Burger Cup Vote: Can Last Year's Champ Hold Their Ground?
The 2021 Beijing Burger Cup is mid-swing with voting underway for the Round of 32. Believe it or not, we're only able to hold this competition because there are so many great burgers in this city! With competition this intense, you might be wondering, just how does one manage to rise to the top?
To find out, we had a quick chat with Uday Phalgun, co-owner of Side Street, which was crowned champion of last year's cup for the first time, beating out three-time champ Slow Boat for that top spot. Will Side Street be able to defend their title this year? You'll decide with your ballot!
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Phalgun never anticipated he'd one day reign supreme as Beijing's top burger master – in fact, he hadn't imagined competing at all. Prior to taking over Side Street, which he converted from the old Ron Mexico bar, his entrepreneurialship was focused more in the tech world, unrelated to food or beverage. It just goes to show that Beijing has such a passion for burgers that there's always room for someone to hop in and contribute something great to the grill.
In many ways, you were an unlikely candidate to lead a bar to become the Burger Cup champ! How did you go from and F&B outsider to owning one of the most successful burger joints in Beijing?
It’s a combination of many things! A lot of the credit goes to our staff. We have an awesome team in our kitchen lead by our head chef Awei and we have had a lot of support from consultants over the years – people like Mario who helped design our famous Cholo Burger; Henry with the KO Burger; and Brian, who designed the overall menu; and an amazing front team. A lot of our staff have been with us since the beginning. Luckily, we also have had strong support from communities from all walks of life in Beijing as we were/are always welcoming to everyone, allowing us to create a loyal customer base.
At the end of the day, the customer is king and we listen to their feedback and constantly try to improve. Of course, everything will be irrelevant if you don’t have good food, so we focus on sourcing the best possible meat, fresh veggies, and bread. We also constantly try to think of new ways to present our burgers. We keep things simple and stay true to ourselves. We were incredibly fortunate to win the burger cup but we never really pushed for people to vote for us. We did have to remind people of the competition, but the victory was even more special when people truly appreciated and voted for us!
A lot has changed for Side Street since taking the top trophy last year. Can you run us through what’s different, and do you think these changes will help you defend your title?
We have been focussing on improving our standards in all aspects and we have recently renovated and expanded our space. We hope to expand to other areas in Beijing soon, but these things take time, and we'd like for that to happen in a more organic way rather than being overly aggressive! We hope these changes are welcomed by our old customers and bring in new customers but again we try to stay true to ourselves. We would like to defend our title, but again it’s not in our hands. Hopefully, people will like our burgers and vote for us! Anything can happen... let’s wait and see.
Side Street has come out to Burger Fest for a number of years now. Do you have any great memories to share?
So many memories! We always have had so much fun, this year was our 4th year participating in the festival. The amount of enthusiasm and fun can’t be described. All the grease and drinking is always so much fun. Every year my partner and a lot of our staff end up losing their voices for a few days. It always takes a few days to recover. This year I ended up staying home three days straight after three days of madness.
READ: Next Sequence Initiated: Vote in The Burger Cup '21 Round of 32!
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