Tasting Notes: Flat Boy Burgers Earns a Permanent Place to Serve Smashburgers

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While everyone at the start of the pandemic was learning how to make sourdough, Dan Cote-Rosen decided to hunker down on his stove and grill up burgers for his friends.

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Not just any type of burger, mind you. As a foodie, Cote-Rosen had developed a taste for the traditional California-style smashburger and lamented the lack of places to find it in Edmonton. A few years later, what was supposed to be a fun way to share his passion turned into a full-time operation at the Granite Curling Club called Flat Boy Burgers.

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So what exactly is a Smashburger, you might ask?

“It was also kind of a new concept for me,” admits Bryan Schmidt, COO for Flat Boy. “Basically, you take a patty of meat rolled into a ball, then you take some sort of flat press and push it as hard as you can on the grill to create a very, very thin patty. They are so delicious that I just stopped making burgers at home. I mean, why bother?

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Flat Boy Burger did not emerge fully formed from Cote-Rosen’s kitchen. According to Schmidt, after the founder gained enough adherents, he moved operations to a ghost kitchen on the south side, hired his first employee, and began producing burgers for limited hours on weekends. A little later, Schmidt and a few others signed on and helped move the ghost kitchen to the curling rink in the spring of 2022.

“We just made the decision to develop this thing,” says Schmidt, who has done his time in the restaurant and brewery industry. “We stayed true to the company’s core values ​​with a traditional California Smashburger. We use fresh ingredients from Darcy’s Meat on the South Side, and we have a few different local vegetable suppliers. Our sauces are homemade. We used to not have a fryer, but at Granite we hand punch our own flat fries, achieving a very thin yet wide fry that tastes great with the flat sauce we developed.

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According to Schmidt, Flat Boy continues to evolve and try new things, not just with burgers.

“We kind of keep it consistent, doing things like changing secondary options,” he notes. « There’s a key lime pie, which is amazing and has had great reviews, and it’s made by Travis, our GM, on his own. Recipe. It’s been really, really fun developing all of this .

It’s also been great for Granite, which has not only gained a thriving business in the off-peak months, but has had a full-time kitchen team for the past few weeks providing tasty, high-quality treats for burger lovers and to curlers during the season. Schmidt cites the partnership between the Shamrock Curling Club and Drift Food Truck as an example of how curling clubs can offer something beyond soggy fries or microwaveable trays. Not just freshly made burgers, but also a number of vegan and vegetarian offerings, which Schmidt is clearly proud of.

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Cote-Rosen is back in his role as Vice President of Marketing at Oilers Entertainment Group, but he and the rest of his team are still determined to see how far Flat Boy can go. This means future plans for new outlets, although they are still figuring out exactly where.

“We’re looking somewhere around Happy Beer Street (roughly between Whyte Avenue and 60th Avenue, and along 99 Street) but we’re not sure,” Schmidt says. “It’s exciting to be on the ground floor of something like this. We have the building blocks for something that I think would one day make a very successful channel, and I’m excited to see what the future holds.

Beverly Food Week

It may have merged with Edmonton over 60 years ago, but Beverly still feels like its own little town.

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A distinct city with great dining options, that is, and they will be spotlighted during the annual Beverly Dining Week, which runs all week and ends Sunday, October 30.

“We’ve always been seen as a small town within a big city,” acknowledges Alex Bosker, executive director of the Beverly Business Association. “It’s true, and I think the city is catching up on the fact that it really is a hidden gem with an amazing food scene.”

Returning restaurants for the event in the city’s northeast quadrant include Pappas Restaurant, Million Thai Restaurant, Galen on 118, Take Five and Old Beverly Cafe, while new entrants include Sambusa Hut, Swiss2Go and Kingdom of Spices . A diverse range of options representing a diverse population, and each establishment will have specialty menus offering options between $15 and $30. There’s plenty to choose from, even the local Boston Pizza, but if you’re a foodie looking for something unusual, you might notice Mumbai Dakar, the only restaurant in town that offers a variety of cuisines. Indian and African buffets.

« I just hope people come and experience the neighborhood, » Bosker says. « It really has a historic charm to it, and it’s like you’re leaving a big city and entering a small town. I know that as a resident of Beverly, I personally have fun browsing through dishes that I don’t I’ve never tasted some of these restaurants before, learning about other cultures while learning about different foods is just a great way to do it.

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