Bun Meat and Cheese by Homeburg: #thekawayiis Experiment

Update September 2019:

Bun Meat and Cheese's pop-up store at 72 Courtyard has concluded. Taiki and his team are now looking for a new permanent space and will probably spend the next few months appearing sporadically on short individual events. Follow their IG for more updates and I will give you more coverage here once the new permanent location is up!

***********

Everyone has their own favourite burger.

Some like the messy, greasy decadence, some like it dripping with melted cheese, some like the presence of vegetables to make the burger feel healthy.

Then comes Taiki, the young man absolutely obsessed with burgers, whose claim to fame was his determination to engineer a burger to his own perfection, to the point he could only make up to 4 a night, resulting in a queue that could drag for months.

Taiki and me.

Just over a week ago, Taiki finally opened his burger stand, simply called Bun Meat and Cheese, aiming to satisfy more burger fans by making 100 burgers accessible 6 days a week (except Monday).

Due to the marketing momentum Homeburg has built over the last year, expectations are high. I have thus brought my family, my 7 and 4 year-old included, down to 72 Courtyard last Saturday (likely the busiest day of the week) to 'test the system'.

Look out for this sign, right outside Beam club, on the 2nd floor of 72 Courtyard.

We arrived on the dot, at 4.59pm (actually a minute before they officially open), to find ourselves with queue numbers 45 to 47 (!!). So, the first step is to get a number (1 for each burger) and be told when to be back to place your order. We were told to return at 6pm.

My daughter enjoying the interesting journey to the burger.

The sun was setting, and the open area on the 2nd floor of 72 Courtyard would inevitably become more comfortable soon, but at a couple of weeks before Songkran, the searing temperature in the late afternoon was just too much for us to wait for an hour. We spent the next hour having some drinks at the nearby Mellow Thong Lor.

Still finding it interesting.

So we grabbed our seats near the burger joint at 6pm sharp, and were summoned to make our orders slightly before 6.10pm.

Patiently waiting.

At 6.28pm (18 minutes after ordering), our 3 burgers were ready. Please note that for ease of consumption, your burgers will be cut into half, and vegetables are on free-flow at the side of the counter, should you require any.

Vegetables, available as a self-service option.

Taiki dissecting our burger.

I shall not go into the specifics of the burger, you can easily find out through many online sources if you are interested. After trying 2 variants at Bun Meat and Cheese, I feel that for the first-timer, a good choice will be to go straight for the Homeburg Prototype #1 (380THB), as the bacon, gherkins and jalapeno will give more taste dimension to every bite.

The Homeburg Prototype #1.

Execution-wise, I feel that it falls slightly short of what I had at Homeburg (maybe 85%).

But wait, making 4 burgers a night (with a possible monthly turnover of 0 baht) through pure passion is a completely different animal to running a burger stand selling 100 burgers (potentially turning over more than a million baht/month) on a nightly basis.

No one said it would be exactly the same. Producing the same quality will be infinitely more challenging.

What I love about Taiki is his single-minded focus to perfectly-engineer 1 product, therefore I have no doubt he will be attempting to improve everyday, or die trying.

Our burger exercise ended at around 7pm (took us 2 hours on a Saturday evening), with my 7-year-old son nearly finishing his entire burger. My wife and I both agree that Bun Meat and Cheese already provides one of the best burger-eating experiences in the city, despite having room to further improve.

If I can do it on a Saturday evening in the middle of the hottest-ever summer in Bangkok, with kids in tow, it's time for you to make the burger trip.