Austin – The Capital City of the Lone Star State has never been accused of being boring when it comes to food. And for burgers and burritos, an eatery with a brazen name will make you do a doubletake. “JewBoy is that celebration of culture I was talking about,” said Mo Pittle, the Jewish guy who started the restaurant 3 years ago. “It’s the culture I was raised in, and the area I was raised in, with the things that I saw as I traveled the country, it all came together.”
Known for their hamburgers with a little Hebrew inspiration and burritos influenced by Pittle’s El Paso upbringing, there is no denying that JewBoy Burger has been the go-to for grub since he opened his brick and mortar location in the middle of the pandemic.
“It’s hard to believe sometimes. I hate to sound like a cliché, and obviously as a writer, you try to avoid them, but it’s super cliché,” said Pittle. “For me, food presents an opportunity to be expressive and creative and generate a narrative.”
Mo graduated from UT back in 1996 with a degree in marketing. He was incredibly successful in the business but after a few years, it just got to be too boring. So he opened a food truck….for fun! “You can sit in a boardroom and spew acronyms all day,” said Pittle. “’Let’s discuss the ROI on Q2 and why the CRM is underperforming.’ I wanted to hit myself sometimes. With food, the tangibility is so gratifying, man. You hand somebody a bag and they open it up and their eyes get big, and they take a picture of it, and they eat it and they show it to their… I watch people interact here. There’s a ton of gratification that comes from all that positive energy, and it makes it easier to engage. It makes it easier to care about what you’re doing.”
The one thing Pittle doesn’t compromise on is quality. His burgers consist of his favorite things in life and yes, that does include bacon. But the one thing you’ll never find on his burgers are tomatoes. “I hate tomatoes, and all due respect to the people that grow tomatoes, fine people, and it’s a fine vegetable for somebody else,” said Pittle. “For me, it’s the devil’s fruit. It’s a vile, invasive, bitter fruit that just leaves its stain on everything, so I dislike tomatoes. We don’t serve them here.”
Before serving up his beloved burgers, Pittle spoke about the reason, and the meaning, behind the name of his restaurant. “I always tell people, ‘Look, if you’re uncomfortable, don’t say it,’” said Pittle. “It’s okay. I have a woman that comes in, she goes, ‘Love your burgers, hate your name.’ Certain terms age better than others. Certain terms are a little bit more malleable, I would think. There’s terms that are just never going to be acceptable. The honest version, we used to use the term homeboy a lot when we were kids. It’s a real common colloquialism amongst Hispanic kids. So my version of homeboy for a Jewish guy is JewBoy. I’m just a Jewish cholo. Again, if you’re uncomfortable with it, I understand that. I don’t need you to say it to order it. I don’t need you to be happy with it. I would like for you to listen and consider and recognize that the more we talk, the better things get. We lose the ability to communicate, we lose everything.”
Communication consists of a few things. Talking, listening, reasoning, and understanding. It helps if you have empathy or if you have a healthy habit for debate, but the key is to just not be a jerk.
“I have said this over and over again. This is not a license to be anti-Semitic,” said Pittle. “This is not a license to come in here and tell me the worst Jewish joke you know. I have a few of them, but I won’t put them on camera either. But that’s not what this is about. This is a celebration of culture. This is where we look at all the different places that feed into here, and we celebrate them.”
Now that the name and the story of JewBoy are cleared up, we can move on to the main attractions; burgers and burritos.