Cole Bowden of The Bob’s Burger Experiment Talks Putting Puns Between Buns
Photos courtesy of Cole Bowden/The Bob's Burger Experiment
If you’ve ever watched Bob’s Burgers, you’ve more than likely had a laugh thanks to the superbly punny “Burger of the Day” chalked onto a blackboard in the background of scenes in the restaurant. Though the show uses the background Burgers of the Day as subtle jokes with no real attention drawn to them, these beefy wordplays certainly caught the attention of one fan of the show in a major way. Essentially, they changed his life.
Cole Bowden was developing a craving for honing his culinary craft as a senior in college. While watching episodes of Bob’s Burgers with his roommate, he was struck by an epiphany — burgers are cheap to make (which is pivotal for college cooking) and their versatility allows plenty of room for experimenting. With constant inspiration from the show’s ever-changing “Burger of the Day,” he began chronicling his burger-cooking adventures in a blog called The Bob’s Burger Experiment. The blog’s popularity continued to grow, eventually leading to the Bob’s Burgers cast and crew becoming fans of Bowden’s work themselves. Now, Bowden is venturing into the role of cookbook author for the first time, as he has been summoned to officially write The Bob’s Burgers Cookbook.
Paste: When did you start cooking? Have you always been focused on the grill or do you dabble in everything?
Cole Bowden: Growing up, my mom was the head chef – and my job was to stay out of the kitchen. It wasn’t really until college that I started to cook, and by cook I mean heat up food and boil water for pasta. During my junior year, my friends and I started a tradition where we would all get together to cook a big meal once a month. There were two rules: everyone had to cook something and everything had to be from scratch. I think that’s what piqued my interest in cooking – seeing how a meal came together from scratch. Man, I knew nothing back then! Pro tip: Pasta should never be made from all-purpose flour. I learned that one the hard way.
My lack of cooking prowess is sort of what started the blog in the first place. During my senior year, as my roommate and I were binging on Good Eats episodes, I realized that I wanted to learn how to cook. Not just follow recipes and heat things up, but really learn to cook. I needed some sort of platform to help me, something easy to experiment with and try out different flavors and types of cooking. We were watching the first season of Bob’s Burgers when it hit me: Hamburgers! Hamburgers could be dressed up in a million different ways, and best of all they’re cheap! That’s why the blog is called The Bob’s Burger Experiment – it really started as a way to experiment in the kitchen and figure out how to cook.
Paste: Was there one particularly punny burger that stuck out to you and inspired the Bob’s Burger Experiment?
CB: The very first burger was the Foot Feta-ish Burger. It seemed all too perfect – I don’t think I’d ever eaten feta on a burger before then.
Paste: You say on the blog you “mostly” haven’t made a bad one yet. What were these few exceptions?
CB: Oh there have been some bad ones, but by far the worst has been the Human Polenta-Pede Burger. I got way in over my head with that one. I tried to make my own buns from polenta – an Italian cornmeal porridge. I ended up with heavy, lumpy, thick cornmeal that ruined the otherwise good burgers. I had invited three friends over for that one… and not one of us ate the bun.
Paste: Do you ever talk to the food like Bob does? That might be key to cooking the burgers.
CB: Are you suggesting that there are people that don’t talk to their food while they cook? Of course I do.
