CP Photo: Marce Johnson
Cooking the Super Burger in Eat-in Park's test kitchen
As Eaton Park turns 75 this year, the restaurant is celebrating its roots. Opened as Pittsburgh's first drive-in with a carhop, Eaton Park has “been making burgers since day one,” and the recipe for its signature double-decker sandwich, the Original Superburger, has remained the same. Improved since its beginnings as a Big Boy Burger, the Superburger has always featured two beef patties between three buns, finished with shredded lettuce, cheese, pickles and house-made “Sauce Supreme,” and topped with Heinz pickle slices.
But now, Eat Park is implementing one of the biggest menu changes in the company's history: It's bringing back fresh beef patties, instead of frozen, that are hand-pressed and grilled. The new preparation method will extend beyond the Superburger to all burgers served at Eat Park's 56 locations, in response to “evolving tastes and experiences that our customers are demanding,” according to an Eat Park press kit.
A menu change of this magnitude took more than a year of planning and preparation, much of it done in the test kitchen at Eat'n Park on Homestead's waterfront. Pittsburgh City Paper We were invited into the test kitchen to see how the fresh beef is prepared and to sample the new Super Burger.
CP Photo: Marce Johnson
John Flick launched the Superburger on June 14, 2024, at his Eton Park test kitchen.
The test kitchen, located behind the open restaurant, is helmed by Eton Park's Director of Menu Development John Flick and Culinary Support Specialist Joe Hull.
While it won't be exactly like Eat-In Park's regular backyard, the space will have all the same kitchen equipment “to accommodate everything,” Flick said. City Paper“It has to work within the system.”
The test kitchen also doubles as a restaurant where training videos and commercials are filmed, and Hal's handprint recently appeared in an advert promoting the new Superburger.
“It felt like a Hollywood movie set,” Flix says.
The galley kitchen layout, with auditorium-style seating on one side, allows visitors to observe and provide feedback.
“Anything that needs to be done to support the menu changes is done here,” Flick says.
Flick and Hull, both chefs at Eton Park for more than 30 years, said they were initially “nervous” about the new burger and were most concerned about supporting their kitchen staff.
“When you work in a kitchen, you have a set routine. [something]”It's ready to be flipped or completed,” Flick says. “It just takes a little bit of adjustment to learn a new skill.”
CP Photo: Marce Johnson
Joe Hull and John Flick of the Eat in Park Test Kitchen
The burger was first tested last fall at Eat & Park's Hello Bistro, where chefs were already working on pressing the patties fresh. Thinner burgers have been trending at restaurants in recent years, in part because of “faster turnover,” Flick said. In 2018, McDonald's also began an industry-wide switch to fresh beef (part of its “better ingredients” strategy), calling the change its biggest in 40 years.
Flick said that when Eaton Park revamped its cooking process to work with fresh beef, it started by “rethinking how we make burgers” so that, with a shorter cooking time, “everything is done at once, everything is hot and everyone is satisfied.”
Instead of grilling frozen patties, Flick and Hull toast the burger buns and add dressing first, and while frozen patties take more than six minutes to cook, fresh patties cook in half the time.
Pressing a burger patty just right is “tricky,” Flick said, because if you press it too hard, you squeeze out all the juices. Eat & Park's new burger isn't a smashburger, another industry trend, which Flick argues would end up with too crispy edges and be too flat, “which doesn't give you the burger experience you're looking for.”
As part of the development process, Eaton Park tested patties to determine the optimal ratio of thickness, cook time and quality. Ultimately, the restaurant custom-designed a press with stops so the patties would be pressed to the desired size. Hull, who says he's still learning the new cook time, leaves the parchment paper on the burgers after pressing them. “It preserves them a little bit. They're juicy and moist and not dry.”
CP Photo: Marce Johnson
Joe Hull, Culinary Support Specialist, Eaton Park
“We're aiming for a balance between getting a nice sear on the outside and still being able to taste the meat when you eat it,” Flick said, explaining that the new burger is cooked medium to medium-well.
Once the patties are cooked, Flick finishes the “assembly” step, being mindful of the weight, and quickly puts the burgers together.
“The fun thing about thin putty is you can stack it as high as you want,” Flick says.
Another burger on the Eat in Park menu, the Super Quadruple, has four hand-pressed patties on a double-decker bun and is selling “incredibly well” at the restaurant, Flick said.
When you mix all the burger ingredients together, timing is key.[the] The lettuce gets hot, [can] “It starts to fall apart,” Flick explains. “So we throw it out the window.[to] We will get it into the hands of our guests as soon as possible.”
CP Photo: Marce Johnson
Joe Hull grills burgers in the Eton Park test kitchen.
City Paper Photographer Mars Johnson and I sampled the new Original Superburger and Cheeseburger, which are loaded with tomatoes and seasoned with a special spice blend straight from the grill.
“This was… [another] “It's a big change for us because now we're slapping the seasonings right onto the patty,” Flick says.
Mars and I agreed that the Superburger tasted fresh and meaty, and had the same basic flavor profile as a McDonald's Big Mac (which is not a total coincidence). Inspired by Eat in Park's Original Big Boy Burger, McDonald's franchisees in the Pittsburgh area invented the “Big Mac Super Sandwich,” which was first served in Uniontown in 1967.
Both burger patties are pressed to size differently than the Smashburger, leaving the meat a little pink. Mars and I both liked the flavor of the cheeseburger, but Flick noted that it could become more widely adopted in the future. We hoped that the shift to fresh beef would signal a decline in processed foods in general.
Eat & Park CEO Geoff Broadhurst recently said: CP “What's old is new again,” he said of the Superburger's return to fresh beef.
CP Photo: Marce Johnson
John Flick launched the Superburger on June 14, 2024, at his Eton Park test kitchen.
While training staff, Mr. Flick sometimes visits the old Eaton Park restaurant, which has a basement that once contained coolers and other equipment used for mixing meat and cutting burger patties.
“The funny thing is, when I talk to people, they say, 'I don't know what this line on the floor is,'” Flick said. “Yes, there was a patty machine bolted to it.”
For Flick and Hull, revamping the burger represents an evolution rather than a return to the past.
With some fine-tuning over the past year, [it] It makes it easier to execute consistently and provide a great experience for your guests,” Flick said. “I think if something old is improved a little bit, tweaked a little bit, it becomes new again.”
