Fire-grilled or smashed? The two burgers, explained

UMAMI · 4 September 2026

A thick fire-grilled chicken patty topped with melted cheese, sliced pickles and caramelised onion, stacked with red onion and lettuce in a glossy milk bun on a dark wood board.

Quick answer: A smash burger is a ball of loose meat pressed thin onto a hot flat top, which maximises surface contact and produces a lacy, crisp crust across the whole patty. A fire-grilled burger is a thicker formed patty cooked over live flame, which produces char in stripes, a smokier flavour, and a juicier interior. Neither is better in the abstract. They are two different things.

The smash burger has spent the last decade taking over. There is a good reason for it: pressing a patty thin onto a screaming flat top creates an enormous amount of browned surface, and browned surface is flavour.

But the technique has a cost that gets discussed less often. A thin patty cooks through almost instantly, which means the window between juicy and dry is measured in seconds. Done well, a smash burger is excellent. Done in a rush, at volume, it turns into a dry disc.

What fire does differently

Cooking over live fire changes three things.

Smoke. Fat rendering out of the patty hits the heat source and returns as smoke. That smoke is a flavour you cannot get on a flat top, and it is why a burger off a grill tastes like a grill.

Char in stripes, not sheets. You get intense browning where the patty meets the grate and gentler cooking between. That contrast between hard char and softer meat is a texture a flat top does not produce.

Thickness becomes possible. Because you are not relying on total surface contact for flavour, the patty can be thick. A thick patty holds its juices, and it gives you something to actually bite into.

The honest trade-off

Fire is harder. It is less consistent, it demands attention, and it takes longer per patty. A flat top is faster and more forgiving, which is precisely why so many kitchens choose it.

We chose fire, and thick, because that is the burger we wanted to eat. It also happens to answer the complaint we hear most often about burgers in this city, which is that you pay a good price and receive a thin patty you can barely find inside the bun.

Thick, not pressed.