Hungry City: Hard Times Sundaes in Mill Basin, Brooklyn

It was high noon at Hard Times Sundaes, a food truck parked behind a Walgreen’s in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, and the gas wasn’t on. “Can you give me a minute?” asked Andrew Zurica, the owner, cook and lone employee. Carrying a propane tank in one hand, he sprinted to Home Depot.

Behind the truck, the sun was throwing diamonds on the water in a boatyard that was laid waste two years ago by Hurricane Sandy. It had taken me 1 hour and 40 minutes to get here, by subway and bus, a long journey in search of what I had heard was one of the best burgers in New York City.

The burger finally appeared: a triple, because I embrace life, with three smashed-flat, dark-crust patties under still-bubbling American cheese and two tongues of wine-red Leidy’s bacon, on a golden Martin’s potato roll that seemed to sigh with each bite. Grateful and silent, I ate it at one of the chained-down picnic tables. A line had formed. “I’ve been dreaming of this since I woke up,” a woman said.

In the end, the greatness of a burger lies not in the quality or provenance of its ingredients, but in the touch, care and God-given talent of its maker. At Hard Times Sundaes, the meat is fresh ground chuck, not some proprietary blend of dry-aged Black Angus cuts. (“I don’t believe in special blends,” Mr. Zurica scoffed.) The ratio of lean to fat is 77 percent to 23 percent, the patty just shy of four ounces. Sea salt and coarse black pepper are pressed in at the last minute. The bun is buttered and charred; the toppings — iceberg lettuce, tomato (in summer, from Mr. Zurica’s backyard), onions raw and grilled, mushrooms, pickles and late-detonating jalapeño — are stacked with Pythagorean precision.

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None of this explains how good it is.

Mr. Zurica, 42, has spent almost all his life in Mill Basin and in neighboring Bergen Beach, a onetime resort community on Jamaica Bay that a century ago boasted a boardwalk, a roller rink, shooting galleries and a casino with a dome like the Hagia Sophia’s. (A trolley dispute ended the fun.)

These parts of south Brooklyn are as far physically as they are psychologically from the obsessively artisanal enclaves up north. Nonlocals must take the subway to Kings Highway, then the B100 bus another 20 minutes to Avenue T and East 59th Street, walk a block south, make a right on Avenue U, and there it is, at the mouth of a strip-mall parking lot.

From the truck, Mr. Zurica can gaze across an inlet to where his former restaurant, the Luncheonette, once stood. He opened it in 2011, after a few stints building and managing restaurants on the Upper West Side. On Oct. 29, 2012, water started coming through the doors, lashed by Hurricane Sandy. Almost all his equipment was lost; he drove home to find his house filled with four feet of water. (“Lots of people lost more than me” is all he says now.) He reopened within a few weeks, but he couldn’t make a go of it. Hard Times Sundaes is his comeback.

The truck doesn’t have the word “burger” in its name, but, as Mr. Zurica points out, neither does Shake Shack. (“Hard times sundaes” was Depression-era slang for penny snow cones.) Inside, a sign posted above the grill says, “Mr. Good-Lookin’ is Cookin’!” The menu is a hastily scribbled whiteboard. Other offerings include exemplary French fries, skinny and firm, and an all-beef, natural-casing Sabrett hot dog done “Brooklyn style,” which here translates as deep-fried: crackly on the outside, juicy within and best coiled with bacon.

The stash of Italian ices has run low since summer. My companion nabbed one of the last remaining flavors, orange in hue and indeterminate in flavor, served in the traditional easily crushed pleated paper cup. “You don’t need a spoon with that,” Mr. Zurica said.

My friend licked it, pensively. “How is it?” I asked. “Kind of gross,” he said, and smiled. “In a nostalgic way.”