Burgers became a huge thing in Bangladesh only recently.

Daniel Rahman and Naorose Bin Ali come in with explosive burgers posing just one question: are the sloppy burgers dunked in honey mustard sauce really the best you can do? 

They decided to not only introduce Bangladesh to what burgers should be like but also how it can be made into something of our very own.

The Prestige: Please tell us how you guys met.

Daniel: I used to live and hang around Dhanmondi No.5, where our drummer, Selim also lived. We used to play in a band together back in the early 2000s. So, Selim introduced us to each other. 

Back then, my band was graced with the privilege to play “Strawberry Fields”, the largest annual concert organized for upcoming musicians all across South-East-Asia.

Naorose was friends with the band, so we all went together.

Naorose: Picking up from Palace Ground in Bangalore, where many a famous bands wreaked havoc, me and Daniel used to constantly bump into each other, since I was friends with the rest of the members of the band as well.

 

The Prestige: Naorose, where did you go for higher studies? Also, how did you become a chef?

Naorose: I went to the University of Western Sydney, in Australia to get a diploma in Commercial Cookery. After finishing my diploma, I moved to Malaysia, where I did my undergrad on Hotel Management from Lancaster University. That was 4 years in Malaysia. After finishing that up, I’ve been in Bangladesh for about 7-8 years now, and throughout that span of time, we have always been in contact. Be it through our love for music, food or doing something new.   

 

The Prestige: How did you guys start ‘Boma Burger’?

Naorose: After I came back to Bangladesh, Daniel approached me a couple of times about doing something together.

Daniel: I had wanted to do something special with burgers specifically for a long time. It’s because I didn’t like the burgers here as much. Plus, I work with brands. So, I liked how people would interact through burgers as opposed to fine dining.

Naorose: He told me about it but I didn’t think it was a great idea because it was a saturated market.

Daniel: Yes, and I knew that not everyone will always want the trouble of commencing a business and he probably wasn’t prepared for it. I myself did a few jobs here and there in consultancy until recently. So, that might have been a factor.

Naorose: That’s true. Back then, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and after developing a better understanding of the market, I told Daniel that there’s a huge gap in the market for burgers in Bangladesh that can be capitalized on. And as I’m a trained chef, having worked in different restaurants and cafes for 8 years, I found this to be quite convenient.

So, even though Daniel would hit me up every 2 years to tell me, “Let’s do something”, I would always be like, “It won’t work”. This went on for a long time up until 6-7 months ago when Daniel gave up and said that there’s no point in trying to convince me. But this time around, I said, “No, let’s do this, let’s do burgers”. In a matter of 3 weeks, we got this thing rolling.

Daniel: We did all our decision-making within those 3 weeks. The next 4-5 months went into preparing the work.

Naorose: I told Daniel that we need a place for the burger joint. So, we were walking down the street and we literally stopped at the first place we saw and said “let’s take this”. It was small, so small that Daniel said that it was the same size as his garage. I told Daniel that if I have to start in your garage, that’s where I’ll do it!

The Prestige: Where did you guys travel to develop the menu of ‘Boma Burger’?

Daniel: We travelled around a lot to gather burger inspiration. We went to Thailand and tried some of the best burgers there. We ate around everywhere and came back to our house, where, for 3-4 weeks straight, all we did was make and taste burgers all day.

We tried at least 2 burgers every day, we set the limit to 2 burgers a day, because it gets difficult to differentiate amongst them after that. Ever since then, we have been doing a lot of things to gather more ideas that have been keeping us busy, aside from eating burgers. We plan on travelling again next week.

The Prestige: Are there any other ventures you’re working on?

Daniel: Boma burger is planning on opening a huge outlet of about 1200 square feet within a month. We’re also going to Cox’s Bazar for something exciting that we’ll reveal soon. 

 

The Prestige: Please tell us about your strengths and your experience as a team.

Naorose: Some of the burgers we made came straight out of the places we visited to eat around. We gathered bits and pieces here and there and formulated our ideas. For example, our ‘Joss Burger’ is inspired by another burger called ‘Chiang Mai Burger’ made by a Japanese guy. This really made us think about how a Japanese guy came all the way to Thailand to showcase his own kind of burger.

We thought about how Bangladesh hadn’t made a burger of its own yet that people could associate themselves with. Madchef was probably the first to attempt this with their Dhakaiya burger. So, I knew that we needed to figure out a way to perfect this notion because, you know, eating is such a thing that connects people to memories that keep bringing them back to it.

We both felt that the burgers in Bangladesh were all the same. We thought we should do something different and introduce individual characteristics for each burger. To do that, we spent a huge amount of time and always pushed each other to do the best we can.

Another thing that worked as strength for us was the synergy we share, although I had worked in a lot of places in the past 8 years, I never had this amount of compatibility in any other place. Daniel and I both have the same characteristics, both being easy going, which is why we get along easily.

Daniel: Our thing is complimentary. I look over marketing and branding. While he takes care of the food.

Naorose: Plus, he understands food. We both love food, we both love eating. And so, I really enjoyed working together with someone who likes eating a much as I do. Our advantage is that we keep the business interesting, unlike other businesses which have a lifecycle and where, after a while, whatever fad they’re following becomes obsolete. But our way makes it possible to try newer things.

Daniel: A lot of this is possible because he studied cooking. For other burger shops, it probably happened through 1 or 2 ideas and with people who are cooks who didn’t study food the way Naorose did.

The Prestige: Philosophy & brand ideology behind Boma Burger.

Daniel: My friends and I always used to refer to food we found amazing as “Boma”.

That is how the name “Boma Burger” came into being.

My life has always been connected to Banani somehow or the other, because of work and friends.

The burger “Banani Boombastic” is my homage to my time there.

Basically, it wasn’t made under the basis of one ideology. But we wanted to figure out what our ‘x-factor’ was. What is unique here? I would say that Bangladesh doesn’t even have the basic burger that is deemed to be a classic around the world. I searched for a lot of burgers like that and couldn’t find one. So, we wanted to build on that.  

Besides that, my philosophy with anything I do is that I’ll have to be a fan of it. If I read a magazine, I have to be a fan of it first. Since I’m a foodie and we tried tons of burger, we found a lot of burgers that would do great commercially but we didn’t like them as they were. So, we decided not to produce them. We could honestly have an entire exhibition for all the rejected burger recipes we did a year from now.

 

The Prestige: How much and what sort of research & development did you do for each burger?

Naorose: There are a lot of factors at play here.

While doing the research and development for making the Joss burger, our objective was to incorporate different deshi characteristics. We brainstormed and settled on using a salad base that tastes exactly like what our own mothers typically make with mustard oil and lemon. We incorporated that in.

Daniel: This is, of course, a pillar to show our strength which is the deshi element, the deshi identity.

Naorose: Yes and after incorporating that, we had to figure out a way for it to work without getting soggy. So, I was eating jhalmuri one day, when he just suddenly decided to put some beresta into my jhal muri. That’s when we thought that’s something we can add to fix the issue with the whole burger.

It was random like that. Daniel would tell me about a great place that has a great salad and he would talk me into going there and trying it just to know how we could make the sauce they used by ourselves at home. And I would figure out ways to put it in the burger.

Daniel: We did want to make a basic burger first. So, we came up with the cheeseburger. We found elements of classic burgers from McDonald’s, Shake Shack, In n Out and other places like them. We merged them to get the same taste, which could be a huge deal for Bangladeshi consumers.

 

The Prestige: Rank top 3 burgers from the menu of boma burger

Naorose: Well, people who make food don’t usually like the food they make. The case is the same for me. But I personally love ‘Banani Bombastic’. The second one would be ‘Classic Cheese’. And then, the chicken burger – “Murgi Milon”. I am not really a fan of the “Joss burger”.

Daniel: The people who like Joss burger are usually hardcore with it.

Naorose: People who love paneer love it. I, for one, know that I made it but for some reason can’t contain the intensity of the cheese in my mouth.

Daniel: Herbivore or the veggie burger is my top. I’m just so invested in each of them that that I have to eat cyclically. So, for me, if I try herbivore today, I’ll try a different burger tomorrow or next week. Like, the cheeseburger for example. So, I’ll have a different favorite every now and then.

The Prestige: How do you maintain and check the quality of your burgers?

Daniel: I regularly check the quality of the burgers, both at the store and through delivery. I eat a different burger at the store every week, and order from home via Pathao once every week for quality control purposes. They don’t know I’m the one ordering it. So, it helps me check how much time they are actually taking to deliver it to my doorstep and if the burger tastes the same after it has travelled from the shop to my house.

 

The Prestige: According to you, what is the quintessential and perfect burger in the world?

Naorose: The most consumed burger in the world is the Cheese Burger. Walk into, say, Mc’Donald’s, Shake Shack or any burger place all over the world, different variations of the cheese burger rule the tables!

 

The Prestige: You don’t follow the branding approach like other burger joints in social media but still your place stays almost full with customers. How & why’s that?

Daniel: I think one of the reasons is when it comes to food, no matter what you say, it always comes down to quality. Every person has an opinion about it. A 3-year-old can’t tell you what his favorite T.V show is, but he/she can definitely tell you which food he likes better. So, I wanted to let my food do the talking.

My marketing infrastructure, my whole experience and my network can allow me to get this to reach every person in Bangladesh in a day or so. I mean, all of them can know our name in a matter of days. But the reason we choose not to do anything about it is because we truly believe that if the food is good, then it’ll automatically do the job for us.

Naorose: And our philosophies match, we get along so fine because, firstly, the people who do business in Bangladesh are very short-sighted and only think about the immediate money to be made, but we both feel that we want to build a brand that we want to grow.

Daniel: The thing is, we started it as a hobby or a passion-project. I wanted to make a burger for me to eat and for my friends to eat. So, if we didn’t feel the passion anymore, we always had the option of leaving anytime. But we saw that it was a commercial success and decided on working towards making it a long term brand.

Naorose: Another thing is that we approach this in a different way than the way other people do. We don’t know how to sell ourselves. We couldn’t explain our burgers to people because it was new. But once they tried it, they were all in on it.

Daniel: The loud element of every food item is what hits you. A burger can have a lot of sauce, a lot of hot spices, a bit of crunch and different elements like that. But Naorose incorporates only one element that speaks out loud. So, if you make a spice burger, it’ll be really spicy.

Burgers have had different trends throughout the years. There was the beef tikka or fried chicken trend and then the sloppy sauce. But whatever trend became huge also died down like a fad. But it can be hoped that Boma burger will be the next revolution, the next big thing that people obsess over. 

 

The Prestige: What ventures are you guys currently working on now?

Daniel: We’re making a Boma burger café in Cox’s Bazar and also there will be a new Boma burger outlet in Banani. We’re also working on an Arab food joint. I can’t tell you the exact products that it’ll include but its execution has been started with the ideas I collected from my visits to Egypt. We’re also working with some of the biggest businessmen in Bangladesh for several new ventures. We also have plans for a dessert brand. Let’s see what the future holds.