A was the Burgerfest weekend and before we got to the tasting, we stayed for stories, in the Digital Chronicles podcast, Together with Dragos Gurărosie, the festival organizer. I sought to find out from him how Romanians view the burger, which are the best combinations and if the burger with halloumi is a burger. A short answer came to the last question: NO! At the others we had the opportunity to delve a bit more...
What is a burger?
"The burger means a meatball between two halves of a bun. What you put next to the meatball and between the pieces of the bun is up to the chef, but it is mandatory to have the meatball. Meatball means mince. I don't want slices of meat at Burger Fest. Slices of meat are slices of meat, just like slices of cheese are slices of cheese no matter what the cheese is, and just like pulled meat is not meatballs. So all the others, from the point of view of Burger Fest, are sandwiches.
We can think of the famous nuts, the dessert that had cream in the middle. Between those layers of cream you can put something of another color. It was at a Burger Fest, I think in 2016, when we had someone make really good sweet burgers out of various. They were burgers because they looked like a burger," he told me Dragos Gurărosie, the organizer of Burgerfest, in the Digital Chronicles podcast recorded just before this year's festival started.
"I think there is life without burgers, and there really should be"
"I think there is life without burgers, and there really should be. In 2015, when it was the first edition, we struggled a bit to find 9 restaurants, that's all we had then, and because logistically, it was very difficult for them to participate in events like this, especially since they don't no one knew what to eat this thing with.
After the first edition of Burger Fest, burgers really started to appear in Trattorias, in traditional restaurants, in various places where you didn't expect it. Now I expect to see burgers in Asian restaurants too, but there should be life beyond burgers. We have the meatballs, so we can eat the meatballs," he says Dragos Gurărosie.
Versatile burger
"As exotic versions of burgers, I ate burgers with pineapple, with foie gras, with seafood. The ones I don't like are the vegetable or vegetarian ones, where the meatball is made of vegetables. Few succeed because it's very hard to find a veggie patty that's really good and fits and you can say you're eating a good meatless burger. The best burger I've ever eaten is also the simplest burger.
It had the meatball, it had the bun, the sauce and that was it. And the freshest was one I ate in the States at Shake Shack, where they chopped the meat in front of you and made a meatball, I don't know if this is possible here. It was mega fresh and everything you ate there was fresh."
Digital Chronicles podcast, produced by Zaga Brand and Humart Association (Human Made Art), comes with new episodes every Thursday and Friday on all audio streaming platforms and on www.cronicaridigitali.ro.
Digital Chronicles podcast is supported by Raiffeisen Bank Romania and Electrolux Romania. The project partners are convinced that through access to education, culture and technology, we can become the best version of ourselves.
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