A taking of the cultural pulse of the crypto community from artists to comedians to meet ups and beyond.

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You want fries with that?

The house filled with that most American of smells: grilling meat, melting cheese, toasted buns. The burger tasting had brought a young, hip and good-looking crowd to Marina del Rey on a recent Los Angeles evening only steps from the beach. In the small kitchen Brad Miller busily assembled his famed Original Burger Boys in the hopes of taking this crowd along with him and his partner Luke Tabit as they set out to launch a restaurant in the metaverse that will deliver an IRL Burger Boy to your home.

The secret menu to this event had only one listing – web3. The food world is coming around to what non-fungible tokens and virtual worlds like Decentraland and Crypto Voxels will mean for the traditional brick and mortar restaurant business. The crowd was made up of crypto pros and people who are still wrapping their heads around what an NFT actually is. They had no problem however in scarfing down the Burger Boys as fast as Miller and a helper made them.

The plan is to build a community around Burger Boy with Miller and Tabit, who owns the restaurant Ashland Hill in Santa Monica and at the LAX airport, so that they can eventually release NFTs to provide access to private events, earn rewards for holders and help fund the creation of their first kitchen for cyber-to-meatspace deliveries.

“Luke and I are hospitality people who love crypto,” Miller told me. “We want to merge culinary and crypto and be the first ones to do it if we can.” The idea is catching on, as BurgerDAO has the same idea as the Burger Boy plan.

the Burger Boy website

While there might be competition, no one has a better burger than Miller. He’s fanatical about ingredients and tested 35 pickles before finding the perfect one (Mount Olive dill pickle chips). For the precise ground beef mixture he created over 100 different patties using the meat grinder he set up in his home. The sauce, though, is what truly sets a Burger Boy apart. It’s made with caramelized onion, molasses, thyme, port and butter and has a depth that makes the rest of the outstanding burger cohere in ways that could drive a vegetarian off the reservation.

If Miler and Tabit have their way, you may soon be able to roll up to a virtual burger joint in Decentraland or Crypto Voxels and order a Burger Boy of your own. They hope to have ghost kitchens set up around the country to then make your burger for delivery to your house. While it’s still very early in their plans, Miller and Tabit know they’re on to something and are having too much fun worry about much else.

“This is such a moving target, every time we turn around the NFT space has changed,” Miller said.