Pittsburgh via Manchester: How One Burger United Two Cities
What makes a great burger? We’ve eaten our fair share, and firmly believe things stand out most when meat is high quality and cooked to perfection. That first bite of beef, bird, or beef or bird-like substitute, tastebuds popping with excitement at the knowledge your experience is just starting. Whether it’s a stripped down affair with cheese, grilled onions, condiments and little else, or something altogether more adventurous.
Hard Rock Cafe has long been known for both ends of the burger spectrum — ‘wow, who came up with this?’ creations, and the authentic taste of 1950s America. The global restaurant group, founded in 1971, now operates more than 300 sites internationally, including a number of hotels and casinos alongside stand-alone eateries. Its locations are varied, from the remote Mariana Islands, to Siem Reap, Cambodia. And its menus do their best to reflect this, without allowing consistency to slip.
It’s a difficult balance to strike, but one made easier if you come up with something like the World Burger Tour. Part marketing stunt (well, OK, all marketing stunt), part platform for chefs to experiment and stamp some identity onto their menu, the idea is simple. In contrast, the toppings are often anything but. Cutting to the chase, more than 150 new burgers were created by Hard Rock Cafe kitchen teams across the globe, each making the most of local ingredients and methods to grill something unique to that place.
Sales were then monitored, as sales have to be, and the top five performing burgers added to a special World Burger Tour menu, which is currently available across all Hard Rock Cafes for a limited time only. Specifically, 14th June (known within the company as Founders’ Day, when the first outlet opened in London) through to 2nd September 2024. Entrants from India, Romania, Brazil, Nepal and the US made it through to the honours list, and now the heat is very much on to see which grilled work of art will reap the biggest rewards in terms of orders.
In the running we have the Bengaluru Burger, which marries 7oz of ground beef with American cheese, sweet-spicy pickled mayo, black bean corn salsa, roasted jalapeños, guacamole and lettuce. Then there’s the Bucharest, which throws garlic horseradish aioli, marinated camembert cheese, tomato, smoked shoestring onions, frisbee lettuce, and red wine cranberry jam over a classic 7oz patty. In contrast, the Gramado Burger, Brazil’s hopeful, uses garlic aioli, crispy mozzarella cheese fritters, and whisky bacon jam with the same beef cut.
Elsewhere, the Kathmandu sticks two smashed and stacked patties together, then covers them in sweet chilli mayo, provolone cheese, caramelised onions, avocado, and tomato zucchini slaw. Finally, the Pittsburgh Burger — alliteration alert — combines Hard Rock’s aptly-named Legendary sauce with smoked bacon, pickles, beer cheese sauce, whisky bacon jam, American cheese, French fries, and two smashed and stacked patties.
Quite the list, almost two months in and the competition is already showing how mouthwatering flavours can transcend borders, and one Hard Rock Cafe’s dream can become another’s, err, dream. Thousands of miles from Pennsylvania, where the burger was created, Hard Rock Manchester has been one of the company’s best performing European restaurants for sales of the Pittsburgh. In fact, the establishment, located in The Printworks, a 24-hour entertainment destination featuring everything from nightclubs to cinemas, is selling more of these burgers than any other on its current menu. Talk about proof the special relationship is alive, well, and clearly pretty hungry.
Aneta Jarzmik, General Manager at Hard Rock Cafe Manchester said: “The World Burger Tour has been a fantastic event to have running in the restaurant and a collaborative opportunity to work with all international Hard Rock Cafes. It brings customers something new and exciting to try and keeps them coming back for more to experience the other delicious burgers from around the globe. If we have learned anything, it’s that Manchester loves burgers!”