La Cense = No Sense: La Cense Beef Truck Review

Recently, everyone got all a twitter about this truck and the burgers it peddles. I cynically looked at their website, and beheld the magic words "grass fed beef burger". Through tears of joy I read that the truck was within a reasonable walking distance from my office today. Sweet. Now I really, really, reeeeeally wanted to like this burger. I love the grass fed beef industry, and want to support anyone who has enough care and vision to raise their cows the way La Cense does. With absolutely no line at 12 noon, I ordered the standard burger (with cheese) and onions, no pickle, and a bottle of water.

Taste? No, sorry, fresh out.

The bun is good, light and fluffy; sturdy enough for a burger, without getting overly dense and compact. The sesame seeds are a nice touch. The onions are both great and terrible: They taste good, but they are the only thing you can taste on this battleship of bland that's about to set sail for a three hour tour of disappointment.

You want a pickle with that?

The cheese might be cheese, or could just be an edible napkin with a chewy texture. Seriously, if you're gonna go for the 95% oil processed "cheese", give me cheezewhiz, and let me enjoy the heady buzz of an MSG overdose and its salt lick satiety. Now, I love American processed cheese, so long as its real. Land o' Lakes makes a great one, as does Boar's Head. Both are available at you local deli counter, but not on this truck.

The biggest offense here is the meat. Now many reviewers are pointing to "overcooking" of the meat as the reason for its dryness and lack of beefy zip, but that's just wrong. I can understand the error coming from someone stuck in the flavor vacuum that is midtown; it's enough to force anyone's taste buds make a run for the hills.

Also, the "well it is made on a truck" excuse holds no water with me. If you cannot make a good burger on a truck, maybe you shouldn't be making burgers on a truck. Wow, that's so simple it's scary.

Looks tasty, huh? Well so does that plastic sushi in the window.

Made correctly, even a medium well burger should be juicy and delicious. Period. No excuses. Mine was actually nice and pink in the center, medium rare, and it still sucked; no flavor, dry, with a gross lack of texture and an annoying chewiness. Why? Over processing which inevitably leads to over packing, the busch league bane of the burger.

When beef is exposed to heat, its collagen proteins shrink and tighten. This can make your burger rubbery, dry, and well, tight. The easiest way to keep a burger from basically wringing itself out as it cooks is to start with a mildly coarse, loose grind. In order to really let the beef do the talking, it must be a nice blend of fat (this is the juicy) and good lean (this is the flavor) cuts, and it cannot be overground. Ever had a bowl of Pho? With beefballs? You could give those to a 5 year old and tell him they're superballs they bounce so well. It's because they're ground so fine (pulverized, actually) that when they are formed the proteins feel like they're riding the #4 train at rush-hour.

You see over processing leads to over packing; squished too tightly together before the heat makes it even tighter, the burger is doomed before it meets the griddle. No amount of searing, salt, fat or praying is gonna make that India rubber puck taste good. So really, in the end, the truck wasn't even the problem. Funny that. Now what to do, what to do...

My savior...

Yes, it was so bad I could not stoop to waste the caloric intake on it. I actually threw it in the trash.


Now normally La Cense would just get 0 Gastroliaison Bacon Strips for this offense to my belly, but they are a super high end, responsible and caring beef producer. I just don't get it. This burger is the culinary equivalent of spending six careful years on a painting, only to drag it behind a pickup truck on the way to the gallery. I had to make up a new award for this sad, sad excuse for a burger.

Gastroliaison's How Dare You Serve That Award

The Verdict: Avoid avoid avoid, don't even try it out of curiosity. I mean it, you'll be cranky.

This concludes Gastroliaison's review of the La Cense Beef Truck.