This Hipster NYC Bar Wants To Add Fish Sauce To Your Burger & We’re Here For It

Strolling down the streets of the Lower East Side you might find yourself walking past a little Mexican bar called Bar Chucho. It’s funky, it’s fresh, it’s where everyone is trying to be. But it’s the sister restaurant to Corima, so the food’s got a bit of a reputation to uphold, too. Not only is it right down the road, but the menu was developed by the same chefs―Sofia Ostos, Jesse Kranzler, and Fidel Caballero. But what do you do when you have to take bar food to the next level? Well, you get funky with burgers, of course.

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Now That’s Some Funky Beef

And I mean it, they’ve added some serious funk to their staple “Hamburguesa” burger through the introduction of beef garum. The rest of the burger is still impressive, but mainly just a simple twist on the burger classics.

The burger’s topped with queso chihuahua, bone marrow, burnt onion mayonnaise (wowza, yumm!), and blistered peppers. On its own, it sounds like one of the more impressive and intriguing burgers I’ve heard of in a while. But the aged beef patty with beef garum in it is where the action’s really at… if you’re brave enough to order a burger with an entirely foreign ingredient in it. It’s our opinion here at Sporked that it sounds like the missing ingredient to making a perfect burger though and we’re here to tell you why.

Okay, so beef garum is kind of just fish sauce… minus the fish. It’s what you get when you ferment beef with enzymes and salt the same way you would to make fish sauce. And instead of a super umami-forward and densely funky fish flavor, it’s that with beef instead. Sounds fabulous to me! But let’s say you try out this illustrious burger for yourself and fall in love with its unique flavor or simply have an endless curiosity about what the creations star chefs taste like in the flesh. What do you do then?

Can’t Get To NYC?

Well, it’s not like you can really source beef garum and it can take upwards of a year (and a boat load of science-y fussiness) to make. Beef patties on their own can be a bit one note at times―yes, even Wagyu burgers. But if you’re unable to make a patty mixed with beef garum, then you’re probably well off to mix in a bit of plain ol’ grocery store fish sauce. It’ll introduce a bit of fermented funk (especially when combined with aged beef like they do at Bar Chucho) and an incredibly rich umami flavor that you just can’t get from beef alone.

And sure, you can add toppings all day that might impact the flavor the same way, but there’s something about putting that flavor directly into the beef so that it melds into the luscious beef fat that makes this concept incredibly special. Each bite is made elevated and unique, and unless you go overboard with the introduction of the fish sauce, it’s probably gonna be fishy in a totally undetectable way. Sure, beef garum sounds amazing. But this idea sounds too good to pass up on just because you can’t find a way to source it.