Café-Style $5 ‘Ramly’ Burger Cooked By Former Jones The Grocer Chef At Bugis Stall
While the Ramly-inspired burger by the Malaysian-born chef is quite good, it’s his crispy chicken thigh burger that we really liked.
The street-shopping haven that is Bugis Street, with its cramped alleyways and dingy stalls peddling fashion apparel, electronics and stinky tofu, is about the closest you’ll come to experiencing pasar malam vibes until the pandemic’s restrictions blow over. Now, Mr. Burger, which opened last October, is here to add more flavour to those buzzy vibes.
The street food stall serving Malaysian-style Ramly burgers (among other options) is helmed by Penang-born Wong Kok Chin, 33, who worked as sous chef at the now-defunct Australian cafe Jones the Grocer at Dempsey.
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Why Ramly burgers?
The word Ramly refers to the beef patties first sold from a street stall in 1979 by owner Haji Ramly Monki, who was looking to fill the niche for certified halal burger patties. It proved popular enough for him to turn it into Ramly Food Processing in 1984, where the patties are made in a factory and sold in supermarkets and supplied to vendors.
The burgers are also known for patties wrapped in a sauce-filled omelette, fueling their reputation as sloppily good pasar malam fare popular in Malaysia and Singapore. Kok Chin is an ardent fan – “Whenever I go back to Penang, I’ll always go and buy them straight away and eat two in one sitting,” he tells us in Mandarin with a laugh.
On a whim, he cooked up Ramly burgers for a couple of friends, who suggested he turn it into a business. He took that business online, and it was so well received that he decided to go all in and open Mr. Burger.
Bustling Bugis Street
Kok Chin and two silent partners poured around 40K into Mr. Burger, which is situated at a collection of stalls (with ample seating) just off the main thoroughfare at Bugis Street – if you’re lost, look for the sign that says ‘Bugis Food Street’. Kok Chin figures that even without tourists, Bugis Street sees enough footfall during evenings and weekends to cover his “really affordable” rent and earn a living.
Since opening, business has been brisk. “The queue gets quite long especially at night – the wait time goes up to 45 minutes. It’s quite stressful, and I feel quite paiseh.” Though we didn’t have to join a massive queue during our Friday afternoon shoot, there was a steady stream of customers throughout our interview.
Kok Chin reckons that it’s ’cos the dish appeals to Malaysians missing home and stuck in Singapore for now (the Vaccinated Travel Lane has only recently opened up). “Ask any Malaysian and they’ll know about Ramly burgers,” he says.
However, he’s not making use of the VTL to visit home just yet. Instead, he’s focusing on Mr. Burger – securing more manpower, and eventually, expanding to a standalone eatery or into shopping malls. “I want to make Mr. Burger like McDonald’s – like fast food, with drinks, fries, air-con. I’ll make Ramly burgers more atas [compared to what it is now],” he adds.
F&B career spanned over a decade
Kok Chin, who “grew up watching his grandmother and father cooking”, was bitten by the F&B bug and left home at 19 to find work as a chef in Singapore. The Singapore PR worked at Pastamania for four years, before snagging a job as sous chef at Jones the Grocer, a once popular chic restaurant and grocer concept at Dempsey which has since exited Singapore. After three years there, he decided to strike out on his own. “I didn’t want to stay stuck in the kitchen for too long. I wanted to try my hand at running my own business,” he explains. He ran a nasi padang stall in Choa Chu Kang for about six years before closing it, citing issues with the landlord he didn’t want to disclose. In the final months running his nasi padang stall, he turned to selling Ramly burgers online.
The menu
Kok Chin mans the stove with an assistant. They serve Taiwanese pork sausages with fusion sauces to go with the country-themed burgers – marked by a cute little flag on each bun. The burgers are an affordable $5 to $6 a la carte, with an option to top up $1.50 for crinkle-cut fries.
They’re served on a rectangular paper plate, rather than wrapped in that nostalgic Ramly burger wrapper. You also get a pair of plastic gloves for a neater meal.
Malaysia Style Ramly Burger, $5
The OG Ramly burger patties aren’t permitted for import to Singapore (as one of Ramly’s sources for beef is from India, which isn’t approved by the Singapore Food Agency), so Kok Chin procures his from Sultan Burger Enterprise, a Singaporean manufacturer of similar patties. There’s a choice between chicken or beef for this burger – we opt for the former.
It’s seared on the griddle, dusted with a hit of “secret” powdered seasoning, wrapped in a thinnish omelette that’s livened up with a splash of Maggi seasoning, and finally doused in chilli sauce, mayo and black pepper sauce.
Store-bought patty and sauces notwithstanding, the hawker tries to make the burger his own. He adds lemon juice to the mayonnaise, and some honey to the black pepper sauce in order to mellow out their flavours. The entire creation, including shredded cabbage, cucumber slices and cheddar cheese, is sandwiched between soft buns, slathered with margarine and toasted on the griddle till the bread has a nice light crunch at the bottom. Everything melds together in a sweet, salty, spicy mess. The patty is reasonably seared, even if the meat within is uncannily uniform, and a bit spongy (though savoury), almost like an authentic Ramly. Pretty good for pasar malam fare, we reckon. And the portion is larger than the traditional Malaysian version.
American Style Burger, $6
We opt for the Ramly-style beef patty with this burger, which also comes with lettuce, cheese, a fried egg and ketchup. Lots of ketchup. With the Ramly burger, there’s a method to the madness since the various sauces complement each other. Here, the burger is just mostly tangy-sweet thanks to the liberal use of ketchup. Not our favourite, even if the beef patty has a better bite than the chicken one.
Thai Tom Yam Chilli Mayo Burger Set, $7 (8 DAYS Pick!)
Our fave of the lot, mainly ’cos an entire skin-on chicken thigh, breaded and deep-fried till deliciously-crunchy and succulent, replaces that spongy patty. The generous squeeze of tom yum chilli mayo and chilli sauce don’t soften the assertive crunch from the chook, either. Shiok.
B. Pulau 63 BBQ Sausage, $1.50 original; $1.80 with sauce
Kok Chin’s label for his Taiwanese pork sausages isn’t so much an indication of their provenance. Instead, he “was really missing home when [he] was doing up the menu” – Balik Pulau refers to the town he was born in on Penang Island, Malaysia, while 63 was his old home’s unit number.
The sweet-savoury sausages are scored and deep-fried, and boast an enjoyable snap. We had ours with a housemade mala sauce of chilli oil and mala paste for an intense, fiery jolt; though the gentler wasabi mayo sauce offers only a light whiff of wasabi, without any heat.
Bottom line
Think of Mr. Burger’s Ramly burger as a slightly more refined version of the Malaysian pasar malam classic. It too has a similarly spongy factory-made patty, deluge of tasty sauces and thin omelette. But it boasts a couple of somewhat ‘chef-like’ touches like a golden-brown, fluffy, well-toasted bun that isn’t squished and soaked in grease, plus a prettier presentation. However, what we really think is worth your calories here? The shiok 'Thai' chicken burger featuring a whole juicy chicken thigh covered in a delightfully crispy crust and tom yum mayo.
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