Rogue & Reckless: A Charleston smashburger pop-up
Most people aren’t consistent so much as selective about where they’re brave. Vinnie Santiago, 32, inked a full sleeve on himself after a tattoo-artist friend handed him a spare kit. But when it came to betting on himself, he moved more carefully. Friends had told him for years his food was good; he discounted it. “You’re my friend, of course you say that,” is how he sums up that kind of praise. It took strangers saying the same thing before he believed it.
Vinnie credits his culinary career to his grandfather, a culinary specialist on a Navy ship. When he would visit his grandfather’s house, there was always something cooking – prime rib dinners, biscuits and gravy, and German goulash. “The house was always smelling good,” Vinnie remembers. His first job in Charleston was at Taco Bell. He then worked at P.F. Chang’s when it opened, and later at 167 Sushi and Mex 1 on Sullivan’s Island. He now works at Odd Duck Market in Park Circle.
Cooking for people is Vinnie’s love language, he says. He and his wife, Ashley, had been hosting dinners with friends, and the food kept drawing the same response: you should do something with this. “I was like, yeah, sure – never really thought about it,” Vinnie recalls. After hearing it more and more, he decided to give it a shot, and Rogue & Reckless, a smashburger pop-up he runs with Ashley, was born.
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The smashburger is having a moment – brewery lots, food halls, even Michelin menus. But it’s a century old. The most-told origin story sends it back to 1920s Oklahoma, where a vendor smashed cheap onions into pricier beef to stretch the meat – a trick so tied to hard times it’s still called “the Depression burger.” The stories don’t all agree on the where and when, but the point survives them: this old, thrifty thing is still going strong.
“Anyone can do a smashburger,” Vinnie says. The question that interested him was how to make one stand out, and his answer was to do the parts most people buy. He bakes his own sesame milk-bread buns, cures three kinds of pickles, and makes the bacon jam and special sauce in-house. His first pop-up, in collaboration with Odd Duck, opened his eyes – watching strangers enjoy the burgers told him he was onto something, and he should keep going.
The second and third pop-ups are already in the books, but Vinnie is not rushing. With a two-and-a-half-year-old at home and a second child on the way, Rogue & Reckless is currently a side venture. This necessity has turned into a strategy. “I wanted to take inspiration from culture brands like Supreme, where they did limited drops, and incorporate that into my pop-up,” Vinnie says. Instead of five stops a week, he wants two a month.
The long game is a food truck and additional menu items. A restaurant doesn’t tempt him – too much overhead, too much staffing, too tied to one address. A truck he could manage, maybe two someday, on his own terms. “You start where you start,” he says, “and you experience the journey as it goes. That’s the whole point of doing it for yourself.”
Follow Rogue & Reckless on Instagram for their pop-up schedule.