Smashburger arrives in Durham

Smashburger, a fast-food burger chain with a unique cooking style, is opening its first location in Durham near Duke campus.

The new location will be on Erwin Mill near Duke Hospital, and will add to the variety of off-campus dining options available to students. Smashburger's claim to fame is a technique of cooking that yields the juiciest, most perfectly seared burger possible, as Christine Ferris, public relations and marketing manager at Smashburger, explains.

“Our style of cooking is different from most of our competition, like Five Guys,” Ferris said. “We use never-frozen meat and smash the burger on the grill while cooking to maintain the taste of the beef. This allows for a special kind of sear that gives our burger their flavor.”

According to Ferris, the location was chosen because of the high traffic anticipated from the hospital and the university itself. Students are happy about the new location because it’ll help break the mundane food routine they have on campus. They aren’t too convinced, however, that they’ll have time to visit regularly, as Aditya Khurrana, freshman, said.

“I’ll visit occasionally in order to vary things a little bit, but since it’s out of the way I don’t think I’ll be going too often,” he said.

Smashburger has visited campus before, as one of the food trucks present at last year’s LDOC celebration. Chris Taylor, senior and co-chair of Duke’s dining committee DUSDAC, confirmed that the new location won’t stop the food truck from appearing at events, even though it’s not an official food truck and doesn’t take Food Points.

The new location near Duke is particularly exciting because it’ll be both the first location in Durham and the first location in the Triangle area, said Ferris. Durham was chosen mainly because of the large amount of college students and the suburban environment.

“Durham is a great location that’ll definitely bring Smashburger many customers,” said Ferris. “The unique mix of townspeople and college kids is exactly the environment we’ve been looking for.”