Northern Liberties now has TikTok-famous Dominican smashburgers topped with queso frito

Philly’s burgeoning smashburger scene just got a little more crowded, thanks to a New York City-based Dominican restaurant with a huge social media following.

El Sazón R.D. — home of lower Manhattan’s viral queso frito-topped smashburger — has opened a location in Northern Liberties at 1030 N. Second St. It replaced smoothie shop Essex Squeeze, another NYC import.

Owned by cousins Edwin Collado and Ari Valerio and their friends Glenn Almanzar and Michael Tsang, El Sazón R.D. has created a takeout empire out of adding queso de freír — salty and melty white Dominican frying cheese — to a set of distinctly American comfort foods: smashburgers, crinkle-cut fries, and deli-style egg-and-cheese sandwiches.

The first El Sazón R.D (which roughly translates to “the Dominican flavor”) opened in 2024 in New York’s Chinatown, where it built a following among the city’s content creators. Almost immediately, Almanzar said, videos of influencers taking exaggerated bites of towering double cheeseburgers racked up millions of views.

Within two years, El Sazón opened three more locations: one in Tribeca, a second location in Tribeca and another in the East Village, the latter of which is a full-service bodega that also serves cheesesteaks alongside platters of chicharrón and pernil with all the fixings. The shop’s Philly location, its first outside New York, soft-opened two days before February’s record-setting snowstorm and deep freeze. Neither, Almanzar said, slowed business.

“We’ve been selling out of stuff. That’s how busy we’ve been,” he said.

Valerio, who grew up in the Dominican Republic’s countryside, is the chef of group, whose menu is inspired by Valerio’s relationship with his 78-year-old uncle Bijo. When he was 13, Valerio said, his uncle allowed him to set up a grill in front of his corner store and sell sandwiches.

“I was his first customer. I was the one who told him could make money doing this,” said Almanzar, who is from the Lower East Side and would visit the D.R. on family vacations.

To open El Sazón R.D, Valerio and Alamazar partnered with Collado and Tsang, who own SET, the thumping Asian-fusion bar known for bottomless margarita towers that started in NYC and expanded to Philly in 2020. As for uncle Bijo, everything on the menu had to get his stamp of approval.

“He’s very old-fashioned,” said Valerio. “We’d do these early-morning tasting sessions and he’d get on me about making sure I was measuring all my ingredients exactly right.”

El Sazón’s Philly menu only has four distinct food items on it, but it pulses with tastes of the Dominican Republic.

The restaurant’s smashburger starts with a Martin’s potato bun slathered with “chimi” sauce, a tangy mayo-ketchup mixture ubiquitous across Latin America. The condiment is a nod to the Chimi, a popular Dominican street food sandwich that involves spreading mayo-ketchup onto rolls of crisp pan de agua piled high with beef and a cabbage slaw.

“People always ask us why our mayo-ketchup tastes different than when they make at home,” bragged Almanzar. “There’s nothing special about it, but at the same time, you can’t recreate it by squirting mayo and ketchup packets together. It’s about balance.”

Valerio smashes a Pat La Frieda beef patty onto a flat-top grill with a meat press, spreading out the edges so they become lacy with a slight crunch. The key to perfecting the queso frito, he said, is to deep-fry the slices for exactly 45 seconds at 350°F. A moment longer and the cheese turns rubbery, not unlike a Wawa mozzarella stick that’s sat on the hot tray for too long.

The result is a $10 smashburger that is hefty and satisfying. The fried cheese adds dimension, its saltiness mixing with the acidity of the chimi sauce and pickle slices to dress up an otherwise plain burger patty. To Almanzar, that’s the point.

“With a smashburger, it’s not about the burger itself but what you put on it — the fried cheese, the sauce," he said.

Popularized by chains like Shake Shack, the smashburger has overtaken the plump pub burger in the past decade on menus around the country. The slim and crispy patties are cheaper and quicker to make, and, since precise temperature isn’t a factor, easier to cook. This year, Philly is also poised to get a Harlem Shake and a 7th Street Burger, two other New York City-based smashburger chains. They’ll join a scene already saturated with local iterations with cheffy flourishes; think burgers topped with chili jam, Yemenite-spiced mayo, and pickled green tomatoes.

El Sazón also sells loaded crinkle-cut fries layered with two hefty squirts of mayo-ketchup, cubes of queso de frier, and fried salami chunks that pop in your mouth like blistered cocktail sausages. It’s yet another play on Latin American street food, said Valerio: Vendors selling salchipapas — French fries topped with hot dogs — are a staple across Peru and the Caribbean, he said.

Also on the menu: Beef, chicken, vegetable, and salami and cheese empanadas made fresh daily by another one of Valerio’s cousins. The turnovers can be served as is or taco-style, wherein the empanada is sliced open and lined with pico de gallo, pickled onions, and drizzles of chipotle aioli.

Eventually, Almanzar hopes to extend El Sazón’s Philly hours until midnight or later on weekends to capitalize on bar crowds seeking something filling, cheap, and a little comforting.

“That’s our kind of food,” he said.

El Sazón R.D., 1030 N. 2nd St. Ste. 201, elsazon-rd.com. Initial hours: noon to 9 p.m. daily.