Stand Makes Me Stand In The Place Where I Am

Have you ever had a truly forgettable meal? A meal that makes you scratch your head when someone asks, “Have you eaten at X?” Well that’s how I feel about the meal I had a few weeks ago at Stand, the new burger place on… on… see, I’ve totally forgotten where it is. I think it’s near Union Square. Regardless, the inside looks like a forgettable cafeteria from a forgettable job you had during a forgettable period in your life. When you finish reading this post, you’ll probably forget I ever wrote it.

I mean, look at this hamburger:

Now close your eyes.

What was that a picture of?

You don’t remember! I rest my case.

But seriously, I don’t remember if the meat was rare or juicy, I don’t remember if there were any toppings, I don’t remember if I liked the bun. I know Adam Kuban hated the bun, but that’s only because Adam wrote memorably about it.

I was there with Ed Levine (who, I should say, is indeed a memorable person) and they brought out different drinks for us to try. These three weren’t terribly memorable:

I drank the one on the right, which was like a ginger lemonade with mint. It was pretty good. The other two were made of fruit, but don’t ask me what kind of fruit because I don’t…(audience responds: “Remember!”)

However, the dessert drinks did have one memorable contender:

No, not the celery soda with strawberry ice cream you see on the right; or the salted peanut (blech!) milkshake you see in the middle. It’s the toasted marshmallow milkshake you see on the left. That was truly awesome: it transformed all the joys of a toasted marshmallow into liquid form. And the marshmallows on the side of the glass were big and puffy and perfectly brown.

In conclusion, then, as you can tell by the title of the post, I’m not running out to eat at Stand again. But if I did, I’d definitely get the toasted marshmallow milkshake: in a forgettable meal, it was the only bit worth remembering.