Adi Burger/The Burger Shop

Adi Burger has been around since 1997. Most of my friends have grown up with this being their de facto neighbourhood burger stall, late nights hanging about chomping on a burger with a can of soft drink in the other hand. Started by Adi (yes, there is an Adi!), it’s now run by his workers who diligently serve up tasty treats for residents and students who abound in this area. 

The burgers here are so incredibly popular that Adi sells on average 500 burgers a night during the week and about 700 burgers per night during the weekends. What also sets Adi apart from other burger sellers is his truck, instead of the usual stall, he sells his burger from a modified lorry. He decided to use this set up because when he applied for his business licence, he was also required to get a lorry so he combined both requirements and the burger truck was born.

Here’s the deal: you can have the burger 3 ways. There’s option 1, where you order it to take away. Then there’s option 2, where you get your burgers, fish a soft drink out of the giant orange bin, and sit on the chairs on the sidewalk. Option 3 is what my friends and I usually go for, and that is to get our order to go, but we head to the nearby mamak Silva, a little ways down the road. They usually let Adi Burger customers sit there as long as you order drinks. Several rounds of teh o ais and we’re set for hours of good times and good food.

Adi’s menu lists out the regular favourites of beef, chicken or lamb burgers, and chicken hot dogs. They also have lighter snacks like chicken nuggets and fish balls if you don’t feel like gorging on a burger. The thing about this stall though, is that the guys here do everything with a little twist. 

First of all, their burger patties are more crispy than juicy. This is because the patties are split horizontally in the middle to speed up the cooking time, giving the edges a good bite. And if you order a special, they don’t wrap the egg around the patty. Instead, they fry the eggs in ring moulds and pop them in the middle of their split patties, which makes for a yummy squishy burger. Adi also adds his own seasonings when he's grilling the patties, this secret blend of spices makes his burgers even more special. Plus, every Adi burger comes with a healthy squirt of black pepper sauce along with the usual chilli sauce and mayo – zingy!

That night when my friends and I headed over, we had their mushroom beef burger, an oblong lamb burger and a chicken foldover. Their mushroom beef burger is their regular beef burger, except that it is doused liberally with a rich brown mushroom sauce. The umaminess that it lends to the burger is spectacular, and if sloppy burgers are your thing, then this is right up your alley. Our only gripe is that they use tinned button mushrooms, though using fresh would probably drive their price up. 

The oblong lamb burger isn’t, strictly speaking, an oblong burger, but a Darabif lamb patty that has been sliced vertically into half to fit into a large long bun. Get this one with extra black pepper sauce and you won’t be missing the lamb chops at your local grill anytime soon.

The heftiest meal of the night was the chicken foldover. Two chicken patties split cooked like their regular patties, stuffed in pita bread along with a fried egg and baked beans. Talk about a breakfast sandwich! If they served this in the mornings, the nearby fast food drive-thru would lose their A.M. crowd in a snap. Besides the oblong and mushroom burgers, another top seller here is their double cheese special - two patties layered with egg and cheese and doused with a generous amount of sauces and condiments.

Since everything is so good here, we recommend ordering a bunch of different burgers and sharing the bunch. That way everyone wins and gets a taste of everything. Thankfully, even with the student crowd, the wait isn’t usually very long. But I’d still be impatient while standing in line though. Burgers this good? I think I’ll go there again tonight...