05-08-2025
Burger Wellington is back for 2025 – here are four entries too good to miss
There are more than 200 entries in this year's Burger Wellington. Food writer Nick Iles sampled four to kick things off.
Burgers are deeply subjective, and that is a good thing. There is no objectively correct burger, only personal preference, and disagreement is one of the great joys in life – it fuels discussion and keeps the world turning. The theme for Burger Wellington 2025 is Food is Love, and the things I love most about this annual festival are the outrageous opinions and hot takes on the burgers on offer, some of which are the silliest on the planet. What's not to love?
Burger Wellington is a chance to celebrate how international and diverse our city is and to celebrate the creative chefs that work their magic here. The breadth and scope of participating restaurants, chefs and burgers are remarkable. Whether the burger is dedicated to the chef's family, the country they are from, or simply demonstrates their appreciation for the produce they get to work with, there is something here for everyone. To help kick off this year's discussions and disagreements, I went out and previewed some of the burgers on offer.
Polish Sausage Company – Stag Night
Polish Sausage Company owner Anna Janiec is very clear about the focus for her burger entry: a love of both her Polish heritage and her signature smoked meats. It is an homage to home and every element seeks to be a fusion of Poland and Aotearoa.
Stag Night is centred around a patty that is made with lean ground venison which is enriched and made decadent with pork fat. The patty is smoked in-house over mānuka coals before being cooked to order on the blistering flat top grill at the back of the tiny shop in Lyall Bay. The bun is a Brezelmania milk bun, which is toasted and covered with a generous layer of beetroot tartare. In Poland, milk buns are a staple and almost everything ends up pickled at some point. Good pickles, Anna assures me, are not supposed to taste first of vinegar. Here the pickles are deeply savoury and have been laced with horopito pepper. The patty is placed on top and the whole thing is doused in a thick sauce made with Zany Zeus cream cheese and a sharp cheddar. The lid goes on and a paluszki (traditional Polish breadstick) in the shape of an antler is speared through it all.
This is a truly transformative burger, taking me at once to the wilderness of Poland; the earthen beetroot, the forest floor, flecks of pepper lifting skywards. The venison is elegant and delicately smoked, made luxurious by the pork fat and billowing cheese sauce that escapes at the edges. This burger is an ode to Poland and it is a thing of beauty.
Le Bouillon Bel Air – Raclette D'Amour
In 1855, French butcher Adolphe-Baptiste Duval opened the first modern Bouillon, a small spot that served meat and broth (bouillon) to the workers of Paris. The concept was simple: nutritious food at a price that everyone could afford. Fast forward 175 years, and the owner of Le Bouillion Bel Air, Guillaume Rostain, is bringing that same energy to modern day Wellington – traditional French fare that never breaks the bank. For Frenchman Guillaume, love means cheese. More specifically, it means sitting around a table with the ones you love with bowls of potatoes, cornichons, ham and a raclette ready to be scraped over it all. If you haven't had raclette before, now is your chance. It's nutty, fruity and offers a real sense of acidity. It is around this cheese that this burger has been designed.
A Brezelmania bun is first spread with a thick homemade mayonnaise, laced with tarragon, horseradish and lemon zest. Next comes peppery rocket and the patty. Here it is locally sourced Angus mince, smashed hard on the top until charred and lacy, then covered with its first slice of raclette cheese. It's then popped in the oven to melt fully before being layered with cured Bayonne ham, Fallot cornishons specially imported from France, and an agria potato fondant that has been slowly cooked in beef tallow. All this before a last layer of raclette is scraped elegantly on at table side.
This burger entry is truly out of this world, or at least out of this continent. It offers all the warming, glorious flavours and textures of a raclette in the Alps, yet is demonstrably and utterly an excellent cheeseburger. What's even better is that, in the spirit of Baptiste and the first Bouillon, it only costs $19. Très bon.
Khao Soi – Soi Mate
Khao Soi opened this year and quickly made a name for itself as an exciting new addition to the Wellington restaurant landscape. Specialising in Northern Thai cuisine, this burger is a playful riff on their eponymous dish, the khao soi – a rich, spiced coconut curry soup that is topped with fried egg noodles and tonnes of other tasty textures. Kaho Soi is a brilliant example of how this city is developing spots that offer regional specialities rather than just the more famous dishes. And their burger entry is the ultimate example of a chef taking what they are great at and turning it into the kind of burger you will only ever get during this festival.
When playing around with the burger concept though, the patty still needs to be good in its own right. Here, the team uses ground eye fillet, meaning it should be served rare. It is cooked perfectly blush with a crust on the outside. It's seasoned with a homemade curry paste. Made from a recipe handed down by the owner's parents, the curry paste is crafted with imported Thai chilis and gives subtle, persistent warmth with floral coconut notes and sharp tamarind. The signature fried noodles and red onion make the whole thing a masterclass in texture. It is a very clever dish – it is both the burger we all recognise, but dressed in the finery and sequins of a Northern Thai curry. To dip the whole thing in the pot of curry sauce on the side is as close to perfection as I think is possible when combining two cuisines like this.
Jano Bistro – Allium Invasion
One of the real joys of Burger Wellington is getting to see what a chef operating at the cutting edge of creativity and skill does when they are challenged to interpret the humble burger. A chef like Pierre Alain Fenoux, the owner operator of two hat Jano Bistro, a converted cottage on Willis Street that serves locally sourced and seasonal dishes at a truly global level. It's a restaurant that is ingredient-led and not afraid to play around with processes to get the best out of those ingredients. This attention to detail and refinement has led to a truly phenomenal burger, the first burger that has ever been made in their eleven year history.
Inspired by the humble French onion soup and time spent with his grandfather, it is as if Pierre Alain has taken the time to understand all the core components of the burger before perfecting and refining every last one. His entry is built around a patty made with Conscious Valley brisket and rib beef. It has a perfect crust and is cooked rare as it should be with such high quality meat. The patty's flavours sit at the heart of this dish and emanate outwards. The onion brioche bun is made in-house and is lacquered, golden and full of sweet, earthy allium. The mayonnaise meanwhile is enriched with beef tallow and only seeks to underscore the perfection of the beef, with lettuce and pickled onions lifting and tempering the fats. A fermented cep mushroom ketchup that Pierre Alain foraged himself adds a real funk and maturity – this is a grown up burger for adults.
All of this is served up with a pot of onion gravy that feels like the souls of an infinite number of onions have been harvested and distilled just for our pleasure. It is wild that a chef operating at this level is willing to spend a few weeks making burgers just for us. Can I suggest you run there to make sure you don't miss out?
