THE Old Homestead has already been dethroned as home to the city's most expensive hamburger.
Superchef Daniel Boulud has just upped the ante with his own whopping $50 burger - knocking the Old Homestead's $41 Kobe Beef number, introduced just last week, off its pricey pedestal.
Boulud's new and improved DB Burger is an even more luxurious version of his $29 original, which held the title of the city's most expensive until Old Homestead set out to trump it.
The new burger, which will be available at Boulud's DB Bistro Moderne starting next week, adds layers of fresh shaved black truffles to the successful formula of ground sirloin and chuck stuffed with fois gras and braised short ribs, and topped with horseradish mayonnaise and tomato on a fresh-baked parmesan bun. It will be served not with fries but with pommes souffles, or crispy potato puffs.
"It's a perfect way to kick off the black truffle season," says Boulud of the fabulously pricey fungus.
The chef says he's already been serving the pricier burger at the special request of some of his highbrow clientele.
Boulud's beef with the Old Homestead burger is its grinding of the imported Kobe. "It's not the way Kobe should be served," he told The Post's Braden Keil. "Kobe should be thinly sliced, not ground.
"Our burgers are made with 20 percent fat. Kobe Beef is probably 45 percent fat."
Boulud achieves the exact 20 percent with a mix of three parts sirloin to one part chuck. "The good thing about the truffle is, it doesn't add any fat to the dish." The burger is first pan-seared, then broiled.
Forty percent of lunch sales at DB are the $29 version minus the fresh truffle.
Boulud warns the new $50 entree might have to go up in price. "If the price of truffles goes up, we'll have to increase the price of our burger," he says.
Black truffles usually retail for $350 to $500 a pound. Boulud says he will serve the uber-burger until the end of the black truffle season. He says the costlier white truffle would not be appropriate with the burger.
"Wow!" said the Old Homestead's Marc Sherry when told of Boulud's whopper. "I eat the DB Burger all the time. I'm going to be there on Monday to try it." Sherry did not say whether he'd raise his price.