The burger: a large, juicy (beef) patty sandwiched between fresh lettuce, tomatoes, a slice of cheese (or two), caramelized or normal onions (maybe mushrooms), sauce, punctuated by two perfect-sized buns. Like the food gods descended from heaven and bequeathed men the inspiration to squeeze the possible food groups into a nice, clean dish.

In my travel experiences, I don’t think I’ve seen burgers done the way they do in Malaysia. Upon a glance, everything is there, but the burgers here are a little smaller than what a non-Malaysian is used to; i.e: smaller patties and buns. Yeah, I think I’ve committed blasphemy against my fellow Malaysians with the former sentence, but I digress.

What makes the Malaysian roadside burger one that captures the imagination? Is it the endless customization options that your boy (the chef) can pull off for you; sauce in the heart of your patties, extras for everything, or the all-egg ‘banjo’ patty? The way they manipulate a perfectly cooked omelette snugly around the burger patty in their famous ‘special’ variant? Is it the speed at which they prepare your burger, having it all cooked and served in under five minutes? Or is it the nostalgia/guilty pleasure of having it as a comfort food/snack that anyone can take for granted, through thick and thin, since they open from 7 pm to 1 am, six days a week? I can’t say for sure myself.

OM Burger

Pandering to the aforementioned, my initial thought was that this was just another roadside burger stall; good but still just another burger. However, social media changed my perception on it. Featured all over Instagram and Facebook, OM burger has gained a reputation for itself in the past few weeks as THE GREASIEST, SLOPPIEST roadside burger stall in peninsula Malaysia. Intrigued, a friend and I made it our quest to go and find out for sure.

Cost: RM 5.00-19.00 (depending on your customization)

What to expect:

The aroma got me long before I saw the store. The unmistakable smell of butter on a hot pan was strong, and it came from the humble little store right outside a seven-eleven. With fame comes a lot of customers, and this was no exception. (Holy shit, that was a long queue.) My order was a triple ‘kahwin’ special with cheese; a combination of 2 chicken patties and 1 beef, wrapped in an omelette, topped off with a slice of cheese. Yeah, for the gym gains I had to do it.

My first bite confirmed something that I thought only theoretically possible; that more butter could be squeezed into the burger buns to make them taste better. The vegetables were what you would expect; a burst of crunch that complimented the grease of the burger, except in this instance even they were overpowered by the sheer amount of margarine squeezed into the burger. The omelettes felt like they were laced with margarine, the patties never felt so greasily good, and even the paper that the chefs wrapped our burgers in became laced with grease and touched my hand within 5 seconds after they gave it to us.

They say that cooking things with butter makes the dish a whole lot more fragrant, and this burger was that exact concept taken to a whole other level. Lettuce, caramelized onions, tomatoes, omelettes, patties, buns, none escaped the grease. To my surprise, the cheese, mayonnaise, chilli and bbq sauce that they added in the burger felt like a perfectly arranged supporting cast in the face of such glorious, overwhelming greasiness. I knew it was going to be greasy, but not THIS greasy.

The rest was a sinful re-enaction of Adam partaking of the fruit of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. By the time the deed was done, my hands, nose and mouth were stained with grease, and I had never felt so greased up and filled after eating burger in my entire life. Goddamn, I knew I would be back for more someday, assuming my guilt doesn’t kill me first.

Notes:

Yeah, I recommend going for this if you don’t have any medical conditions beforehand and love oily, greasy stuff. Personally, I wouldn’t go more than once a month for fitness reasons, and as such this store is one of my guilty pleasures. I hope you, the reader, liked this like I did, and maybe if you happen to be in Ampang area in KL, maybe you could give it a shot (map link here).

Liked the burger or the article? Be sure to leave a like or a comment, and as always, have a great day ahead!!