Alternative Eats: Burger Babes
By Eva Clifford, 2014-06
There’s nothing quite like a bit of young spirit to spice-up the food scene. This spring, a breath of fresh air comes flying in from America’s East Coast. Meet Phoebe and Renel a.ka. Burger Babes, two students from NYU who have been studying in Shanghai since February. Since then, major things have happened. A friendship formed at the start of the semester evolved into what has now become a collaborative burger business, with the two girls sharing their passion for food accross the city by spreading love and burgers. These, Burger Babes just keep on picking up momentum…
Phoebe, 20 years old, studies Media Production & Food Studies, while Renel, 21 years old, is majoring in Food Design. When they met, a burger stand wasn’t even on the agenda.
Inspiration can hit us all at strange and unexpected times in our life. For Phoebe and Renel, the idea for Burger Babes came to them as they were out one night in Shanghai and spotted a local street-stand selling burgers outside the nightclub, Hollywood(!) This burger proved to be a major turning point for Phoebe and Renel as they were so enraptured by the taste, a friend jokingly asked them, “Hey, why don’t you start your own burger stand?” and this is exactly what they did.
We came across the Burger Babes at Spring Fling last month, a vintage fashion fair at Central Studios, near Xintiandi, and were stunned by just how young these girls were. They admitted their finals were next week, yet here they were behind a sell-out burger stall, complete with sticker name cards and as chilled out as ever.
They started by selling burgers out of their own kitchen to students on campus. Purely burgers, because, in their minds, “it was the quintessential American food everyone missed, or didn’t know they missed till they had one that was as delicious as ours.” Everything after that followed suit; they began selling in the street, popping-up at events, marketing themselves… But really, the girls just do it for fun.
They like to call their burgers Cali Sichuan burgers – a cross between ‘In N Out’, ‘Shake Shack’ and that one fateful street-stand outside Hollywood.
From their menu, you have four options: Burger Baby with one beef patty (RMB 28), Burger Babe with two beef patties (RMB 38), Burger Bo$$ with three beef patties (RMB 48) and the Shroom Burger with a marinated portabella filling (RMB 38). For the adventurous, you can “trick it out” with an add on of their – wait for it … - homemade bacon jam (crispy pieces of bacon caramelised with minced onions and sugar) and potato chips for crunch. The burger itself is made from one of their special buns (custom-made at a local bakery and toasted, of course), 60g 100% beef patty (smashed, to up the flavour), lettuce and tomato (sourced from the wet market), caramelised onions and homemade Sichuan pickles. And, as if it couldn’t get any better, all the burgers are made with extra special love and care by these two energetic and smiley girls.
You will be happy to hear that this is only the beginning of the road for Phoebe and Renel, as both are extending their stay in Shanghai. Although Renel is working to open a health foods restaurant and Phoebe plans to intern at Kate & Kimi, they will continue to grow their Burger Babes business. Expect big burger things from these Burger Babes.
