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Michael Kornick opened his acclaimed Chicago fine-dining restaurant mk in 1998. He also serves as a restaurant consultant and as chef/partner in N9NE Group, which operates high-end restaurants and clubs in Las Vegas, Chicago and Dallas. He and partner David Morton soon will open DMK Burger Bar on Chicago’s north side. The restaurant will begin with a dozen burger creations (see the DMK menu here), truffled fries, shakes and house-made cherry soda. Kornick spoke with BurgerBusiness.com about the popularity of burgers, how to make a lumpy shake and why fine-dining isn’t the way to go right now.

Are you still confident about an early November opening?
Well, it might be Oct 29, 30, 31 or Nov 1. I’m not sure I want to open on Halloween, but my accountant keeps telling me the earlier the better.

You’ve been involved in fine dining for a decade. How long have you thought about doing something more down-market like DMK?
Oh, I wrote this business plan in 2002. Then it was a little more focused on burgers, shakes, fries, custard; that sort of thing. But we had E. coli and mad-cow disease in ’03. I opened four places in California in ’04. Then from June of ’06 to March of ’07 I opened seven places with N9NE Group. So I got a little sidetracked.
    Then early in 2008 I decided to do it again and my partner and I started working on it. We had a space that was supposed to be [available] in ’09 but the landlord went bust and one thing led to another and the space went away. It took us to July [2009] to resign a lease, so here we are, taking occupancy in a new building on Oct. 1 and trying to get open by Nov. 1.

Did you feel especially antsy to get this going because the niche is so hot?
There’s been a flurry of burger places opening in Chicago, mostly fast service but a couple of other ones, too. Todd English and Thomas Keller and Emeril are all opening burger places. Laurent Tourondel [chef-owner of BLT Burger] is showing that he want to keep growing. So there’s certainly been an interest in our opening as soon as possible.
     But I think the timing is fine. Burgers aren’t going away. They’ve been around a long time.

A lot of upscale burger joint pride themselves on build-your-own service or on a long list of options. You’re planning to open with just a dozen burgers, although they’re pretty intriguing and out of the ordinary. How did you decide on this menu?
The burgers came from a lot of soul searching and reflection about what I don’t like about contrived burgers. I tried to use flavors in the same way I do at mk: using flavors that work together. So, for example, the idea of huevos rancheros and green chiles and eggs is the inspiration for the roasted Hatch green chile burger with a fried egg.

You’re primarily grass-fed-beef burgers, but you have a turkey and a lamb burger, too.
Initially, I was thinking it would be beef, bison and turkey. We’ll have bison occasionally, and maybe some others. As specials.
      With the lamb, the old Miller’s Pub on Adams Street [in Chicago] had the Athenian Burger. It was a [beef] burger that had oregano in it and came with feta cheese, and it was a great late-night burger and a great late-night place. We used to eat a Greek salad and the Athenian Burger. So the idea of doing a burger with real grass-fed lamb and having it feel like a Greek salad [with the iceberg lettuce, tomato and raw onion] on top was great. 

But you aren’t going too far out with anything.
Well, as I say, I had this strong interest in creating flavors that went together and that weren’t going to throw people a weird curveball. And that’s how my cooking is in general. I don’t practice a lot of molecular gastronomy and I don’t serve chocolate with foie gras or pineapple on my pizza. It’s not how I think about food or where, historically, my interest lies.
     But I love the idea of artisanal cheese and meat together. Whether that’s a ham and cheese sandwich or prosciutto and Telleggio. So it felt natural to search the Wisconsin artisanal cheese market for cheeses I felt would go best with other flavors.

You’ve got some stylish sauces: a chipotle ketchup on one, an aïoli, and mayonnaise on another.
I like the Southern style of mayonnaise on burgers. But I think it has limitations in this market. I was eating at Rootstock [in Chicago], and they have a burger with nice aged Cheddar and a bacon-scallion aïoli. I was wondering how many people in Chicago like mayo or aïoli on their burger? I don’t know. We have a couple with aïolis or interestingly flavored mayos on them. We have pesto because it works really well.
      But barbecue sauce or ketchup are more in line with our Midwest identity. We went in search of the best organic ketchup we found a brand I really like. And I also like the Heinz product, and I think people are accustomed to that. At N9NE Steakhouse we’ve made a house ketchup and always have had good response in that marketplace. I like the idea, but, honestly, I’m not 100% sure where that’s going to end up on tables next week.

And you’ve got good fries?
Great fries. The way we’re going to present them in terms of flavor is going to make people happy. I’ve always been proud of mk’s fries, and I take great care with them, just like any other dish.

You have shakes and malts?
The shakes are going to be great. We did some research, even going to Flip Burger in Atlanta to meet [Chef-owner] Richard Blais, who does nitrogen infused milkshakes. But we found that the best way was to get a low-horsepower old machine. The faster you mixed the shake, the worse it was, which was exactly backwards from what we were told by the mixer people.
     We were committed to serving lumpy shakes. And that comes from using five small scoops of ice cream instead of two big ones and from not walking away. If you stick the can under the blade and then walk away, it will eventually suck everything down and make it all smooth. This old soda guy, Marty Rubin, showed us that if you never walk away and if you move the canister up and down, you can get a lumpy shake.
      If you can drink the shake with a straw, we screwed it up. That’s our philosophy. 

Some fine-dining chefs aren’t thrilled by the attention burgers are getting. Do you think burgers’ popularity reflects negatively on American culinary culture?
No, the opposite. It’s high time we took burgers back from the fast-service, labor-enhancer, frozen-patty model. The burger market has been dominated for more than a quarter century by commercial fast food, not handmade burgers.
     And I think all over the country there are places that are doing high-quality burgers: choosing meat carefully and grinding it, choosing buns carefully. Chicago is a place where there’s been a gap on that. I think it’s time high-end burgers take back their rightful place here.

You mentioned chefs opening burger restaurants. Why is that happening?
The chefs who are doing these projects are doing so because they have to find a way to increase their income without killing themselves. In the fine-dining segment, that’s hard. The profit margins are tough.
     Look at Rick Bayless, who spent most of his career with Frontera Grill, and now after 23 years he’s opened a sandwich shop [Xoco]. I think he will find it will be his most profitable restaurant per square foot.
     And that’s what Thomas Keller has found with ad hoc. Bobby Flay has opened the Bobby’s Burger Palace restaurants. If you could have a half a dozen burger places doing two-and-a-half million dollars each and not have to be constantly evolving? Great.
     The great burger places, their menus haven’t changed much in the past 30 years. The ones that are well known came up with a product, found a market for their product and do it over and over.

Does that bode ill for your opening high-end restaurants? Would you rather open more DMK Burger Bars than another mk-tier restaurant?
I’d be hesitant, based on what’s happened to many of my colleagues, to open up a restaurant with an $80 or $90 check average prior to 1) the economy making a drastic and fairly intense comeback and 2) unless I had the kind of deal that allowed me to do what I wanted because part of the cost of it would be supplemented by the facility I was going into.
     For example, a building that needed an anchor tenant and was willing to extend great rent abatement and buildout to a fine-dining restaurant because they had promised an office tenant they’d have it. Or if I went into a deal with a hotel company or a Vegas resort where they can absorb the buildout and other costs.
     For the independent freestanding restaurant to have something that’s visually competitive and architecturally competitive and have a kitchen where you can do the kind of food that chefs want to do these days, it’s a very hard marketplace.
     Hard to open from the get-go, but also very hard to raise money in today’s climate. There are a lot of restaurants that are open and successful from the operator’s and customers’ point of view, but the investors have never been made to feel it was worthwhile. They’re last on the list. It’s hard. The independent restaurant market is going stay difficult  for a while.

A DMK is less difficult to create?
Well, one of the good things about doing a burger place is feeling good about not being there.  Being there to get the place up and running and making sure the food has integrity and will be chef-driven, but knowing that at $7 a sandwich, there’s not a great expection that I’ll be there with my spatula in hand.
     That’s comforting. I have four kids at home, and mk is demanding enough.