Two-Time Champ Slow Boat Brewery Sails to Third Burger Cup Victory

Patrick Flanary | Jul 9, 2018 4:32 pm | Add a comment | 3346 reads

Slow Boat Brewery’s ship has reached winning shores once again.

After losing its coveted crown to Q Mex last year, the two-time Burger Cup champion encountered fierce tailwinds in our final round of voting to sail past Great Leap Brewing, and snatch victory from the jaws of the 2017 defeat.

Slow Boat’s fries-and-cheese-loaded Fryburger reigned supreme in 2015 and again in 2016, and brought back the heat this year to dominate Beijing’s congested crop of burger-flingers. With this win, Slow Boat’s third, the brewpub ties Home Plate BBQ for the most Burger Cup crowns.

Of their winning strategy this year, Chandler Jurinka, co-founder of Slow Boat alongside head brewer Daniel Hebert, had this to say: "We devised a list of people who we thought would help us vote relative to last year or the years prior where we didn’t do much at all, we just assumed people would vote but what we know now is that people, in the beginning, are very active in voting but in the end they get a little bit fatigued. So for us, we just tried to identify people that were our fans and that would vote us."

And as for how the winning burger came about: "It’s always been us trying to second-guess the market because it’s not always intuitive that burgers will be successful. Just like our beer; we never made our beer trying to figure out people what would be interested in, we made beer that we thought would be interesting and then figured that China would catch up. But to give credit where credit’s due, my sister was basically the creator of the burgers and then we added a little in there. For example, for the Fryburger, which is our bestseller, we use the term East-meets-West but it does have a heavy dose of Xinjiang hot sauce. So we use that sauce and we mix it with some of things that are more on the Western side."

What’s next for the Slow Boat? Well, Dongcheng's burger and beer lovers will be happy to hear that Jurinka hopes to steer the ship back to the brewery's roots, adding, “We’re hoping to branch out to new locations but Beijing’s real estate is a tough one. You know, our heart really is in the hutongs – that’s where we started, that’s where we always wanted to be – so hopefully, we’ll find a place there soon.”

Slow Boat's win also means big commiserations to Q Mex, who fought a long and hard battle to the top with and whose growing number of fans – whether it be in their original Courtyard 4 location (just behind Slow Boat), their newer Q Max Taqueria joint in Xinyuanli, or their newest venue in Shuangjing Space 3 mall – will be sad to see them beat.

Tracing back Slow Boat's victory this year, it all began when they dropped serious anchor in the Final Four round against last year’s Cup king Q Mex, after chewing up Biteapitta (8) in the opening round, hurling newbie Hulu (4) from the bracket, and blowing out Cannon’s Burgers (3).

But damn, Great Leap showed up again in 2018, making its fifth straight Final Four Burger Cup appearance. The brewpub surged to its best performance ever by coming in at No. 2, just two months after the death of its Xingfucun location . And what a legacy thus far: GLB hurdled No. 2-seeded Jing-A (2) into the Final Four after routing Ramo (8) and cutting out Caravan (5) early in the competition.

It's clear that Slow Boat’s honors don’t end with the 2018 Burger Cup title; you, our dedicated voters, also named them Beijing’s No. 1 most popular microbrew, putting Slow Boat ahead of a strong, hoppy pack:

1. Slow Boat Brewery
2. Great Leap Brewing
3. Jing-A
4. Arrow Factory
5. Panda Brew
6. Legend Beer
7. nbeer Pub
8. Steamrhino
9. The Great Outdoors
10. Rolling Rolling
11. Dongli Brewery
12. The Other Place
13. Regain Element

As for your where-to-chow-down list, no fat surprises here, save for foodie favorite Wangjing’s placing ahead of student hotspot WDK and ever-ascending Shuangjing:

Sanlitun
Chaoyang Park
Gulou
Guomao
Wangjing
Wudaokou
Shuangjing
Qianmen
Shunyi

In other beef-match news, newcomer Side Street had one of the most impressive runs in Burger Cup history when it knocked 2017 champ Q Mex to fourth place in our voting poll of Beijing’s best burgers. And in our closest race ever, Side Street lost by only 0.6 percent of the vote to GLB in the Final Four round.

Burger Fest 2018 was our biggest, fattest throwdown and showdown yet. In addition to expanding your waistlines, it seems the burger bracket changed hearts and minds. Almost every one of you is more aware of burger choices in Beijing (as 94 percent of you told us), with 86 percent of you trying new burgers for the first time. Seems most of you crashed your diets in 2018, with 80 percent saying you tossed back more burgers than usual. And more than half of you were swayed this year, with 58 percent telling us your opinion of the best burger changed.

But seriously, we’ve never had a bad burger in Beijing. And your voting duty might be behind you for the next year, but if we don’t see the top 12 burger winners slathered all over your Instagram accounts and foodie blogs this summer, we’re calling bull on you phonies.

A refresher course on past Burger Cup winners:

2011: Blue Frog
2012: Home Plate BBQ
2013: Home Plate BBQ
2014: Home Plate BBQ
2015: Slow Boat Brewery
2016: Slow Boat Brewery
2017: Q Mex
2018: Slow Boat Brewery

And now, for the top 100 best burgers in Beijing, according to you:

1. Slow Boat Brewery
2. Great Leap Brewing
3. Side Street
4. Q Mex
5. The Local
6. Cannon’s Burgers
7. Jing-A
8. The Great Outdoors
9. Home Plate BBQ

They go on to join the other venues ranked as such:

10. Blue Frog
11. 3 Little Pigs by Andy’s Craft Sausages
12. Common Burger @ ARCADE by Hatchery
13. Arrow Factory
14. Fatburger
15. Hulu
16. Caravan
17. Let’s Burger
18. Plan B
19. Katchup
20. 4corners
21. The Butchers Club
22. Stuff’d
23. Paddy O’Shea’s
24. Biteapitta
25. The Cheesecake Factory
26. Lily’s American Diner
27. Fatboy’s
28. Ramo
29. QS
30. Bodensee Kitchen
31. Joe’s Bar and Kitchen
32. The Bell
33. XL Bar
34. Laker's
35. East Hotel
36. Migas Mercado
37. Beersmith Gastropub
38. Punjabi
39. Waspark
40. de Refter
41. Lush
42. Grandma's Kitchen
43. Tim's Texas Bar-B-Q
44. Bistrot B
45. Veggie Table
46. Legend Beer
47. 1F
48. VSports Bar and Restaurant
49. Panda Brew
50. Root Pop
51. Irish Volunteer
52. NBeer Pub
53. Morton's of Chicago
54. Eudora Station
55. Café Flatwhite
56. Fella’s
57. The Rug Café
58. Beer Mania
59. Picture My Cup at Kimo Kids Cafe
60. Steamrhino Brewery Restaurant
61. Grinders
62. Burger Counter
63. Tiger Pancake House
64. Peiping Machine
65. The Roots
66. Windy City
67. iB Craft Beer
68. Yummy Box Pizza
69. Village Cafe, Opposite House
70. Luga's Villa
71. The Bookworm
72. Blue Marlin
73. Park Side Bar & Grill
74. Three Guys Burger House
75. Wolfgang’s Steakhouse
76. Cafe Flo
77. Pop Up Kitchen
78. Angel Burger
79. The Cut, Fairmont Beijing
80. Peking Garden
81. Frost Coffee, Cocktails and Dining
82. CHAR Bar & Grill
83. C’est la Vie
84. Aurora
85. Park Square
86. Four Ace
87. Burger Break
88. Molly Malone’s
89. He Kitchen
90. O’Leary’s
91. The Kitchen Table, W Beijing Chang'an
92. Balmain Gourmet
93. Meat by Ernest
94. Steak Exchange, InterContinental Hotel
95. Flora Steak and Bar
96. Dongli Brewery
97. Rolling Rolling Craft Brewing
98. BLT American Restaurant Salad & Grill
99. Wiggly Jiggly’s
100. MustGuette

Burger lovers, we applaud your civic duty, and we salute your gastrointestinal fortitude. Eat well, and often.

Finally, congratulations once more to this year's Best Burger champs Slow Boat. If you'd like to recap every nailbiting moment of our 2018 Burger Cup coverage, click here.

Photos: Uni You