Duffy's - Forest Avenue

I've heard from quite a few people that Duffy's on Forest Avenue has the best hamburgers on Staten Island. Tonight, husband and I finally made the trip to Duffy's and had dinner.

The awning outside their building proudly states that they have the best burgers on Staten Island. That's a pretty confident statement to make, so we were very hopeful that we would find this to be true. Duffy's is a tiny bar with several tables, and the place was jammed. We took a bar table, so didn't need to wait very long.

I knew I was going to have a burger, so I didn't really spend any time looking at the menu. It took a while for the waitress to come take our order. They have Franziskaner Beer so I ordered that, along with a cheeseburger, medium, with fried onions and mushrooms. They didn't have mushrooms, so I just got the onions. Husband ordered a cheeseburger, rare.

It took a little while to get our food, but not too bad considering the crowd inside. The burgers were served on an english muffin. The fried onions were fantastic - nice and caramelized; an excellent flavor. The burgers were perfectly cooked to order - mine a barely noticeable hint of pink, my husband's a beautiful bright pink center. A great, juicy and flavorful burger.

I didn't need to ask for mustard; they keep a bottle right on the table with the ketchup. I liked that!

Overall, these burgers were terrific. I give this a 4 burger rating - Top of the Line!

NOT a Burger ...

But the best tasting Chili we have had ... in a long time. The recipe is from Tyler Florence and the foodnetwork.com website. This is actually the second batch of this chili we have made. And this batch is much better than the first. Mainly because I did not make it as HOT as the first batch.

The recipe calls for 1 chipolte chili pepper in adobo sauce. You can buy those little cans in the mexican food aisle of the grocery store. They are HOT. The recipe also calls for one-half jalapeno pepper. Well, I had the great idea to add 3 of the chipolte chilis since I did not have a jalapeno pepper. Was that ever a BIG MISTAKE! We burned for a while after finishing eating. The flavor of the chili was fantastic ... but just too darn hot.

So today we made the same recipe, but this time I stuck to the exact quantities, and what a great chili it made. We are trying very hard to save it for the big game tomorrow, but it tasted really good ... we may have to make another batch.