What The Fork: Street, Gourmet or Zomato, Burger is Everywhere, Writes Kunal Vijayakar

But alongside these stipulated spits and time-honoured eateries have mushroomed Chinese food stalls, roadside dosa carts, shawarma grills, innumerable cake shops and very neoteric and contemporary looking burger joints. All serving hot, spicy, Mexican, crispy, chicken burgers, attributes never associated with a burger before. All along, while we were getting hysterical about the burgers at Indigo Deli, Salt Water Grill and Hard Rock Cafe and the kind, the burger got democratised and attainable.

When Burger Arrived in India

Burgers have been around for centuries. As long as there has been bread and meat, there have been burgers. Because however you may decide to eulogise a burger, at its soul, that is what it really is. Bread and meat. The burger in its present form, a round beef fillet packed with onions and breadcrumbs, fired on a grill and served between two buns, probably came from Hamburg in Germany, and hence called Hamburger. The Americans embraced the Hamburger somewhere in the early 1900s and made it their own, so much so that the burger became part of the American way of life. In India, the burger arrived somewhere in the ‘50s and ‘60s. This is all hearsay and like best legends, passed down through word of mouth.

My grandfather, who was quite a gastronome, always told us that Café Excelsior near Excelsior Cinema was the first joint to serve a burger in Mumbai. The café originally opened inside the Excelsior cinema hall in 1919 to cater to cinemagoers, but later moved to their own premises across the road where it stands to date.

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While it was still housed inside the theatre, serving samosas, wafers, sandwiches and soft drinks, the Irani owners decided to innovate and introduced the hotdog, a local Frankfurter sausage in a long roll, and the Hamburger, a simple, fried spicy cutlet in a bun smeared with butter, mustard and mayonnaise, one slice of tomato and one of onion. That’s it. It was a super hit.

Nearly sixty years later and largely thanks to the arrival of burger chains, the hamburger has literally transmogrified into a staple. But it is the last five years that have been life changing for the burger in India. The burger is everywhere. From simple street stalls, to gourmet restaurants, and on nearly every third page of Zomato and Swiggy.

My Favourites

I have my favourite burger joints, some are purely take-away and some can be enjoyed in the cool comfort of a café or restaurant. So here goes my list of favourite burgers, in no particular order.

Woodside Inn, in Colaba, brought the gourmet into the burger with the most innovative native tastes. My favourite there is the Bandra Burger. It’s spicy and is packed with pickled Goan chorizo, pepperoni, sausages, pork shoulder, apple compote and gouda. I may eat at Colaba, but it’s so Bandra.

Seefah is my favourite Asian restaurant and they do a range of Asian-flavoured burgers. I like crisp fried prawn in a burger and they do a mean Prawn Katsu Burger—breadcrumb-fried prawn, in-house special sauce, sunny side up egg, matcha fries and wasabi mayo salad. I also like their Grilled Pork Banh Mi, Vietnam-inspired grilled meat with cooling homemade pickles and coriander, served with papaya salad and Sichuan fries. And the most innovative is the Deep Fried Laab Gai, sticky rice buns instead of bread, minced chicken salad with a Thai herbs-marinated chicken patty made with a fine minced and roasted rice powder.

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Delzad Avari, young and exuberant, cooks from his home kitchen at Forjett Street in south Mumbai. Takes the most impactful flavour trends and finds ways to stack them in a burger. Classic, Cheese, Pulled Pork and Fried Chicken.

Good Flippin’ Burgers available on order are solidly good chunky burgers. The burgers I like at GFB are The Flippin’ Standard. A juicy, medium-rare handmade buff patty topped with a slice of cheddar, served with caramelized onions, a signature house sauce, sliced tomatoes and lettuce between bread. Fat, juicy and simple. If you like it spicy, then there is the Bhoot. The same patty but with a spicy bhut jolokia chilly sauce, cheddar, caramelised onions, gherkins and lettuce.

Of course, at the end of the day, I keep going back to two burgers that I grew up eating. The first at Kobe, which opened in 1975 and their really humble burger with a crisply blackened tenderloin patty in a buttered bun with mustard, a slice of onion and a slice of tomato. And the other is Buff Chilly Burger at Gondola in Bandra. Shredded meat tossed in a wok with whole green chillies, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and piled between a buttered bun. Burger, you’ve come a long way baby.

Kunal Vijayakar is a food writer based in Mumbai. He tweets @kunalvijayakar and can be followed on Instagram @kunalvijayakar. His YouTube channel is called Khaane Mein Kya Hai. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.

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