WHAT’S IN A NAME - BURGER ORIGIN STORY
Way back in the day. I’m talking nearly 10 years ago, I would tow my street food wagon to events that were extracurricular to my usual nightly village stops. All kinds of fun events would require my services. There was this cool little street food market at a historic pannier market, the rainy as hell festival on the side of a hill that turned into a mudslide, and then everyone had to be tugged out by tractor and even the National Streetfood awards.
Another nice little gig was a twice-a-month trip on a Friday lunchtime to a business park on the outskirts of Exeter. We’d rock up around 11 am, set up the trailer and get ready for maybe 50 or so hungry office workers to make their way out of their fluorescent boxes and into the glorious Devon sunshine to chow down on arguably the best lunch of the month.
We’d take a varied, eclectic mix of food that on this particular day included;
- Pulled pork bun with slaw
- A grilled halloumi burger with ranch, flat cap mushroom, tomato, and beetroot jam
- THE CLASSIC - a fried chicken burger with chipotle mayo and cheddar cheese
- Cornish Hake and chips
and probably a butcher’s sausage and chips or something similar.
We’d never really know how many people were going to come and eat or what, for that matter, would tickle their fancy. What we did know, however, is that these folks were in a rush with no more than an hour to throw some food in their faces and get back to the grind. We had to be quick. So we’d cook a couple of portions of everything off. 1 of us would take the money, another would bag up and another would frantically top up what was being sold. This was usually me.
1 ear on the orders coming in, to not run out and get everyone fed in super quick styley, and 1 eye on the queue to see how many more were joining at the back. But all in all, pure focus on smashing out the best lunch that they’d all have that month. Every burger had to bang.
Towards 1:30 pm the queue would begin to wane and we’d normally pack up, ready to move on to our normal Friday night pitch in Sampford Peverell where we’d have to be by 3:30 pm at the latest to start all over again (albeit where it was much, much busier). Cooking furiously, a thought crept into my mind, “We’ve been here much longer than normal”. I checked my watch. It’s 2:15 pm and the last few customers are only just getting their orders.
The word must’ve spread around the business park and everyone wanted some incredible lunch! Good for business, yes, but we had to go. An even busier service awaited us a little over an hour’s drive away. No sooner had the last few customers paid and turned to go back inside that I was furiously closing the hatch ready to hot foot it whilst the other two chefs were packing down.
As I was hitching up, I shouted into the trailer to the two guys now snaffling back treats. It’d been quite busy and caught me so by surprise that there were a few leftovers in the warmer. “Just throw anything together, we’ve got to go”, I shouted through the door.
We all jumped in and sped off. I say sped, more like amble. You can’t speed anywhere towing a 3-tonne trailer with 4 fryers filled with hot oil. You’re lucky to even get there. As soon as we arrived, the chef passed me what he had created. By this time, he had already eaten his and had a massive grin on his face as he passed it over. What he’d chucked together in a hurry was quite possibly the best-fried chicken combo I’d ever tried. A piece of fried gold smothered in garlicky, creamy ranch sauce, a slice of perfectly grilled halloumi, and some of the epic slaw to bring it all together and add that extra crunch.
This was a delight to behold. A happy accident that somehow worked better than anything I’d put thought into. I should’ve been mad that this chef. Instead, I grabbed my chalk marker and slapped it straight on the menu for that night.
We named it the Ol’ Dirty Bird right away and it’s been on the menu, unchanged since that day. An homage if you will, to a time when life was frantic, and who knew where we’d turn up next to sling burgers.
They say that the best prospectors hit gold by accident, where they least expect, and we certainly struck fried gold that day.