy black jeans, chain wallets, and dirty goatees. Many are un- or under-employed. They smoke poorly constructed rollies to the stub and yell curse words at passing cars.

Congratulations, Five Guys fans. You've just been compared to violent, under-employed slacker kids who love to drink Faygo soda. If I had to guess, I say Ozersky was trying to imply that Five Guys fans are like mindless gang members who pledge allegiance to cultural crap.

Well, I have to hand it to Ozersky. He's certainly following his own advice.

Rogue States owner/chef Raynold Mendizabal and his landlord have tabled a plan to build an expensive venting system to reroute the Dupont Circle burger joint's beefy fumes directly to the roof.  It was apparently the only option that would appease Steptoe & Johnson, the neighboring law firm that had sued Rogue States and its landlord over the burgery exhaust drifting into their offices.

But fear not, Mendizabal hasn't given up. The chef, who has an advanced degree in math, is falling back on his skills in logic to get him out of this stinky mess. He's conducting some environmental tests to prove that Rogue States is no longer generating any greasy stench.

His plan is two-fold, Mendizabal told Y&H yesterday. First, he plans to install even more aggressive filters over his grill at Rogue States. He has also invested in a more aggressive maintenance plan for the scrubbing system he installed earlier to appease the plaintiffs and judge (to no avail). He estimates that between the two new approaches, he's sunk about $60,000 into saving his business.

Before and after he puts the new filters in place, Mendizabal plans to run some tests of the fumes coming from his vents. He'll conduct one before he installs the filters and another one after. Mendizabal's hope is that the second test will show there is no longer a measurable stench coming from his vents.

The stink, he says, is key at this point. The pricey scrubber he installed earlier has already eliminated the smoke from his vents, but there is still some burger juiciness lingering in the air.

"There is no smoke coming out," Mendizabal says. "There is smell now."

The tests, Mendizabal hopes, will move this ongoing battle out of the emotional realm of employees crying to the judge about smelling like an all-beef patty and into the realm of science. He hopes the judge will see that he has done everything in his power, short of building the venting system to the roof (which his landlord doesn't want), and will allow him to remain open until the Oct. 4 trial, which will decide if Rogue States really does present a nuisance to the burger-saturated lawyers next door.

Time is also an enemy for Mendizabal right now. He has only 'til Sept. 24 to get those new filters in place and run meaningful tests. That's the date that Mendizabal has to show the judge that he has followed the order to abate the burger stench.

"The judge is the wild card," Mendizabal says.

Not even the lobster truck could compete with Five Guys

Last week was one for the record books, thanks to the baffling whims of the interwebs. A four-paragraph item about Five Guys topping the hamburger category in the 2010 Zagat fast food survey went viral, generating tens of thousands of hits and causing our poor little servers at City Paper to beg for mercy.

Because of that item, traffic to the Young & Hungry blog broke all previous records. Take that Red Hook Lobster Pound truck!

The top five from last week:

1. Five Guys Makes the Best Fast-Food Burger in the Country
2. Red Hook Lobster Pound Truck Gets Rolling Today
3. R.J. Cooper to Open an Alleyway, All-Tasting Menu Restaurant in Mount Vernon Square
4. D.C. Beer Week Starts Friday: What's In Store?
5. Lobster Truck Has 'Em Hooked Already

Photo by Kim Chi Ha

Little did I know when I walked into Shake Shack last week in Miami — the first non-New York outlet in Danny Meyer's budding burger empire — that I was getting a preview of things to come in D.C.  But while I was away, Washington Business Journal's Missy Frederick reported that Meyer will open a Shake Shack in the former Fuddruckers space off Dupont Circle.

Some have suggested that the last thing we need in D.C. is another burger joint, and I'd be inclined to agree with that position — if I hadn't sampled the burgers myself.

From my initial tasting, I'd dare say that Meyer's joint is doing the Five Guys concept better than Five Guys. The Shack's 80-20 patty of freshly ground beef — which A Hamburger Today claims is a mix of sirloin, chuck, and brisket — is simply griddled and topped with American cheese, lettuce, two slices of ripe plum tomatoes, and a secret sauce (which this enterprising writer tried to recreate at home).

The Shake Shack in Miami

The first thing that stands out about the Shack burger is its appearance. The sandwich is so vibrant with color — neon orange! ruby red! forest green! golden brown! — that it looks like something a food stylist would prepare for a magazine shoot.  I was mesmerized by its sheer, sexy all-American, all-beef glamor — and I still am every time I look at the picture I snapped above.

Fortunately, looks aren't everything with the Shack burger. Its flavors are just as vibrant. The fresh ingredients are obviously a key element, but so is Shake Shack's grilling technique. The cooks clearly know not to play with their meat. The fat is allowed to render onto the griddle without undue spatula manipulations, which lets the grease crisp and flavor the exterior of the patty. Without that fatty crust, the burger would be little more than a tired, gray disc of beef, reliant upon the toppings to provide flavor.

But don't overlook the joint's namesake shakes, either, which are hand-spun and come in a limited number of flavors, none of them (thank God) too idiotically exotic. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Z-Burger, and your ridiculously long shake list, most of which, I'd venture to guess, are flavored artificially.) We tried the chocolate and salted caramel shakes, and they were so rich and delicious and naturally flavored that we dared not finish them.

We still had to don our swimsuits, after all.

So say the voters in the 2010 Zagat fast-food survey, who rated the Five Guys burger ahead of such iconic patties as those at In-N-Out Burger and McDonald's. Zagat raters also liked Five Guys fries well enough to place them second in the survey, right behind the golden spuds at the Golden Arches.

All of this bodes well for the ever-sprawling Five Guys chain, which launched with a single store in 1986 in Arlington. Well, it bodes well until you consider these two factors:

• That In-N-Out Burger has only 249 outlets, mostly located in the West, compared to more than 600 Five Guys stores dotted all across the country.
• That In-N-Out Burger actually won the Top Food category among "large chains," which are those "with up to 5,000 U.S. locations entering into the 2010 fiscal year." Five Guys finished fourth in this category.

Last time Y&H checked, both Five Guys and In-N-Out Burger essentially serve burgers and fries, and little else. The contradiction here among the survey results is almost impossible to reconcile — and points out how little importance we should place on them.

The question of the day is whether or not Ray's Hell Burger, the prez's preferred patty, will be opening a D.C. location at CityVista. Prince of Petworth, as is our liege's habit, teases us with such a rumor.

But DCist, you know, actually did some reporting and asked owner Michael Landrum if he's planning an expansion. He waffles on the subject. "While Landrum did not outright deny the possibility of a City Vista Ray's location, he told DCist that he regularly fields offers from a number of developers," wrote Jamie R. Liu.

Personally, I'd call Landrum for further clarification, but I don't have the time right now for a 45-minute conversation. More to come on this subject, no doubt.

When it comes to the "perfect" hamburger, Josh Ozersky doesn't mince words. He prefers the simple, American-cheese charms of a lean ground-chuck burger at Veselka in the East Village. It's a nice counter-intuitive choice, more down-market than the gourmet burgers that get all the media attention.

But I wonder if Ozersky's just adopting a common-man shtick at the expense of flavor? An 85-percent lean burger just isn't going to have the flavor of, say, a BGR: The Burger Joint patty, which seems to have as much fat as a sausage.

Discuss.

Video courtesy of Chow.com.

BGR: The Burger Joint

4827 Fairmont Ave., Bethesda (301) 358-6137

106 North Washington St., Alexandria (703) 299-9791

3129 Lee Highway, Arlington (703) 812-4705

1514 Connecticut Ave. NW (202) 299-1071

I duly noted his irony and insult, but told him all the same that I had to go and write up my blog item. Well, this morning, look who made the front page of the New York Times? (Not that you can see it well in the screen capture at left, but here's a link to the front page.)

I suspect Mr. Landrum would say that this only proves the collective drop in standards across all media. Or would you, Mr. Landrum?