Asked if he planned to replicate the burger concept elsewhere, Lagasse said he didn’t yet know: “We’ll have to see how it goes.” As the burger generally ranks on surveys as America’s favorite food, it should go well.

Chef Lagasse joins other celebrity chefs who find that the margins are higher (and more fans are to be made) in selling burgers over foie gras…although Daniel Boulud has done both with his pioneering gourmet burger stuffed with shorts ribs and foie gras, available at NYC’s Bistro Moderne.

“The Piggie,” at DBGB Kitchen & Bar in New
York City, features a beef burger on Boston
lettuce topped by pulled pork, with jalapeño mayonnaise. Photo by T. Schauer © DBGB.

Other chefs with burger restaurant concepts include Bobby Flay, Hubert Keller and Laurent Tourondel. “Top Chef” contender Richard Blais’s menu at Atlanta’s Flip Burger Boutique includes 30 rotating burgers, with a daily choice of 8-10 beef burgers, three vegetarian burgers, three pork burgers, and three “alternative meats,” lamb, duck and venison. Numerous others, like Chef Boulud, have added gourmet burgers to their casual restaurant menus. Boulud’s recently-opened DBGB Kitchen & Bar in New York (a favorite of the NIBBLE staff) offers three kinds of gourmet burgers, one of which is pictured above, a happy marriage of burger, pulled pork and jalapeño on a Cheddar cornbread bun.

• Make better burgers at home with these burger-making tips.
• If cheeseburgers are your thing, check out these gourmet cheeseburger recipes.