Everyone in the burger world is smashing these days. Thin patties, lacy edges, the whole ritual. I've written about the technique myself, and done right, it's beautiful. But a little spot across the lake from New Orleans is going the other direction, quietly. NOLA.com has the story of a hidden Covington joint serving a towering thing called the Cowboy, a burger stacked tall and proud while the rest of the country flattens everything into crispy discs.

This is the kind of place I love finding. A hole-in-the-wall, nothing fancy, just a kitchen making a burger the way a burger was understood for decades before the smash wave arrived. The Cowboy is what the name promises: big, tall, unapologetic. The kind of burger you need both hands for, and a strategy for the second half.

There's a lesson here about trends, and I keep learning it in kitchens all over the world. The smash burger is a technique, not a religion. A thick patty cooked with care, seasoned properly, rested a moment before it's stacked, that's another road to the same place. Growing up outside Naples, I watched my grandmother make ragu one way her whole life while Rome and Bologna argued about theirs. Different hands, different truth. Good food needs care, not money, and it certainly doesn't need whatever technique was trending on TikTok last month.

The thick burger asks more of the cook, actually. A smash patty forgives you; it cooks in two minutes and crisps up almost on its own. A tall patty demands that you manage the heat, so the center stays juicy while the outside earns a real sear. Then the stacking, the balance, making sure the thing holds together long enough to reach the table. It's architecture as much as cooking.

The Northshore doesn't get the attention New Orleans proper gets, and that's usually where the interesting food hides. A place with nothing to prove doesn't have to chase the trend cycle.

If you're in the area, go order the Cowboy and eat it the way it wants to be eaten. Don't take it apart. Lean in.

And if any smash burger purists want to argue with me, I'll be the one at the corner table with burger juice running down my wrists, completely at peace.