If the right franchise partners can be found, St. Louis might be in for a treat.
Anyone who’s been to a baseball game at Wrigley Field might already be familiar with DMK Burger Bar, because that’s where the first restaurant opened eight years ago. Owned by five-time James Beard-nominated chef Michael Kornick (formerly of mk restaurant), Morton’s Steakhouse legacy David Morton, and franchise guru David Grossman, DMK currently has five locations in the Chicago area and hopes to expand to St. Louis and other Midwest cities in the near future.
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Here’s the formula: 15 gourmet burgers, made with choice ingredients and served with first-rate fries and milkshakes. For instance, a bison burger with blueberry barbecue sauce and goat cheese; a beef burger with Sonoma jack cheese, roasted Hatch chile, smoked bacon, and a farm egg; and a salmon fillet with Thai curry aioli and Asian slaw. The house veggie and grain burger, meanwhile, is topped with eggplant, aged cheddar, and pesto mayo. All beef is grass-fed, and all of the meats are free of hormones and antibiotics.
Then there are the fries. Imagine hand-cut potatoes with Parmesan truffle cream (pictured at left below) or dusted with chili powder and served with sriracha mayo. Others come tossed with artisanal Wisconsin cheese and scallions. Sweet potato fries are accompanied by lemon Tabasco aioli.
“We call this ‘fine-casual,’” says Grossman. “Quality white tablecloth food at fast-casual prices.” This means burgers run between $8.50 and $13, while milkshakes and fries for the table cost around $5. Those milkshakes are spun with such ingredients as peanut butter, espresso, and Twix bars.
Grossman, who spent seven years with Subway and opened 100 of those sandwich restaurants, says the impetus behind DMK’s franchise plan is to bring more great food to the Midwest, and the best way to do that is to partner with local people who know the community well.
“We’ll teach them all they need to know about the food side of things,” he says, “and they’ll help us with the local market.”
Meanwhile, knowing what he already knows of St. Louis, he pictures DMK Burger Bars in such areas as Clayton, Frontenac, Creve Coeur, and downtown. He and his partners hope for an opening toward the second half of 2018.
