Small kitchen at Illegal Food goes big with burgers

Service: requires patience, as each dish is cooked to order

Best dishes: The Hank and Okonomiyaki fries

Vegetarian selections: rare

Price range: $

Credit cards: Visa, Mastercard and American Express

Hours: 5 p.m.-midnight Wednesdays-Mondays

Children: welcome, but would recommend bringing them early

Parking: challenging, as a parking space in Old Fourth Ward is hard to come by

Reservations: no

Wheelchair access: yes

Smoking: no

Noise level: moderate to loud

Patio: no

Takeout: yes, 50-cent surcharge per item

Address, phone: 427 Edgewood Ave. S.E., Atlanta, 404-525-3002

Website: www.Facebook.com/illegalfood

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In our modern age, with the proliferation of food trucks, pop-up restaurants, food parties, and supper clubs, the ways in which chefs are getting their food out to the public is more diverse than ever before. No longer limited to opening their own brick-and-mortar shop, chefs are finding ways to get their start without all of the pesky overhead.

Johnny Martinez and Brandon Ley, the owners of Joystick Gamebar in the Old Fourth Ward, saw an opportunity to augment their current offerings by opening up their bar to host for a series of pop-ups. The space, formerly home to David Sweeney’s Dynamic Dish and now home to a cocktail-driven bar whose walls are lined with retro arcade cabinets ranging from “Centipede” and “Ms. Pac-Man” up to “NBA Jam” and “Rampage,” still had a small kitchen sitting unused in the back. After seeing the positive customer response to the pop-ups, they decided to open up Joystick’s kitchen on a semipermanent basis for one of the lucky up-and-coming chefs.

Taking a cue from the success of the partnership between Fox Brothers' BBQ and Smith's Olde Bar, Joystick became an incubator for Illegal Food, the brainchild of husband-and-wife partners Steven Lingenfelter and Laurie Dominguez. However, unlike Fox Brothers' incubation at Smith's, Joystick offers no other food options to compete with — Illegal Food IS the kitchen at Joystick.

While the two entities are legally separate, the experience as a diner going to Joystick is seamlessly intertwined with Illegal Food. This symbiotic relationship is a win for everyone involved — Illegal Food gets a kitchen to work out of, Joystick gets a food menu to keep their hungry gamers satisfied, and we get something to snack on between fatalities in “Mortal Kombat II.”

Lingenfelter’s burger-centric menu is quite small — offering only three starters and three sandwiches on the daily menu, as well as a regularly changing daily special. This is unsurprising when you consider that he and Dominguez are the only employees running the kitchen six nights a week (while they are officially closed on Tuesdays, they still leave behind a sandwich or snack that can be served without them working in the kitchen) and the amount of care that goes into each made-to-order dish. Every fry is hand-cut, patties are ground to order, and sauces are house-made.

Though burgers are the bedrock of Illegal Food’s menu, Lingenfelter’s nightly specials showcase a much more diverse range of dishes and influences. Past specials have included duck confit, Shanghai-style pork dumplings, puff-pastry-wrapped meatballs with black truffle potato pancake and bone marrow demi-glace, and Thai coconut curry hot wings.

As I first dig into my order of the Okonomiyaki-style fries ($8), I start to realize why Johnny Martinez warned me that these were so addictive. Imagine gathering up all of the flavors that define a Japanese restaurant — strips of nori, bonito flakes, pickled ginger, sesame seeds, Japanese mayo, okonomi sauce, green onion, and house-made Sriracha — and dumping them all on top of a heap of super-crispy fries. This overwhelming blend of flavors combines to make one of the best plates of fries in the city. Over the course of two visits, I’m party to the shameless, hasty destruction of four plates of these fries — I have no regrets.

I see the same sort of risk-taking in Lingenfelter’s burger menu as well, which sometimes features monstrosities like the fried egg- and bacon-laden Ol’ Dirty Breakfast ($10) with a Krispy Kreme bun, or its eccentric cousin the Notorious P.I.G. ($10), a pork patty between a pair of raspberry-filled donuts. The heirloom chili rub on the beef patty of the Nasty Nate ($11) combines wonderfully with the blue cheese and bourbon bacon jam to make for a rich, heady burger packed with aggressive flavors. Or try the most recent special to get promoted to the daily menu, the Bhan Mi burger ($10). This pork burger comes topped with picked carrot and daikon, fresh cilantro and cucumber, spicy mayo, and enough fresh jalapeno to clear your sinuses.

But it is when we turn to a reinvented classic that Lingenfelter’s burger-making prowess really shines. The Hank ($8.50) instantly became one of my favorite burgers in the city, and I have tried more than my fair share. Their signature burger, imagine the best Big Mac you have ever had — a grass-fed Brasstown beef patty, lettuce, sweet onion, American cheese, pickles and “special sauce” served on a Holeman & Finch bun. Despite following a time-tested formula, the care that Lingenfelter puts into each order combined with his thoughtful sourcing of ingredients make this an instant standout in the Atlanta area, and one that any serious burger fan should go out of their way to try.

Though Illegal Food is still in its infancy, I can only hope that the current iteration at Joystick is only a preview of bigger and better things. Though I really look forward to Lingenfelter graduating to his own full-blown restaurant, the food this little kitchen-that-could turns out today is certainly worth checking out.