A Tale of Two Burgers: Beef + Lamb Ambassador Chef’s Culinary Homage
Chef Chetan Pangam with his 2025 Burger Welly entry. Photo courtesy of One80 Restaurant, Wellington.
When you’ve won Visa Wellington On a Plate’s Burger Welly two years in a row, the pressure to deliver something new and better is real. For Beef + Lamb Ambassador Chef Chetan Pangam, this year’s entry was about more than just bold flavours. It was about telling a story through food, rooted in heritage and family.
Chetan admits coming up with something fresh was daunting. “You’re always wondering, what next? I just wanted to stay true to my cooking by using Indian flavours with a modern approach.” His inspiration began with a simple idea: curry. Not in the literal sense, but the flavours that accompany a great Indian curry, rice, pickles, spice. “That’s how it started. What goes with curry? Rice. Maybe some papadums an pickles. Then we thought, we’ve done chicken and lamb... now let’s try fish and beef.”
The theme this year, ‘Food is Love’ prompted Chetan to dig even deeper and he came up with a clear direction to honour the two people who inspired and supported his journey from the very beginning: his mum and dad.
The result is a beautifully balanced surf n turf concept with twin burgers, each representing a parent, their cultural heritage, and their influence on Chetan’s life.
The first is the beef cafreal burger, a robust, spice-rich burger that pays tribute to his mother and her Goan roots. The burger features a beef patty, seasoned with cafreal spices, nestled in a basmati rice kanji bun, layered with pickles, cheese and topped with potato salli and accompanied with Chetan’s mum’s Goan cafreal curry sauce. The burger is bold, aromatic, and unmistakably Goan.
The second burger honours his father’s hometown of Karwar, a coastal city known for its fresh seafood and gentle, nuanced curries. Chetan brings that inspiration into a fish burger, using similar elements, a rice bun, pickles, and spice - but delivering a completely different flavour experience with his dad’s Karwar coconut onion curry sauce.
Chetan says the burgers are like opposite sides of the same coin – both personal, both rooted in tradition, but completely unique.
Curry Rice Papad Project by chef Chetan Pangam. Photo courtesy of One80 Restaurant, Wellington.
Of course, getting these flavours just right took plenty of trial and error. Chetan partnered again with Clareville Bakery, who helped create a custom rice bun for the burgers. He also worked closely with Harrington’s Small Goods to refine the beef patty. “We tested different spice ratios until we hit that perfect balance,” he explains. “Everything starts in my head, usually at odd hours, and then slowly comes to life.”
Beyond the burgers, Chetan was also given the honour of opening Visa Wellington On a Plate this year, alongside celebrated Indian chef Varun Totlani of Mumbai’s Masque - India’s No.1 restaurant three years running. The two chefs collaborated on both street food and a fine dining tasting menu that blended modern Indian cuisine with nostalgic flavours from their shared culinary heritage.
One of the biggest crowd-pleasers from their street food menu was tabak maaz — braised lamb ribs in milk with crispy crackling, cooked in mustard oil and clarified butter. There was also a pulled lamb puff taco, two versions of pani puri, and a hearty beef and rice bowl that delivered a rich, warming umami flavour bomb. Chetan recalls that the opening night was freezing cold, so the street food was intentionally designed to offer flavour, heat, and comfort which it certainly did on a cold Wellington evening!
Chefs Varun Totlani and Chetan Pangam chatting to Seven Sharp’s Daniel Faitaua.
For the weekend’s tasting menu, the experience took a different turn - a complete coin flip, as Chetan puts it. The chefs crafted an eight-course menu centred around New Zealand produce, featuring refined dishes like beef short rib with black onion sauce, lamb loin with Chettinad sauce, and a creative take on beef tartare served with crispy tendon. Chetan says the menu was extensive, and it was an incredible experience creating these dishes alongside such a talented chef as Varun.
For chef Varun, it was his first trip to New Zealand, and he says he found Wellington’s vibe incredible - the people and especially the food scene.
“It was exciting to cook in a new space using New Zealand ingredients. The beef and lamb here, particularly from Lumina and Silver Fern Farms, are next level. Every product we used was top-notch. I’d definitely be keen to bring some of that back home to India - it’s world-class."
As for the question everyone wants to ask a Beef + Lamb Ambassador Chef – what’s your preference - beef or lamb? Chetan smiles. “That’s like choosing your favourite child. Last year’s lamb burger was close to my heart, but this year it made sense to go with beef and explore a different region, a different story.”
The flavour journey wouldn’t be complete without the perfect beer. Following the success of his Garage Project collaboration last year, Chetan teamed up with Double Vision Brewing this year to create a Peach IPA to match the beef burger. It’s bright, fruity, and refreshingly crisp and is perfect alongside the deep spices of the cafreal patty. And for those looking for something special, Kotari Gold - a nod to India’s iconic Kingfisher beer - is back on tap at his restaurant until it sells out.
In the end, Chetan’s 2025 Burger Welly entry is more than a dish, it’s a culinary homage, a heartfelt expression of family, memory, and culture, all wrapped between rice buns. Whether it’s the boldness of beef or the subtlety of fish, one thing is clear: this tale of two burgers is told with love, spice, and soul.