The Wagyu Beef Burger at Hall Merges New York and Japanese Cuisine

Chef Hiroki Odo uses a wagyu blend, sansho peppercorns, sake, and tamari to create this decadent burger.

“I thought it would be nice to make a hamburger that mixed New York and Japan,” says chef Hiroki Odo. Actually, he made six. At Hall, Odo’s “conceptual bar” in the Flatiron District, the limited menu features a selection of wagyu burgers, from a simple single cheeseburger to one topped with A5 wagyu steak.

Step by step, general manager Brian Saito walks through crafting Hall’s burgers. He starts with a blend of Sakura Wagyu chuck and A5 wagyu, finely grinding them and controlling just how much fat is in each patty. Then there’s the sauce, a combination of sansho peppercorns, “a perfect complement for the fattiness of the wagyu,” reduced in sake and tamari. It’s a sauce, Saito says, they also use at chef Odo’s titular kaiseki restaurant next door. All of it gets piled on buns made from the chef’s own recipe, “so their key point is a sense of unity.”

The entire Hall menu is in service of wanting to bring a variety of experiences to New York diners, says chef Odo, and to showcase all the cuisines Japan has to offer. But, he admits, multiple concepts in one space “isn’t the kind of restaurant you could open in Japan.” A cocktail and burger bar, in front of a chef’s counter, next to a kaiseki restaurant? That’s New York.

Watch the latest episode of Icons to see how Odo and Saito create one of New York’s best burgers.