Four months ago, Brandon Pettit embarked on a highly scientific, sometimes tortuous quest for burger greatness. The result can be found on the menu at Essex every Sunday night.

It began with a hamburger patty cooked in one of the restaurants' wood-burning ovens. Pettit is a master of manipulating these dome-shaped spaces and the flames within, as evidenced by Delancey's sublime pizzas and most of the menu at Essex.

A few burger test runs turned out shall we say...less than transcendent, so he issued himself a challenge: figure out how to cook a burger—a superior one—using a wood oven. Plenty of people cook burgers over wood-burning grills, but the only wood-oven burgers Pettit knew of were the work of at-home enthusiasts.

Burger aficionados generally fall into two camps: grilled versus griddled. Grilled burger people exclaim about the smoky flavor you get from cooking the patty over applewood. Griddled types much prefer the crust the meat develops, a souvenir of being cooked on a griddle in its own fat.

So Pettit pondered the merits of each approach and devised an approach that fused their best elements. He installed a custom shelf near the top of his dome-shaped oven (and closer to its ever-present column of smoke) and experimented with different sizes of cast iron skillets, capable of retaining the dazzling heat that imparts the crust.

He tinkered. He experimented. Patties overcooked. He almost gave up. Then, a breakthrough—pans need to be as hot as the oven when they receive the meat. From there he devised the perfect sequence—into the oven, a short interlude still in the skillet, then resting—that produced a perfect medium rare, a smoky flavor, and an even crust that's a thing of beauty.

The meat itself got the same methodical treatment. Each 8-ounce patty contains two different grinds and three cuts of beef. There's a different housemade sauce for each bun; one made with roasted shallots goes on the top one, and a riff on the Shake Shack sauce (Pettit uses pickled cherry bomb peppers from Tonnemaker) goes on the bottom bun. The meat is oversalted and toppings are undersalted to make sure that beef flavor doesn't get overshadowed.

Right now add-ons include padron peppers, cheddar, and bacon. "We do have bottles of mustard and ketchup in our kitchen just in case somebody asks for them," says Pettit. "We're not snobby like that. Nobody’s asked yet."

The burger is available at Essex, but only on Sundays. At least for now, since Pettit will cook each one himself until he's worked out any kinks.

Side note: Delancey and Essex have begun hosting monthly Monday night dinners. Sometimes they're in honor of a cookbook release, other months it will just be a changeup from the regular menu, like a Mediterranean food and wine pairing in November or a feast of the seven (wood-fired) fishes in December. Keep an eye on Delancey's Facebook and Instagram for details.

And by all means go try this burger.