HOUSTON, Texas – For this week’s burger of the week we’re in west Houston at a burger joint that kind of fuses some flavorful things together. We’re at Flip ‘n Patties.
Along the Energy Corridor of the Space City you’ll find the typical h-town population. Very, very diverse. The blending of all these cultures makes for some incredible food combinations and that’s exactly what we found at this Filipino inspired eatery.
Michael Jante started Flip N Patties with his creative cousin Don.
“We grew up together, spent almost every day of our lives together up until we started school, elementary, kindergarten and stuff,” Michael said. “We still hung out. Family is huge here in Houston.”
Their parents immigrated from the Philippines in the 70s.
“A lot of immigrants come here for the American dream, you know, and they got great jobs when we got here they were both engineers,” Michael said. “Moved to Houston and it’s a big oil industry here in Houston. Then kind of passed that onto me as far as wanting to be successful here in the states.”
Both took the business path to start their careers, but it just wasn’t what they wanted to do.
“Went to school, kind of just followed that road then I was like, ‘Hey man, I’m not really loving this. I kind of want to live life loving what I do,’” Michael said. “And so I love food and when I travel that’s all I do. I travel for food, I don’t travel for landmarks.”
So the cousins opened a food truck in 2012 dedicated to their taste of home.
“How can we get people to a food truck, especially people who don’t really know Filipino food,” Michael said. “So we said let’s make burgers. Filipino style burgers. We took what our parents came here with and we took what we were born with and kind of put it together.”
The successful combination of authentic Filipino food and creative burgers lead to their first location and now their infused food is flying out the door. Head chef Cameron Terry introduced us to one beautiful burger.
“We’re going to be making the Jeepney Burger,” Terry said. “It has a certified Angus beef patty, slice of tomato and a longanisa patty which is kind of like pork sausage, with a fried egg.”
A 6 ounce patty of beef topped with house made seasoning and Worchester sauce along with a specially blended Filipino sausage starts frying up. Then an egg and a very special Siopao bun hits the grill.
“We make everything in house,” Terry said. “Everything you’ve seen here is made in house, except for the egg. We don’t have chickens.”
The grilled bun gets a banana ketchup aioli, the beef, a tomato, more aioli, the sausage, and egg and we’re happy, happy.
“Overwhelming aroma,” Claudia said. “I feel like I smell all of it before and it just kind of infuses as I’m starting to chew because it’s just juicy and you feel all the spices running through. It’s just very unbelievable.”
You’ve got that soft bun that’s just a breeze to bite through followed by the beef patty. And then you get to that longanisa sausage, which has the same texture as the beef, but tastes so much sweeter. And then the egg and the banana aioli. Even the Westchester sauce they put on there comes together to make a burger you’ll do flips over.
“It brings different flavors together, it brings different cultures together, just like Houston brings the different cultures together,” Jessie said.