Page 18 - foodservice magazine April 2019

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MELBOURNE AND SYDNEY: A TALE OF TWO BURGERS
THE PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS WANT THE BURGERS, BUT WITH 36-MONTH AGED CHEDDAR OR LIQUID VELVEETA? TOWERING WITH TOPPINGS, OR JUST A SIMPLE WAGYU PATTY? ALEKSANDRA BLISZCZYK ASKED TWO AUSTRALIAN BURGER KINGS, SHAYNE MCCALLUM OF MELBOURNE’S 8BIT, AND KERBY CRAIG OF SYDNEY’S UME BURGER, FOR THEIR TAKES ON WHERE BURGERS HAVE BEEN AND WHERE THEY’RE GOING IN THEIR CITIES.
“Ithink everyone’s doing it tough these days, and I’m not just talking burgers,”
says Shayne McCallum, chef
and owner of Melbourne’s 8bit TALK Burgers. “I haven’t seen a [burger]
Kerby Craig, chef and owner of Sydney’s Bar Ume and Ume Burger says he’s at his busiest point of their three years of business. “It hasn’t tapered off, it’s been growing.”
Craig, whose first chef job was at Tetsuya’s, opened his Japanese Ume Restaurant (upmarket precursor to more casual Bar Ume) in 2011. Back then, Craig says Rockpool Bar and Grill had the city's only decent burgers. “There was nothing in Sydney.”
In the following years, Craig had made plans to open a high- turnover casual diner to prop up his high-end restaurant and, in 2016, pulled the trigger.
“The whole burger thing
was taking off in Sydney, so we decided this was probably a good time to start with our burgers.”
2016 welcomed many of the city’s biggest and best, including Down ‘n’ Out and BL Burgers, just after Five Points opened in 2015 and Mary’s Newtown in 2013.
The burger craze hit Melbourne around the same time.
Before 8bit, McCallum says that “there was really not much
around, Huxtaburger was probably the biggest.”
But around 2015, it exploded. Now, every cafe in Australia does some form of bun-encased meal, and burgers have become some of the most Instagrammable foods out there.
The burgers themselves have grown too. From Huxtaburger and Mary’s simple squishable cheeseburgers, both cities (and half the world) saw the trend shift to towering seven-patty Godzillas stuffed with mac and cheese croquettes and dripping molten Velveeta. The idea that “it looks good, ergo it must taste good” became the norm, largely because of, dare I say
it, Instagram.
“Influencers love food as
much as chefs,” says Craig, but “it becomes this weird little ecosystem of influencers [who] come in, and because they want something that their fan base wants, then that influences the business. So the [restaurant] starts doing it, and basically you pigeonhole yourself into the market. But these [influencers], you can’t satisfy them. They just want more and more.”
Ume Burger's bacon and cheese burger: Beef patties, crispy bacon, onions, american cheese, rice vinegar pickles and Ume's special sauce
place packed in a long time. It’s not as crazy as it used to be.”
When I spoke to McCallum in 8bit’s Melbourne CBD store (the original is in Footscray, and a third has recently opened in Sydney), it had just opened for the day, and we were the only two there. After our
chat on a cloudy Wednesday morning I decided to stick around for lunch.
About an hour later at 12:45pm, the restaurant was full. Collared workers, uni students, and couples about town were queuing to order. And while the line may not have been out the door, almost every seat was taken. I even overheard a server apologise to one customer who had waited about 10 minutes for his meal.
Most restaurant owners would kill for demand like this. And although McCallum says it has quietened down since 8bit opened in 2014, it’s still pretty noisy.
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