Home Cook Sells Juicy Cheeseburgers By Lowering ‘Em From His Condo Balcony To Customers

8days.sg is at a condominium in the Balmoral neighbourhood near Bukit Timah, lurking like a horror flick stalker in the garden below someone’s apartment. Patiently we wait for second-floor resident Ulrich Chia, who had recently begun selling burgers from his family home. The 32-year-old carefully lowers his freshly-grilled food to us from his balcony, where he has set up a S$500 US-imported camping grill to cook his smashburgers.

Popularised in the States, the burger’s distinctive style involves smashing a ground beef ball on a hot griddle, flattening it with a meat press till it becomes a crusty-edged patty. It’s meant to be ugly-delicious; the brown, crisped patty is jazzed up with only a few ingredients like cheese, tomato and toasted buns.

A pink tapestry marks the spot where we are to receive Ulrich's plastic basket. It is secured with laundry rope that he slowly slackens to let his loot abseil down the parapet. “It was the first basket we came across and we were like okay lah, can lah. It has a pasar malam vibe to it,” he quips to us.

This kampong method of transferring goods is convenient for Ulrich, who doesn’t have to keep running downstairs to pass his burgers to customers or have them attempt to find the obscure staircase leading up to his home.

Pat your bun bun

The self-taught cook had graduated from “YouTube University” majoring in making American-style smashburgers, on which he spent two months doing R&D and perfecting his recipe. In July this year, he and his US-based partner Clara Lee conceptualised a home-based business to sell these burgers.

Called Burger Daddy (utter this with a salacious wink), all the requisite information for ordering Ulrich’s burgers are on the biz’s cheeky Instagram account @patyourbunbun.

And “pat” would be the appropriate word for how he handles his burgers. Instead of smushing the burg till it looks like someone sat on it, the pressing is all done on the beef patties, which are then placed on handmade Hainanese buns from an old-school local bakery and finished with a firm pat on the top bun.

The menu 

There is only one burger on the menu from this one-man show, which Ulrich christened The Smash Hit ($17). It puns on his background as an indie guitarist in defunct local rock band Cashew Chemists, and the smashed nature of the burger. A set with burger and fried-to-order shoestring fries goes for $19.50.

The Smash Hit

Each burger comes with 150g of beef, similar to well-loved burger cafe One Fattened Calf, which is one of Ulrich’s go-to joints. Instead of a whole chunk, he splits the beef into two thinner 75g patties.

According to him, this increases the beef’s surface contact points, allowing him to sear the meaty discs till they get a flavourful crust. “I cook it all the way to medium or medium well so that the fat renders better. It becomes juice. When it’s browning, I know it’s time to flip,” he explains. Double patties also means he can layer two slices of American cheese to make his burger even juicier.

Balcony cookin’

Ulrich trots out ingredients from his home kitchen to the outdoor balcony, where there is a mini garden teeming with herbs, onions and chillies that his family uses for home-cooking. His mise en place is impeccably neat and clean. “I worry about hygiene and things like that. It’s no laughing matter when it comes to paying customers,” Ulrich shares. There’s a portable fan to keep him “from suffocating”, and a lawn umbrella so that he can fulfil orders even when it’s raining. “The show goes on,” he declares.

He doesn’t “fuss too much with veggies”. There’s just a slice of lightly-salted tomato that doesn’t distract the eater from the patty’s full-on beefiness. The burger is stacked with homemade onion jam (“it’s a secret recipe inspired by French onion soup”), and a “fancy sauce” that reminds us of tangy mayonnaise. “I’m still developing it, so I don’t want to disclose the ingredients. I want to see if it’s the best thing for the burger,” says Ulrich.

When he’s cooking, the balcony is filled with the smoky aroma of charred meat that rises upwards. What if his neighbours complain, we wonder. “I gave them burgers. I guess until they complain, I’m going to keep doing it,” Ulrich grins. As his camping grill is portable, he intends to do pop-ups in the future.

Weekends only

Order collection is only on selected weekends for now, as Ulrich also holds a full-time job as a freelance architectural designer. Working from home meant that he was often staring at a screen monotonously. “I would be on my bed, using my computer. [Cooking and selling burgers] lets me reset over the weekend before I continue working on Monday,” he says.

He releases 40 slots per weekend (20 each for Saturday and Sunday) via Instagram for his burgers. "It’s normally [announced] on Mondays, but since we’re a pop-up we don’t operate every week," he shares. Collection is staggered in 20-minute blocks from 12pm to 2pm, and each order is limited to two burgers.

“I can make about four burgers in 20 minutes, which is the most I can do,” Ulrich explains. Currently, his slots are snapped up within a day. And it would benefit you to be punctual if you want fresh burgers, as he cooks according to his collection time slots.

Cloudy with a chance of burgers

The burger is meticulously wrapped and packed in a brown paper bag labelled with the customer’s name. Ulrich puts our order in his red basket, and lowers it ceremonially to us as we wait at the ground floor pick-up point. It’s fast, fuss-free and slightly comical; we feel like we are receiving a gift from the burger gods.

Is the burger heavenly?

Unwilling to wait, we tear into our paper bag on the spot (there is a small outdoor seating area for people who want to savour their spoils pronto). The burger, about the same size as a Shake Shack burger, oozes juices that run down our hand. We recommend having tissues or paper towels on standby.

While there are home-based burger sellers who expanded to brick-and-mortar restaurants like NBCB Cheeseburger, Ulrich has not decided if he wants to scale up his business. “I don’t know if I want to expand yet. It’s quite chill. I don’t have to worry about rent or paying people. It’s a passion project,” he explains. But he is looking at selling more than 40 burgers a week. “If I can find a way to do it,” he says.

To order, fill in the order form here when Ulrich opens up slots, usually on Mondays. For more updates, go to www.instagram.com/patyourbunbun.

Photos: Aik Chen
Video: Pyron Tan