Chef Kevin David Takes Us Into San Juan's Newest Burger Obsession
Picture this on your plate: A crispy chicken sandwich with homemade Kimchi, miso aioli, and fermented honeysuckle glaze. Or maybe a truffle burger with homemade truffle aioli, raclette, grana padano, salt, mayonnaise, and some roasted mushrooms. Each element has been carefully crafted, and the end product is just delightful.
The chicken sandwich and truffle burger are only two of Bun Run's most popular menu items. This charming pink little burger shop between A. Mabini and C.M. Recto is San Juan's hot new burger concept. It offers customers a more localized take on the smash burger tradition.
And the man behind the establishment is none other than Chef Kevin David, a man whose resume speaks for itself. The Filipino culinary stalwart washed dishes at The Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges in New York, worked with James Beard Award-winning chef Jonathan Waxman's eponymous now-defunct restaurant in San Francisco, and was mentored by titans like Melissa Perello and Steve Samson.
Now back in the Philippines, he may be better known for the curated pop-up tasting menus he did for Nacionale Bladeworks through Idalia, too. Adding to his portfolio is a flourishing new burger restaurant that has garnered quite the following since opening earlier this year.
"We add a burger of the month every month. We keep the all-stars. We keep the things that shouldn't be moved. Then we change everything," David explains.
In many ways, Bun Run reflects the chef's experiences, attitude, unrelenting flavor fascination, and unique culinary perspective. With each recipe, David brings the same fine dining principles and calculated experimentation he's learned to cultivate over the years.
"Every chef that I've ever worked for has said to me that any food will be great if you source the ingredients correctly. You need to treat them with respect. The technique is very important," he says. "You have to do the ingredients and the meat justice. If you have that mentality, you'll take care of everything."
On the Making of Bun Run
"Believe it or not, the first week we opened, people honestly thought that this was a sex shop. I said, 'Where does it say here that Bun Run sells fucking vibrators?"
When David was writing the business plan for Bun Run, he was sure to be bringing two things to the table: great food and the color pink, ballerina-slipper pink, to be exact. It's a color that resonates, after all. "We're bright. We're loud. We bring people together. This is the bigger message."
It's a reference to a hazy memory, as well. The chef and retired sneakerhead fondly remembers once having a pair of pink Kobes back in the day. Unfortunately, he never got to see them again after a pretty wild night out in New York. Just to set the scene, he was hammered and opted to take the subway back home. Upon arriving, his grandfather asked why the hell were his feet wet. "I said, 'I don't know, but I lost my shoes.'" They apparently got stolen off his feet.
Before Bun Run's smash burgers became a hit, it was a relative unknown. People around San Juan didn't really know what to expect from the pink corner shop. "Believe it or not, the first week we opened, people honestly thought that this was a sex shop," the chef quips. "I said, 'Where does it say here that Bun Run sells fucking vibrators?"
Suffice it to say, the results so far have been great, in part, because David runs such a tight ship around here. He has to, considering the limits of the compact space, the manpower, and the orders that come flooding in as soon as they open at noon.
Bun Run's Chicken Sandwich with its signature truffle fries and Truffle Burger. Perennial all-stars.
David and his partners did a feasibility study before opening the shop. It was here they found that selling 20 burgers a day would be ideal to hit their targets. But these days, Bun Run is selling approximately 100 to 150 burgers a day on average."This space wasn't built to do that number, I'm telling you." On the weekends, those numbers double. At times, it gets to a point where the shop has to turn people away at midday because stocks run dry.
"Filipino food should be contemporary and constantly evolving. Places like Toyo Eatery, if you think about it, open your eyes to where Filipino food is headed."
It should also be noted that David insists on being a proper teacher to his crew. "The staff here get the training that they could have had abroad. It's all about attitude. I can always teach anyone to cook, but I cannot teach them how to be a nice person," he argues. "You know, I do a lot of screening for my cooks. I usually do this psychological test where I ask them questions like, 'How many M&Ms are in this jar?' Some people will tell you they don't know.
"There was this one time that a candidate told me that they felt like the answer was 1,300. That's enough to get my attention. Here, we believe that counting the grain of salt when you season your steak matters."
You can see it coded in the kitchen, this efficiency amidst the frenetic pace. There's a sense of urgency that dictates every movement, as with any great restaurant. It is in this environment that David has always thrived, whether he's washing dishes or teaching cooks about new techniques and processes. So maybe the stereotypes seen in The Bear are true?
“The Bear was a little nicer,” David says of the Emmy award-winning show, talking about the realities of running a kitchen. "It's probably the most realistic thing I've ever seen. I lived The Bear. I saw people's plates getting thrown back if the chefs didn't like it. It’s freaking insane how things were run back in the day. Chefs are nicer now though. I think I’ve become nicer over time, too."
You can't miss it along Mabini, really.
Already fielding offers from the SM Group and Megaworld, the owner of Bun Run says that he is looking to open up another branch down South by the end of the year. Next year, David and his partners are targeting to open four more shops, specifically around the prime Taguig and Makati areas. "It's a good problem to have."
"The story is very important for me because I feel like I want people to know that the food is not your average burger or chicken sandwich."
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Technique, Precision, and the Question of 'Filipino Flavor'
A burger is a burger at the end of the day. So what sets Bun Run apart?
To say that David is particular about ingredients and techniques is an understatement. This is perhaps most evident in how he lacto-ferments tomato trims from their sliced tomatoes. These things take up to two weeks to ferment. Once done, the chef cooks them down with local beer, muscovado sugar, and salt. Bun Run's beef also relies on the Maillard reaction. It caramelizes the sugar and protein, giving the meat that beautiful brown color and more complex flavors.
"No one does it like us. We use lacto-fermented pickles. Our special sauce has bonito flakes and porcini salad. Even our ketchup is homemade," he rattles off. Everything is homemade and we make everything in-house." People, of course, have responded well to these. Every part of the business has been done with as high a level of care as possible.
"So every time I write the menu, in any restaurant I work, or even at Idalia, I make sure there's a story to tell," he insists. "The story is very important for me because I feel like I want people to know that the food is not your average burger or chicken sandwich."
Truth be told, Bun Run comes in at just the perfect time as the Filipino food movement pivots to a new age. Our chefs have gone global. Filipino-led restaurants have been given Michelin stars. Our recipes have received endless validation and recognition. Filipino restaurant concepts are now scattered all around the United States and Canada, and are only growing elsewhere around the world. Back home, the country's fine dining institution feels like it's approaching a certain maturation. Filipino techniques are changing and so are ingredients.
The menu last July. In September, Bun Run's 'Burger of the Month' is the Burrata Burger.
Right there in the middle of this shift is David, whose work has consistently showcased the triumphs of Filipino culinary fusion. In one of his pop-ups, for instance, he came up with Kare-Kare Ravioli. Here, he pairs a braised oxtail with homemade peanut sauce and dehydrated bagoong. "It's Filipino and it's funny. You're eating a nice raviolo and you're eating kare-kare. It gives you two memories at once."
He further states: "We have strong Chinese, Spanish, American, and Japanese influences in our cooking. The layers in our flavors are just warm and different," David explains. "Filipino food should be contemporary and constantly evolving. Places like Toyo Eatery, if you think about it, open your eyes to where Filipino food is headed."
"My ultimate goal is for people to think of Bun Run when they think of smash burgers. I'm not trying to compete with any of these cats. I'm just trying to do my own thing."
The chef doesn't think much about the concept of "Filipino flavor" in his dishes though. This idealized local flavor system doesn't dictate or limit what he does or doesn't want to do. "I don't like bending over backward for people. I like breaking out of the box." However, the multiculturalism of the Philippines does provide him with a fresh lens as a culinary savant.
Even today, he still constantly travels around the country to learn more about local techniques. A recent trip to the Cordilleras taught him about an indigenous way of curing pork. In Ilocos, on the other hand, he learned about gamut. Zamboanga has curacha, and the rest of Mindanao, the chef emphasizes, has so much texture and depth to be explored.
"Making food is all about the simplicity of how you can present it," David notes. This infinite simplicity and curiosity are omnipresent at Bun Run, rendered in its colors, the kitchen, its staff's character, as well as the shop's burgers and chicken sandwiches.
"My ultimate goal is for people to think of Bun Run when they think of smash burgers. I'm not trying to compete with any of these cats," the chef says emphatically. "I'm just trying to do my own thing. At the end of the day, I'm making good food, my staff is happy, and my customers keep coming back. That's what it's all about."
Bun Run is found at 191 A. Mabini corner C.M. Recto, San Juan, and is open from 12 to 8 p.m. from Monday to Thursday, and from 12 to 11 p.m. from Friday to Saturday.
