What made you decide to open up a zombie-themed restaurant? You know, I was always thinking about how I could get my love of horror movies into a restaurant and I thought a normal restaurant maybe wouldn’t work without getting too theme-parky. But with burgers, they’re just sort of fun anyway, and horror movies are definitely fun, so let’s try that. The very first thought I had was Universal mon- sters, just because I’ve always loved the classic horror
movies.The original working title of the place was Dr. Cali- gari’s Burger Lab, and I liked that be- cause I thought we could have fun with it because of the way that movie was filmed. That was before zombies became the craze, and I’ve always loved them. So we decided to pitch it to some banks and they told us we were crazy, but we just kept the idea moving. Then The Walking Dead came out and the banks started to come around.
How did you come up with the de- sign of the restaurant? We didn’t have an easy task trying to figure out what we would make it look like. As I was talking to the designer, I was like, “I don’t know if this is a real term but I want it to look ‘post-apocalyptic chic.’” He looked at me like I was a nut job. So we sort of took some elements of industrial- looking things like light fixtures and chain- link fences, and for the murals we [hired] Ron Wagner, who’s actually a pretty rep- utable artist. He did some really great stuff for us in the setting of downtown Des Moines. It’s a zombified Des Moines scene in a couple of the murals and then a couple other great zombie graphics.
Meat Locker: Zombie Burger’s “post-apocalyptic chic” attracts all kinds, and (below) one of the restaurant’s signature burgers, The Boomstick.
There’s one, though, where we make mac- aroni and cheese and put it into a mould, fry it and make buns from that. Then we put a couple of the burger patties and some cheese and some onions on it. That one might be the most extreme or craziest that we have. Then there’s The Undead Elvis, that’s a fun one. It has peanut butter and fried bananas on it.
What’s the average reaction to the place? We thought we would have a busy restau- rant but we had no idea what to expect. When we opened up the doors, it looked like the craziest zombie movie you’ve ever seen, with hordes of people just outside waiting. And it has not stopped; it’s a busy restaurant. We get people still coming in dressed up as zombies on the weekends and you get people from all different walks of life. We get a lot of kids too, and really I’m surprised, because if we don’t get a kid running out of here screaming at least every other day, I don’t feel like we’re doing our jobs.
What would you say is the most adven- turous thing on the menu? The good thing about my team is that they’re all just as twisted as I am and keep coming up with new ideas. We have a list of probably 100 other burgers that we’re going to try over the lifetime of this place.
Any personal favourites? We have a reference to probably my favourite twisted movie, that I don’t admit to many, The Human Centipede. We have the “RIP Meine Drei-Hunde,” which is a three-hotdog stuffed burrito. Only people who know that movie get that reference. So yeah, we try to push the envelope as often as we can, probably too much, but what’s the fun of doing this if you aren’t going to push it?
You’ve also got “Rippers” on the menu. What are they? I’ve always been sort of an East Coast guy and Rippers are actually something from New Jersey. The way they do their hotdogs is they drop them in a fryer and they split open, and we thought it just seemed like a natural choice to go along with our zombie burger con- cept.
Tell us a little bit about the Drink Lab portion of Zombie Burger.
The drink lab stems from the fact that I wanted to have a bar at- tached to it. I didn’t want just a burger restaurant: I wanted to def- initely have a bar, and then the milkshakes kind of got crazy, as well. I wanted an actual restaurant and not a quick service place where you just grab a burger. We wanted every aspect of this thing to not be a phone-it-in [type of place]. We’re not just going to serve some- thing; we’re going to do it in a way that you’re going to remember and want to come back. The drink lab is a part of that; you can come here and just drink or you can come here and grab a burger. Most peo- ple do both.
How crazy do the drinks get? We have a Bloody Mary called The Abyss. The rim of it is wrapped in prosciutto, the cocktail itself is made with squid
ink and vodka, and we make radish eyeballs too, which we just drop into it. We’ve also played around with liquid nitrogen for some stuff, but I have to say that The Abyss is the craziest.
Do you think you’ll be opening up any more horror-themed restaurants? I don’t know about different themes, but I still like the idea of tying horror to food, just because it’s my favourite. I’d like to do an- other location – several locations of this [theme]. I’ve also talked to my partner and said, “You know, let’s find a location where I can set up a creepy little store next to it, where I can sell fun movies, memorabilia from horror movies...” – that way, as people wait in line, they could go through and do that. And the con- cept is something that you’ll hear people talk about. I was in the air- port in Atlanta and somebody was talking about Zombie Burger in Des Moines, Iowa, so that’s pretty cool to me.
35RM
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