The Burger Trend in Singapore

I have been following the burger trend in Singapore since 2006 when I first collaborated with Aston to create the ieat Superburger. The burger is still on the menu after all these years! I think he keeps it on the menu more for the sake of nostalgia because the burger trend has shifted quite a bit since. In those days, it was all about a big juicy patty and piling it up with other toppings like bacon and deep-fried onions!

In those days, size really mattered. The bigger the burger, the better. So everyone was building a bigger burger until Roadhouse (now defunct) came up with a 1 kg burger challenge. After that stunt, no one else tried to make a burger with so many patties. I think it dawned on everyone that a burger should not be so big that you have to dismantle it to eat!

By the time I did my Burger Survey in 2016, the trend was shifting towards the gourmet burger where the emphasis was on quality rather than quantity. The following year, gourmet burgers started making an appearance in our hawker centres which made gourmet burgers more accessible to the masses with prices starting at $4.50 with fries!

Enter the Smashburger

In 2019, Shake Shack arrived in Singapore, riding on the global trend of the smashburger! I thought that their debut would have ushered in the age of the smashburger. And that soon someone would make a smashburger with overhanging crusted edges like the rings of Saturn. But, no one seemed to have caught the smashburger bug like me. Surely I can’t be the only one in Singapore who finds love handles on a burger sexy? T...