How a $2.55 slider became NYC’s most popular burger overnight
Finding a delicious burger this cheap is certainly rare.
A Brooklyn grocery store and cafe has become an overnight sensation for their scrumptious sliders — which sell for a shocking, budget-friendly $2.55.
Jubilee Marketplace’s 20 Gram Café, a k a Greenpoint’s 20 Grams, only began flipping their not-so-advertised, talk-of-the-town treats, which are about double the size of a White Castle slider, at the end of January.
But one recent week, the store’s 20-seat restaurant was selling up to 1,300 burgers a day — and ran out over the weekend from high demand.
“It’s positive insanity,” executive chef and culinary director Samantha La Manna, 30, told The Post, adding that people are ordering a dozen at a time, which cost $30.
“It’s such a nice prize as a creator to give somebody a product and they’re like, ‘Holy s – – t, this is amazing,’ ” she said of the bountiful burgers, which are available daily from noon to 9 p.m.
The gooey delights also come as a breath of fresh air for New Yorkers fed up with paying exorbitantly inflated prices for what were once cheap eats, such as the Big Mac meal now costing $18 at McDonald’s.
“I’ve had customers repeatedly tell me it’s very expensive to get a quick bite anywhere,” owner Young Kim, 33, told The Post. “That’s just something we’re trying to accommodate.”
The shop’s burger mania began when New Jersey native Kim approached La Manna, whose previous culinary experiences include working at Le Bernardin and Eleven Madison Park, with a bag of sliders from the Garden State’s White Manna of Hackensack.
It’s a popular, retro diner-style joint — it was even once featured on “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” — and has recently inspired more hot NYC eateries, plus lots of nostalgia for Kim.
“Back [when I was in middle school], you could go to White Manna with a dollar and change and get a burger,” he said. “I really wanted to re-create that with the store.”
They’re able to keep prices down substantially by utilizing what’s being sold in the grocery area of Jubilee — a floor beneath the café that some new burger-hungry customers may not even know exists.
La Manna — who is adamant about controlling and reducing food waste — said that meat comes from their butcher section, and the burger’s special ingredient of garlic confit was repurposed from other fixings downstairs.
“It elevates the taste of any food,” she boasted of the specialty add-on which is embedded in the patty meat.
The sliders themselves are true to White Manna’s smash style as they’re loaded up with enough grilled onions that the scent now permeates the cafe and outside.
That’s in addition to American cheese, a pinch of salt, plus a sauce of yellow mustard, mayo, ketchup, relish and a hint of hot sauce. That mixture is “not spicy, per se,” according to Kim. He also noted that the burger’s top bun gets steamed, and the bottom is toasted for a mix of textures.
As for who cooks them, Jubilee’s dedicated owner is behind the stove and happy to work 16-hour days “to keep the burger as cost-efficient as possible.”
Kim, a culinary-school dropout, said that La Manna has given him a crash course on burger flipping.
“It was like a whole new world for me,” he recalled. Regardless, La Manna hailed Kim’s skills with the grill and said he had it down pat after just a day.
Kim’s plenty used to hands-on labor, too.
He had started as a shelf stocker in Jubilee’s lower Manhattan location 10 years ago before becoming owner of the Greenpoint store when it opened in January 2023.
Now, cooking one of the most affordable burgers in town — and pressing onions — has become a labor of love.
“I’ve never been so excited to get to work,” he said.
