Durham lined up for these pop-up burgers. Soon they’ll have a permanent place in ATC.
Burgers come and burgers go.
Fortunately for burger fans in Durham, the pandemic pop-up QueenBurger will soon return with a new permanent location.
From the owners of the downtown Durham cocktail bar Kingfisher, Sean Umstead and Michelle Vanderwalker, QueenBurger was a one-year backyard burger popup. The outdoor-only restaurant closed in August after a year in business.
QueenBurger will move into the former Only Burger space on Blackwell Street in Durham, next to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park and across the street from the American Tobacco Campus. The new burger shop will be around 1,800 square feet and include a 15-foot bar and large front windows that can open up when the weather’s nice.
“When we got to the one-year anniversary, we sat and thought through the process and as crazy as it sounds, QueenBurger had actually operated longer than Kingfisher,” Umstead said. “It took on a life of its own, but it wasn’t tenable to keep operating in the back of a bar that was in the process of reopening.”
QueenBurger was born out of the pandemic, when Kingfisher wasn’t allowed to operate as a cocktail bar. Vanderwalker and Umstead laid AstroTurf behind their bar, set up a flat top griddle powered by propane, bottled a few cocktails and went to work. The pop-up ran for exactly a year, selling more than 15,000 burgers.
“It was a really fun place to escape to,” Vanderwalker said. “People could truly enjoy themselves and get away from the pandemic for a minute.”
But the outdoor nature of the pop-up put it at the mercy of the weather. Rain storms shut down service some nights, walls were built to block the wind and in the winter diners huddled near space heaters to get January smashburgers.
“It’s really satisfying to serve a single item and have people respond so strongly to it,” Umstead said. “I think it was able to consistently bring joy to people during what were pretty unsettling moments.”
The permanent menu
The menu at the revived QueenBurger will be familiar, with the smashburger and veggie burger as the pillars, plus appearances by a Carolina burger and a Sunday brunch burger topped with an egg. The biggest difference will be the addition of french fries, which QueenBurger will offer as the shoestring variety, with options like a spicy dry rub, reminiscent of vending machine Hot Fries.
The AstroTurf will make a return as well, with plans to lay down a few yards in front of the restaurant, plus a few picnic tables.
“One cool thing we’re going to do is try and translate that backyard feel to the American Tobacco space,” Umstead said.
Queeny’s and QueenBurger
This makes three restaurants and bars Umstead and Vanderwalker have set in motion in a little over two years, including Queeny’s, which looks to open in November on Chapel Hill Street in downtown Durham, just above Kingfisher.
Queeny’s aims to be a cafe and neighborhood restaurant concept, and will include a podcast studio and small bookshop. This week a vintage-looking sign was installed in front of the brick building and hundreds of homemade cups, plates and bowls are sitting in storage ready for the restaurant to open.
Though the names are somewhat similar, the pair said diners aren’t likely to confuse the two restaurants. Queeny’s will be a full service restaurant, while QueenBurger will stay counter-service and fast casual. Queeny’s will have a thicker tavern style burger, and QueenBurger will continue griddling smashburgers.
“As soon as diners experience either one it will be clear,” Vanderwalker said. “They’re very different concepts.”
This story was originally published October 14, 2021 at 11:28 AM with the headline "Durham lined up for these pop-up burgers. Soon they’ll have a permanent place in ATC.."
