The Secret to a Great Veggie Burger Is Experimentation

I've been a vegetarian for 24 years—ever since I was a little kid. My brother Fred and I decided to become vegetarians after our mom described what meat actually was to us: "those cartoon characters" that we loved so much. So that was the last conversation that we had about it.

At Burgerlords, we could have easily made it a vegetarian concept, but I think it's important to bring carnivores and vegetarians together in one space. People always worry about dinner plans with their vegetarian friends, and nowadays, even at the heaviest meat places always have something for us to eat. As kids, we discovered that grilled cheese at In-N-Out, which changed everything. We'd take the bus downtown, go skateboarding all day, and eat there sometimes twice a day.

Nowadays, I think the veggie burger can and should stand on its own. I like for it to be made up of all vegetables and grains. I think the biggest problem is when you go somewhere and the veggie burger is an unseasoned portobello mushroom burger. The fact that something thinks, "Oh, you're vegetarian, so you'll eat this" is a complete cop-out. Soy and all these protein fillers aren't real food for vegetarians. That's not the healthiest stuff you can put between the buns. That's why it took us four months to develop the Burgerlords vegan burger, which is made up of a secret combination of barley, cashews, four or five different vegetables, and an amazing spice blend that we came up with. I crave it every single day. We're still on the search for the perfect veggie burger, and I think what we've come up with is pretty damn close. I don't want it to taste like meat, because being a vegetarian, that's the last thing I want to do or create. I guess for people who are newer to becoming vegetarians, it's still a transition period where you still want that old flavor that you crave. We created something to suit our palates, and we put everything that we want to eat every day into it.

When I eat the Burgerlords veggie burger, I want to eat in on a curb, take it in my car, or hang out on the street. And when you find yourself sitting on the Burgerlords patio, we're dead center on the Central Plaza in Chinatown, so the mixture of people that come through—which is mostly tourists—and the landscape is something to witness. Right at sunset, the lighting hits all of the old buildings, which gives it a gorgeous glow.

When you're starting out at home trying to develop your own veggie burger, there's so many amazing online recipes that are out there, but the biggest thing is figuring out the base that you want, whether that's grain or beans. Get your hands on everything and play around with all of it. Everyone's palate is different. Just make sure to stay away from the soy proteins and the tempehs of the world.

There's so many elements that go into creating a veggie burger, but at the end of the day, it's a casual thing. All of the hard work that goes into it is a lot like a painting: it's a flat surface that you wet with the oils and the brushes that you use and put so many hours into to get that one final piece. You can go down the one-note portobello mushroom route or try to get complicated with it. We now have meat-eaters who've switched to only ordering the Burgerlords veggie burger, which is a beautiful thing. The labor, the hours, the ingredients, and the final result are like a piece of art that you get to devour.