The big cheese: The Grillfather cooks up a record breaking hamburger
|Published
The Grillfather cooks up a record breaking hamburger. Picture supplied
A Cape Town restaurant has broken the unofficial South African record for making the biggest hamburger.
On Saturday, as part of their fifth birthday celebrations, the Grillfather SA restaurant created a whopping 84.38kg burger, beating the record of Annie’s Ladies Bar’s giant burger which was set in 2019, weighing in at 79kg.
In July 2019, Grillfather first set the local record for the biggest commercially sold burger at 19.6kg, a record that stood for seven days before Annie’s in Bellville attempted their record breaker.
That moerse burger fed over 120 hungry people who filled the pub to celebrate owner Annie Redelinghuis’ 60th birthday.
It was also on Annie’s menu and sold for about R15 000.
On Saturday, the Grillfather in Woodstock bettered this attempt and owner Naeem Hussain said their burger was created to mark the franchise’s fifth birthday and also honour the late founder Shane Swiegelaar, who died in March 2020.
The Grillfather in Mitchells Plain turned five in September.
Shane’s wife Tina said: “It was a bittersweet moment for me, because he wasn’t there.
“We did the burger in honour of him. Five years in any business is an accomplishment on its own.
“He is the Grillfather and will always be the Grillfather.”
Naeem adds that they named their newest creation after Shane.
“We named it in honour of Shane Swiegelaar as he always loved going big with everything just to match his huge heart, that is where the name came from, #TheBigSwieg.
He adds: “The burger consisted of around 55kg of beef patties, 5kg of sliced cheese, 10kg of boerewors, loads and loads of pineapple, braised onions and mushroom sauce.
“We did this at Grillfather Woodstock and took about seven hours to prepare for this record breaking burger.
“We are thankful for our sponsor Amier and his team at Woodridge Meat Hyper in Mitchells Plain as we would not have done it without them.”
The burger can feed 150 giembas and Naeem says there are plans in the pipeline to put it on their menu.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest hamburger in the world weighs a whopping 1,164.2kg and was cooked by a group of German men in 2017.