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We kicked off National Hamburger Week in style yesterday, getting our burger on at Central Michel Richard in Penn Quarter. One of the umpteenth burgers deemed the best of D.C., we thought there was no better way to start our week of beef revelry. The dry-aged Central beef burger is the definition of fancy-ass, served with confit tomato, a house-made mayo and several potato tuiles (for the layman, that's "wafers"). It comes sans cheese or bacon, but those are never optional when we come to the table. Adding the pig and cheese brings the total to a pricey $19 which also gets you a side of fries. Now this burger was good, really good. It's certainly deserving of large amounts of praise, but there was one thing that brought down the whole burger-eating experience for us. Our initial bites were great: juicy, cheesey and beefy, though the meat could've used a bit more seasoning. But as we got into it a bit more, we were met with an increasingly tough and chewy mouthful of burger. At first we thought it might have been the potato wafer, but upon inspection we found the tuiles thin, crispy and a welcome addition to the mix. After even further investigation we determined the culprit was, surprisingly, the bacon. Where were the crispy, salty strips of pig candy? We don't know if it was just a bad day in the kitchen or what, but the stuff on our burger was so damn chewy, it put a serious damper on the whole thing. We can't believe we're saying this, but maybe we should've passed on the bacon. (Somebody slap us.) Central definitely warrants a return visit from the Crew, though since we've still got a full week of burger eating to go, our redux will have to wait... Central | 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest | DC | centralmichelrichard.com