Poppy’s

***** THIS RESTAURANT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED *****

Like ice cream, potato chips, and coffee, hamburgers have gotten much better over the last few decades. There are more and better choices all up and down the status ladder. Cheap or fancy, good ones are plentiful. But great ones remain hard to find. Poppy’s serves a great one.

It is not an unusual or outrageous burger in any obvious way. It is decent-size, an honest quarter pound, crusty and irregularly shaped, thick enough to ooze juice but not boastfully large. A single is listed on the menu as a Classic Little. Two in a bun is a Classic Big. Both automatically come with a spill of chopped sweet red onion and a melting mantle of Adirondack cheddar cheese (from Barneveld, NY), which is sharp enough to be a significant presence, but not so flavorful that it in any way detracts from the booming protein flavor of the beef. Like the cheese, and like so much of the menu here, including tomatoes in tomato season and Hudson Valley lettuce, the beef used to make these burgers is local. The menu promises it is grass-fed and humanely raised and has a “distinct, clean flavor that melts in your mouth.” Yes, it does. Other burger options include a BBQ bacon burger, an egg-topped burger, and even a veggie patty made of beans. Beyond burgers, there is a short list of beefless rice bowls and salads available.

Every good hamburger deserves a good spud companion. Poppy’s offers two: sweet potato chips that are sliced see-through thin – crisp and elegant – and French fries that are gorgeous golden twigs, served piping hot.

For all the attention paid to the provenance of the provender, Poppy’s is a casual, bare-table, paper-napkin sort of place. Burgers come wrapped in foil; and while glasses are available for soft drinks and beer, my waitress apparently sized me up as a more rugged sort of guy, bringing my root beer in its bottle with the twist-off cap still attached. For those who came to Poppy’s back when it opened in 2009 and service was do-it-yourself, note that it has since remodeled, but not dramatically. Indoor seats are at handsome wood-back booths and out back there is now a nice patio for open-air eating.