First bite: The Cobra Burger men are coming | eat

Like it or not, there is a certain ritual to getting a burger from Cobra. You line up at the famous “Burger Hole”, an order window on the side of the road that doubles as a confessional. (Yes, I want two burgers, fully loaded. And yes, they are both for me.)

As you wait for your meal, stand at attention to a cobra-crested flag that could pass as the insignia of the House of Slytherin.

And you take a mindless selfie, like many do, because the sandwich board in front of you commands “take a picture of this sign for no real reason”.

The restaurant’s humor is disrespectful, insulted and sometimes downright stupid. Cobras Social Media, a barrage of weed smoking jokes and OnlyFans accounts, reads like it has been proofread by a toddler, with deliberate misspellings such as “corba” (cobra), “borgor” (burger) and “chz” (cheese). ). For my birthday, the kitchen did everything it could to put “Happy Birthday, A-hole” on my order.

These guys started their whole business on the “smashing stuff” principle – they take a handful of beef and grind it up before handing it back with the large open palm of a metal spatula and pressing it firmly against a scorching plate.

As rude as this group of burger makers may seem, they are practically puritanical when it comes to the art of the smash burger. I wouldn’t expect otherwise from guys with such an extensive background in whole animal slaughter.