EmmaGoodEgg

My Favourite Buns

 

Seems to me the fashionable sungkai (breaking fast) experience this year is the humble, and not so MIB-compliant, cheese burger.

Burger stalls have mushroomed in Brunei, and some with serious full time chefs involved. This is my take on the local burger scene.

In the spirit of science, the test is "The Sungkai Burger Experience" and I have deliberately aimed for stalls or less formal eateries. Unfortunately due to time and logistics, I was unable at this time to include burgers in other districts. I paid for all my meals and knowing that the burger at the end of day is a very personal experience, I have also provided my own subjective rating. All of the places sampled have informative Facebook pages.

I started with a tweet asking folks online for their Top 3 favourite local fast food burgers. The burgers I then tried and tested were the ones most mentioned. I list them in chronological order of consumption.

The first local fast food burger on my list was Hommed Baga, a play on the words "Homemade Burger". The Hommed Baga stall is in Anggerek Desa, directly across the simpang going into AITI. I called ahead but the telephone number that was listed was unreachable. Later I found out that Hommed Baga management no longer takes pre-orders by telephone due to an incident with an unhappy customer.

The stall itself was an incredibly smoky and a fast paced experience, not a surprise since Hommed Baga seems to be able to handle big orders (also the reason why they find it difficult to handle pre-orders via telephone). Service was the usual Brunei, surly at first but friendly once the ice was broken.

We ordered the Shroom Burger, the Lamb Shroom Burger, Basic Baga, Rush Baga and Da Bomb (the Big Mac of Hommed). It was already 4.25pm and Hommed Baga took on our order of 14 Bagas without flinching, gave us a little key ring with a number on it and asked us to return within half an hour. We drove around little India in Serusop, and promptly returned to more smoke on the clothes as we waited a further 20 minutes for our burgers.

The burgers came with the usual burger add-ons: egg, mayo, ketchup, cheese, tomato. The Da Bomb, was a lot of meat and carb, it came with beef rashers, a nice thought but maybe salty for me. The bun was the best out of all the burger joints tested. No sesame seeds, crusty and not too moist.

The star of Hommed Baga's repertoire is the Shroom Baga. A mix of different mushrooms held together by gooey melted cheese, on top of a medium sized, nicely finished patty.

If Hommed Baga was a car, it would be Toyota Land Cruiser: Big, chunky, Go Anywhere.

Taty's Cafe is a basic cafe, just before Muara Town, on the same row of shophouses as BIBD. It was the only cafe on my list. It had plain wooden tables like those in an old time kopitiam. Easy beach vibe plays on the radio. Rasta coloured curtains covered the entrance to the kitchen. Self affirming scribbles on the walls.

We ordered from a cheerful, spiky haired waiter, the quarter pound lamb burger, quarter pound cheese and the Lady Boss Burger Jr. The Lady Boss Burger was the winner; mushrooms, single beef patty coming together nicely. My preference would be the burgers without the cucumber acar (pickled cucumber) and chilli sauce. The patty was well done, but the bun, unfortunately generic.

Because of its laid-back counter-culture vibe, if Taty's Burger was a car, it would be a Volkswagen minivan (in sky blue).

Santai Burgers are usually found at Cribs Cafe in Serusop, on the row of shophouses just after HSBC. They are currently open for business at the Gerai Ramadhan by the Stadium. A burger joint at a Gerai Ramadhan is pretty much one of a sameness. One can’t beat the atmosphere - there's the crowd, the heat, the smoke, the happy anticipation in the air as people wander round buying food for sungkai.

It was an all girl affair. A row of ladies churning out burgers like a well-oiled machine, the end of the line covering the burger in white waxed paper. I ordered the Sloppy Joe Cheese and The Works. For dessert, churros, from the Filipino ladies at the side.

The winner on the menu to me was the Sloppy Joe with cheese. A beef patty minced on the hotplate with egg and cheese. The bun for Santai was pretty good.

If Santai Burger was a car, it would be a vintage Mercedes Benz saloon, an old school, quirky classic.

Zulfadly, the owner of KaPow Burger is a friend of mine. KaPow has a stall at the crossroads off the highway in Lambak, but can be found at the Gerai Ramadhan at the Stadium. KaPow came onto the burger scene radar after introducing Wagyu Burgers, their big draw. I ordered the same at the Gerai along with a Combo (lamb and beef) and the Super Kapow.

The Wagyu Burger was a good size, pricier at 6 dollars and smaller. It fits in the palm well. It had a nice, albeit generic, white and red paper wrapper held together by a slash of glossy red tape. I liked that effort in design.

The patty was 100 percent beef. The Super Kapow had a touch of pickled cucumber, onions, mayo, ketchup and cheese as toppings. Great beef, let down by the bun.

If KaPow Burger was a car, it would have to be a Lexus, because of the luxurious Japanese breed of cow.

AHOA Burger (the initials stand for Awang Haji Omar Ali) is a stall on Jalan Mulaut. It is just past the surau, heading towards Kuala Lurah. The offerings are simple: lamb, beef, double lamb, double beef. Egg and cheese as extras.

Inside the wire mesh of the stall a crew of four well-drilled kampung boys bash out the burgers with a real spirit of gotong-royong. They were fast and consistent and the service was simple and friendly. Burgers were, at $4.50 for a double, reasonably priced. The patties were homemade and all meat, but the buns were again generic.

If AHOA was a car, it would be the Toyota Kijang: Reliable, simple, fleet of foot, economical. Can get the whole kampung in it.

Finally, Grubs Burger seems to have sprung up in the last week or so, with rave online reviews. I tried to order on Thursday but was told that they stopped taking orders by lunch time. I pre-ordered their entire repertoire from a well-spoken and helpful young lady on the telephone.

Their patties were irregularly shaped, indicating that they have been molded by hand and not by a machine. The beef was well presented, with a nice crisp piece of lettuce and chunky slices of tomato. It reminded me of the fantastic Japanese chain, Freshness Burger. The top of the bun was a nice airy dome, sprinkled with sesame seeds. I'd like to think that thought had been put in into the choice of bun. Burger extras consist of toasted bell peppers, tomato, cheese, mushrooms. Chilli, ketchup, mayo and mustard are sauces of your choice.

If Grubs Burger was a car, it would be a Mini Cooper S: Young, zesty and full of life.

At the end, if I could pick and choose a Dream Team Burger it would have: A KaPow patty, a Hommed bun, with the trimmings of a Grubs Burger, AHOA's and Santai's gotong-royong and Taty's atmosphere.

All in all, it's nice to see these bun-trepreneurs getting out there, doing stuff and putting a local spin on what is now worldwide cuisine. 

@emmagoodegg

Illustration by Cuboi Art.

For the online version click here.

The Yearn For Churn

Our story begins with a dairy product made mostly of milk proteins from the udders of cows, sheep, goats, buffaloes, yaks, and known to everyone as "Butter". From days of yore butter has been used as an ingredient or a kind of spread for bread and body. There are many types of food that require butter but for the purposes of this article let's put on the table the "Kek Lapis". 

The Kek Lapis, or layered cake in English, is an intricate multi-layered cake in a variety of flavours like chocolate, cranberry, prune, or a mixture of all three plus durian. With colorful names like "Kek Lapis Nutella", "Kek Lapis Idola", "Kek Lapis Dayang Salhah", they have become standard fare at houses during the Hari Raya. Word from local bakers has it that Golden Churn Creamery Butter is a favourite brand in the making of Kek Lapis. There was therefore peace and contentment in butter land.

But this golden time was shattered by JAKIM, the Malaysian Islamic Development Department. 

A few weeks ago JAKIM confirmed that consumer favourite Golden Churn Butter from Australia had tested positive for pig DNA and that its halal certification had been withdrawn. This was spurred by the test on a sample of Golden Churn Butter in a Sarawak lab, the results of which tested positive for DNA from the said snouted and behooved.

A further test conducted in Peninsula Malaysia however found no traces of the sensitive-to-Muslims double helix. Initial tests in Brunei concurred with this. The Brunei Ministry of Religious Affairs (MoRA) first came out with a statement confirming that tests done at our labs concluded with a negative for said porcine DNA. There was a collective sigh of relief from bakerpreneurs (baketrepeneurs?) who use Golden Churn Butter for their baked goods.

But then in a curly twist to the tale last weekend MoRA released a statement advising folks that Golden Churn Butter is halal, but to avoid using it for the time being. Our newspapers were quick to come up with witty headlines like, "Golden Churn - Butter not". Bakers around the country wrung their floured hands, casting withering glances at rows of familiar round golden tins in the kitchen.

Muslims in Brunei are generally concerned with the halal-ness of the food they consume. In Brunei a product is awarded a 'halal' certificate or given the 'halal' brand after going through various audits and stringent laboratory testing conducted by the Halal Food Control Division under MoRA. The Development of National Halal Standards and Guidelines for Halal Food under the Ministry of Primary Resources (MIPR) is responsible for the preparation of the standard. For those interested in importing or getting goods halal certified, there is a rather concise document spelling out the Guidelines to Halal Certification over at the MIPR website.

So you can imagine the impact of casting doubt over the halal certification on a basic ingredient like butter on our small but thriving (especially during Ramadhan) local cake industry. It also became very much a matter of cakeconomics.

Imagine too the plight of producers and suppliers last week whose yellow, creamy, (and innocent) dairy product, having expensively jumped through all the necessary hoops to obtain certification and whose product had been tested and found to be swine free, became tainted by what happened overseas.

Our story ended happily when MoRA swiftly (and commendably) issued a follow-up statement this week confirming Golden Churn Creamery Butter to be halal. Commendable really for clearing up an uncertainty that threatened to disrupt so much. Commendable for the trust we have in ourselves to arrive at our own judgments on such things. A lesson on how things should be done folks, with quick steps and a firm hand.

@emmagoodegg

Illustration by Cuboi Art.

For the online version click here.

IP Smackdown

The World Wide Web was buzzing this week about how Google slammed Apple. In a WWF-like maneuver, counsel for search engine giant Google reversed hang manned Apple the Big Bad Technology Company along with crony Microsoft, by blogging about how the two companies were hoarding patents like naughty chipmunks, causing economic distress and stifling innovation.

Wikipedia says "A patent (/ˈpætənt/ or /ˈpeɪtənt/) is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state (national government) to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention". It means that by publishing and registering the details of your invention, you can charge others for its use, thereby getting paid for the labour and effort you have put into it. Apple was supposedly to have bought Novell and Nortel’s old patents, which they can then charge for use. Google maintains that this will create a levy on potential or current software designs. Apple has since countered with a blog post from their corporate communications saying that they invited Google to bid for the patents but the search engine mogul declined. As of print date, Google has not commented, the bickering continues and the mind boggles.

Patents are not the only registrable right for creations of the mind. You can register a trademark, an industrial design. The law of copyright protects all kinds of original writing, music, film and even software. Acknowledging and more importantly, compensating, the inventor, the writer, poet or builder is not a new concept. Google "patents" and you can find references that as early as 500 BC, the Greek city of Sybaris decreed,  "encouragement was held out to all who should discover any new refinement in luxury, the profits arising from which were secured to the inventor by patent for the space of a year."

In 2011 Brunei we have a raft of laws to protect ideas like the Trademarks Act, Inventions Act, Copyright Order, Industrial Designs Order and Layout Designs Order. But to be honest, nationwide we have a lackadaisical approach to intellectual property  (IP) rights. Many download songs, albums, movies and television series for free. Many more indulge in pirated DVDs, and other goods easily accessible in our malls and shophouses.

Thankfully our connections to IP are not only with those obtained illegally. There are a number of local IT technopreneurs engaging in the business of developing start-ups for Internet applications. Local business Expansys has recently come out with a savvy marketing move for MeSixty, inviting beta testers prior to release of the beta version of a location based networking app. In the courts we've seen the case of the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf logo being used by a local company, which ended up in favour of the original owners of the brand. More recently, pirated DVDs are being deliberated in our courts.

So it's not to say we don't have the laws for it, but we still face challenges that may hinder IP development like a lack of awareness on the importance of IP protection, and the lack of enforcement, because what good is the law without it. The argument that we are a small developing country that needs to concentrate on the basics before worrying about the details just doesn’t ring true. We do have all the basics and more. Why shouldn't we participate and compete in the worldwide marketplace of ideas and innovation?

The counter argument to this is akin to the colour depletion theory, where if one owns a colour, sooner or later all the colours will be owned, and we will run out of it and then where will we be? Will we end up with a faceless corporation owning “…the sky the sea the land, the waves and the caves and the golden sands…”? (© Julia Donaldson)

In the case of patents, one can use another's industrial invention if one pays a fee for it. Application developers may be yearning for this particular patent to come up with the next big thing for your smart device. Their poor creativity is stifled when they can't afford to pay the rights. It should be pointed out that patent rights protect an inventive step that represents the cutting edge of knowledge. If the limits of knowledge are being pushed back every 3 months, ideas and innovation quickly become outdated and old. This therefore would appear to be Google’s argument, how can you exploit something that is no longer a novel idea to the detriment of the creation of new ones?

For us perhaps it is not a good idea to sit on the sidelines of this debate, but to get involved in it, to produce, compete and innovate within the context of the widely accepted norms, to benefit our current and future generations. 

@emmagoodegg

Illustration by Cuboi Art.

For the online version click here.