The Man Who Quit Wall Street to Flip Burgers

[cheerful music] [meat sizzling]

At 50 years old,

I did the most crazy thing that somebody would expect.

I left my 30-year career on Wall Street

to open up a burger restaurant.

We started doing pop-ups during COVID.

Next thing I knew, we had three-hour waits for burgers.

Today, we could do anywhere

between 600 to a 1,000 burgers a day.

We see a lot of the same faces,

that tells me we're doing something right.

To take a passion project

and turn it into a permanent home takes a lot of thought,

a lot of energy, a lot of dedication.

It's unlike anything you're gonna get

in any other nine-to-five job, any other office job.

If I didn't take that chance,

I would regret it the rest of my life.

[cheerful music]

Welcome to Gotham Burger Social Club.

My name's Mike Puma.

And today, you're gonna see everything

that goes into running this place.

Why don't you guys follow me?

We'll show you what we do.

[cheerful music]

Down here, we keep everything very organized.

Got our buns, Martin's Potato Rolls, always the best.

All of our dry storage.

And back here is where we do our prep.

We've got stuff for specials.

We've got all our spices that we use and all of our sauces.

This is something that's pretty cool that we've got here.

These oil tanks get filled weekly.

We refresh the oil every day.

No one wants to carry dirty oil up and downstairs.

We use this machine.

Everything goes through the tubes,

and they go upstairs into the kitchen.

And it saves us a lot of time and effort.

And also, I think it's a much cleaner system.

It'll suck all the dirty oil out,

put it into the waste oil tank.

You'll turn the spigot the other way,

and instead of sucking, it's gonna pull,

and it'll fill it in with all the clean oil.

So we get 128 gallons of oil delivered each week.

Because we use so much oil, it's worth the price.

So every day, we get our beef in fresh, never frozen here.

They get delivered, and I think we just got an order in.

The next thing we're gonna do is,

we inspect that beef when it comes in,

make sure it's up to our standards,

and then we prep it and get it ready for the day.

When we get beef in,

we get it balled first with three-ounce portions.

Otherwise, we'll be here all day making beef balls.

The puck shape is gonna come out of a dye

that they have at the factory.

You can certainly do balls.

I've seen people take this, roll 'em into balls.

So when you smash this down, we have a great tool,

as soon as it kind of hits a circumference

all the way around, we know that it's smashed enough.

You've got a nice flat surface. It just works perfect.

We've tried a lot of different methods.

This way works really, really well.

Your fat-to-lean ratio, you want at least 80/20.

We use a 75/25 to help really get that nice crust,

still keep that smash burger juicy.

You have to understand, when you're smashing that burger,

you're giving it a high heat.

You wanna lock in some of that moisture,

and that's gonna come from a higher fat content,

and that's where the flavor comes from.

So this is gonna go into a pan into our lowboy downstairs.

This just makes it a lot more efficient. It's ready to go.

Next, we're gonna be making our frickles, our fried pickles.

Frickles are just a great Southern dish.

You'll see 'em on a lot of menus

when you're traveling around.

You don't typically see 'em in New York.

[cheerful music]

We start with a nice, thick dill chip.

These things are gonna go right into the flour,

give 'em a little dredge, tap 'em out,

then they're gonna go into our homemade tempura batter.

This has got a lot of seasoning,

some really great stuff in here

to give 'em a little flavor, right into panko.

And you gotta hand-dip these.

Otherwise, they're just not the same

when they come out of the machine.

But when these guys are ready,

and they go into the fryer,

they're gonna get golden, crispy, delicious,

but the inside's gonna have all that pickled softness

as soon as you bite into it.

Somebody's down here for a couple hours.

We make thousands of these a day.

We've got a lot of options for people who enjoy a burger.

In New York City, to stand out,

you gotta think about doing things a little different.

So this originally started by me reviewing burgers online.

Grab the group of guys,

meet up once a month, write a review.

So originally,

I came with the name Gotham Burger Social Club,

'cause in New York,

and it was a group of guys rating burgers.

Then I started making burgers for fundraisers.

Fast forward to 2020, pandemic hits New York,

a lot of bars, restaurants,

everybody struggling asked for my help.

Started doing one pop-up a week,

turned into two a week, turned into three a week,

and the lines grew and grew and grew,

and got larger and larger and larger,

to the point where we decided to open up a restaurant.

So we knew, once we opened up the restaurant,

we needed to expand that menu a little bit,

give people a little bit of variety.

So we added things like the chopped cheese taco,

the loaded tots, fries, our frickles that we do here.

There was not a great deal of market research done.

There was no testing, on your friends.

It was like, No, this is what I wanna have in there.

And this is what we're gonna do.

We're gonna let my team come in, finish these,

'cause we gotta get about 1,000 of these ready for service.

They're gonna finish this off,

and we're gonna get ready for the next steps.

[cheerful music]

At the time here,

we are making our famous club sauce here at Gotham.

This is a mayonnaise-based sauce, ketchup, mustard.

It's a classic burger sauce,

but we err on the side of more savory than sweet,

little onion powder, paprika.

Our club sauce goes with every single side.

It comes on our traditional OG Gotham Smash.

If you guys wanted to make your own special sauce at home,

it's very easy.

Take two parts mayo, one part ketchup, one part mustard,

one part relish, little salt and pepper, mix it together.

And that's the consistency we look for.

Not too thick, not too thin.

We're gonna batch the sauce here,

and then we're gonna show you how we slice our onions.

We go through a lot of onions here,

'cause we do make a Oklahoma fried onion burger.

We're gonna use this beast of a machine, Robot Coupe.

It's a, who? The name of the machine.

[Cameraperson] Name of the guy.

The name of the, oh, this guy, Alex.

[cameraperson laughs]

Alex, say hello to the guys.

Hi, guys. We're going.

[Alex speaking Spanish]

[cameraperson laughs]

[machine whirring]

Show you guys just how thin you need these onions.

That first patty's gonna start cooking

in minute, 30 seconds.

You're gonna flip it over,

give it another minute and a half.

You these onions to be so thin

that they're gonna cook in that minute and a half.

Otherwise, you're gonna dry out the burger.

Once the onions get sliced, then we're gonna drain them.

We're gonna get some of that moisture out.

Once you start adding moisture to the burger

and to the grill, and everything, it starts to steam.

You start to lose that maillard effect on the beef.

You're gonna start steaming the burger.

We'll go through thousands of pounds of onions

in a week here.

So this machine is very, very valuable.

It's not cheap. It's about a $5,000 machine.

You've gotta equate costs

with different variables in this business.

But if you're looking at it long term,

it's much more economical

to spend the money on a machine like this.

[machine whirring]

This is Dorian,

and he is doing something very, very important.

He's shingling the cheese. Why do we do that?

The cheese comes in blocks like this sliced.

When you're moving fast,

it's really hard to pull this stuff apart,

it'll start to rip on you, break, stick together,

especially when you got gloves on.

By taking the time

to do this process moves the upstairs kitchen a lot quicker,

'cause if you start tripping on yourself on the line,

it's gonna shine through the food.

It's 9:30 now.

We're gonna let these guys finish up all the prep down here,

and we're gonna get the line ready upstairs.

[cheerful music]

So now, there's the line in the kitchen.

Everything was designed with purpose and intent.

We've got a separate griddle for our veggie burger,

our beast of a griddle to handle all of our griddle needs,

from burgers, hot dogs, chopped cheese.

Three fryers to handle our fries, tots, frickles.

And then we're gonna finish everything right behind you.

Let's get our chopped cheese ready for the day.

This is something we do a couple of different ways.

We do chopped cheese tacos,

and we also added on our loaded tots.

[hopeful music]

Start with a little butter.

[butter sizzling] Our diced onions down.

[onions sizzling]

We're gonna lightly caramelize these,

give these onions just a little translucent cook.

They're gonna finish cooking with the beef.

Chopped cheese are a New York bodega classic.

Came out of Harlem,

they make usually a sandwich with it,

with lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, mayo.

We'd make our own twist on it.

We use a flour tortilla, toast it up,

add a little chopped cheese on there,

a little lettuce, tomato, pickled jalapeno.

We make a spicy creme in-house that is just lights out.

We're constantly making fresh chopped cheese all day long,

because we just literally can't keep it up in stock.

This is a gas griddle, 52 inches.

This is something that isn't gonna cool off

when I throw down a bunch of beef.

This is what makes it a chopped cheese.

We're just gonna cover this with American cheese,

let it cut a melt, and then we're gonna chop it in.

[meat sizzling]

[scraper tapping]

Now, we wanna create a nice cheesy sauce

when we're doing this.

You know, this is another great thing,

if you have leftover beef at home,

you don't know what to do with it,

make chopped cheeses the next day for the family.

So the chopped cheese is ready.

We're gonna clean up this grill.

It's 11 o'clock now.

We're gonna get ready to open up the doors.

We're hoping to have a nice, busy day here.

[cheerful music]

We are open for business. We got orders coming in right now.

They get printed on this ticket.

She'll lay everything down on the trays,

then we'll start toasting buns, burgers will go on.

Then we'll drop things for the fryer.

We don't want fried stuff to get cold.

We wanna time everything as perfect as we can.

We've got a tong for beef, red handle.

I don't like handling beef with gloves or hands.

Too much cross-contamination we see in kitchens.

This scraper, very, very easy to find

at your local Home Depot or Lowe's.

That is nothing more than a putty knife.

They just scrape well,

there's enough surface area to kind of use it as a spatula.

We're gonna make a Gotham Smash burger.

Beef always on the bottom,

and you've got the rest of your items on top.

We're gonna make a double,

starts off with 2 three-ounce patties.

And then we're gonna add our thin-sliced onions.

It's gonna get smashed into the beef,

cook in, and steam into the beef when we turn it over.

We're gonna smash this.

[upbeat music] [meat sizzling]

I like to use a method,

where the middle is gonna be a little bit thicker

than the side.

[meat sizzling]

But I want it thin enough

where I'm gonna get those crispy edges,

and still have some thickness in the middle.

When you flip it, you see that crust that builds.

By smashing a burger,

it's the only way to build that crust like that.

Those crispy bits are some of the best part.

You ever have a steak,

and you want those crispy bits off the steak,

that's the whole part of this burger.

These could be ready in about a minute and a half

on each side.

More than two minutes on each side, you're overcooking it.

And that's exactly what we're looking for.

So now, the onions are doing their job.

They're cooking, and they're releasing flavor into the beef.

You could smell it. It's intoxicating.

So we're making a double, two pieces of American cheese.

We're gonna stack those doubles.

We're gonna give it a little steam to help melt that cheese,

dome it. [meat sizzling]

Look at that melty cheese.

That's what you look for right there.

We toast the tops of the bun with a little butter,

not the inside.

You got a nice soft texture on the inside,

a little chew on the outside.

You're getting a substantial burger, a triple or double,

you want a bun that's gonna hold onto that.

You want something that's gonna be able to hold those juices

that are gonna come to the burger.

The double is really the way it should be ordered.

We're gonna start with our sweet heat pickles.

We got maybe a couple of pickles, jalapenos, the ketchup,

'cause I think every burger there

should have a little ketchup, a little kiss of mustard,

and then we're gonna finish it off

with our world-famous club sauce.

And that's our Gotham Smash. This is the OG.

If you've never gotten to Gotham,

this is what you're coming for.

This is what we built our brand, this burger.

This is the one I was making on the street corners

during the pandemic.

To me, this is the perfect well-rounded burger.

You wanna make another one?

[upbeat music]

We started doing a burger as a special here

at Gotham Burger called the California Dreamin',

and it was inspired

by everybody's favorite West Coast burger.

We're gonna start off by toasting a seeded bun.

This one, we are gonna toast the inside.

I don't like toasting the sesame seeds,

they can get a little bitter.

Two-ounce patties of beef, but no onion smashed on there.

[meat sizzling]

If you don't have a burger smasher at home,

you can use the top of a can,

you can roll it out and put it on the plancha

with a rolling pin if you wanted to.

Find anything that just has some weight,

you could put a little parchment paper down on it,

and just press it down.

So I could already see, by these pockets,

that these are ready to flip.

Same two pieces of cheese.

We use American cheese here on all of our burgers,

melts perfectly, and it's the perfect amount of creaminess

and saltiness to the burger that I love.

Cheese is perfectly melted.

Because this is a Cali burger,

you're gonna get your lettuce and tomato on this one.

We're gonna finish this with our California sauce,

which is more of our version

of like a Thousand Island dressing.

Wouldn't be inspired without some hot chili peppers.

You're craving that In-N-Out-style burger,

and you're not out West, this is the burger you want.

It's a phenomenal bite right there.

[meat sizzling] [cheerful music]

[oil sizzling]

This is where all the crispy magic happens,

right here, folks.

We got our fryers here.

Here's where we're gonna drop

in our crispy shoestring fries, some frickles too.

Day to day, my role changes.

As founder and president of this company,

I could be on the line cooking one day,

I could be cleaning a toilet one day.

People think this is an overnight success.

I spent 12 years building my brand,

did seven, eight years of pop-ups before I even thought

about opening up a restaurant.

I'm not gonna tell anybody not to follow their dream,

'cause they should,

but don't think this is easy for a second.

I do not miss my past life in finance for a minute.

I don't think about that.

When people say,

This is better than that burger I grew up on,

or, That's worth so much,

I can't even put it into words.

I sat in an office for 30 years.

I'd rather stand in this kitchen all day long.

[cheerful music]

We got some really crispy chicken tenders.

Now, that's a chicken tender.

Oh, we don't play games here.

[upbeat music]

So this is where we get busy.

Got 11 doubles coming in for lunch.

People are hungry out there. We're working.

We want that- Each person's job

is to make sure the orders are correct,

gonna make sure that we're moving fast.

It's organized chaos in this kitchen.

The most important thing is that every single person

on the line has a job to do,

and they know exactly when to do it.

[cheerful music]

Luis, Alex on the grills,

they're watching every single order.

Then it's gonna go down to Claudine.

Claudine and Tanya are gonna assemble your burger

to perfection.

[grill sizzling]

We clean this grill after every round. You might say, Why?

Because the more this stuff stay on,

the more it's gonna get burnt,

it's gonna give a rancid taste.

We don't want that.

When you see those black grills

that are just full of carbon, we try and avoid that.

We wanna keep a clean surface,

'cause that's gonna make that burger taste that much better.

We could get probably about,

think it was about 45, 50 burgers on here at a time.

So if we have to load up 45, 50 burgers at a time,

we can get 'em on here and get 'em out quick.

So right now, we're in the middle of lunch,

Fire Department just showed up, ordered 13 doubles,

which puts a lot of pressure on the kitchen.

So to manage that, we'll pause our delivery,

'cause we wanna take care of them.

We also wanna take care of the people in the restaurant.

[cheerful music]

So it's been great spending the afternoon with you guys,

but we got a lot of work to do here.

We got another rush coming in a little bit.

So you guys are gonna have to pack up and leave.

[cheerful music]