Grilled: Burger Me's Juicy Goes the Whole Cow With Two Beef Patties

As part of the Beijinger's month-long Burger Cup (which kicked off May 16 with burger specials around town), we take a closer look at some of this year's participants. Today we're grilling Theodore Gao and Haley Han, the owners of Burger Me which is located in the Aegean Shopping Center, who were not only slinging burgers at our May 28 Burger Festival, but also vying for the title of Burger Cup champion (voting for which is underway into the Round of 32).

What was the signature burger promoted at the Burger Cup Festival?
At the Burger Cup Festival we sold a Newbee Burger which is basically an adjusted version of the original cheeseburger made especially for the festival (RMB 40 for a whole, RMB 20 for a half).

RELATED: Who's Been Grilled So Far?

Tell us about your signature burger. What makes it the best burger in Beijing?
We call it Burger Me Burger (RMB 86). It is made of two 360-gram patties, bacon, cheddar cheese, egg, and awesome buns. We use 100 percent grain-fed Australian beef mixed with some local pork to add to the flavor. The buns are baked on the special Burger Me recipe, and have the perfect taste we want. There is a tip that we would like to share with any budding chefs out there: we brush a layer of unsalted butter on our buns when baking them, which will make it taste better than normal buns. The grain-fed sirloin beef we use is all imported from Australia, and we make the patty with beef with egg, red pepper, and onion powder.

What does the burger come with, and what drink is it best paired with?
Our burger is served with black pepper wedge fries or a side salad. The salad is a mixture of cabbage, purple cabbage, chopped tomatoes, and thousand island sauce. As for drink pairing, we love having our burger with iced tea on which you can get free refills at the restaurant!

What toppings/sauces are on this burger?
Almost everything on our burger is made in-house: there is homemade ketchup, homemade mayonnaise, homemade Mexican chili sauce, and then there's spicy tomato sauce, mustard, and Sriracha sauce.

Aside from your own restaurant's burger, what was the best burger you've ever had?
Shack Shake’s cheeseburger.

Do you have any promotions or discounts that you'd like to mention? 
We've got a whole series of promotions. If we get into top 16, the second burger you buy is 50 percent off from June 9 to 12. If we make it into the top 8, buy any burger and you will get buffalo chicken wings (worth RMB 38) free between June 13 to 15. For the top 4 round, between June 16 to 17, buy one burger and get the same one free. If we're one of the final two restaurants battling it out, we will give out 50 burgers for free. And finally, if we become the champion, we will celebrate on June 21 at the restaurant. 

The Beijinger's 2016 Burger Cup is brought to you in cooperation with the following sponsors: Oasis Hospital, McCain Fries, Santa Fe Movers, Etonkids, Lonely Planet, Xian Cheng, and Asian Tigers.

Photos: Tracy Wang