Among 9,179 meat burgers competing for first place at Peru’s recent BurgerFest 2022 edition, the plant-based burger, Not A Common Burger, made with fresh pulses, was crowned as the public’s favorite.
The brand was born during the Covid-19 pandemic in Lima’s ‘dark kitchens’ where its founders André Gallet, Carlos Goicochea, and Antonella Aguilar saw a business opportunity and decided to open their own place.
André, a chef with 12 years of experience working in the food service industry, was challenged by the idea of creating ‘an uncommon burger’ appealing to meat lovers and vegans as well.
“We are not vegans, vegetarians or pescatarians, but we are convinced that everyone should have the right to eat well,” he explains in an interview for El Comercio.
The menu
Not A Common Burger’s kitchen is not only for vegans. Its menu offers two fish burgers, tuna and trout, and one black bean vegan burger, as well as fried potatoes and yams and a vegan mushroom bomb.
“First, we started with fish. Then we developed the vegan burgers. We decided to offer a good product where everything is vegan. From the mayonnaise to the bread. We are very careful not to let them down,” says Gallet.
For André Gallet, the real difference is to offer a legume burger that does not try to mimic meat, something unique, he says.
“We don’t want it to look like meat. We don’t use soy or pea protein. That’s not our raison d’être. We don’t want it to look like meat. We want to sell unusual burgers that don’t exist elsewhere,” he argues.
You don’t need meat to make things that are tasty
Not A Common Burger makes everything from scratch except the bread. The vegan brioche is custom-made by a bakery and “is as good as or better than the traditional one,” André says.
When asked about the FestBurger festival, he exclaimed, “It was a vote I found quite surreal. It made me realise that you don’t need meat to make things that are tasty, delicious, and worthwhile. I could see it for myself when I saw people buying and seeing their faces when they tasted the burgers.”
