At Philly’s new Kook Burger & Bar, a Shore-style menu and $30 milkshakes

Kook Burger, a modest burger shop that launched a year ago in the Jersey Shore community of Brigantine, has expanded to Center City Philadelphia in a big way.

Owners Braeden Anderson, his fiancee, Selena Gabrielle, and Victor Alegria have taken over a three-story building at 2102 Market St. with Kook Burger & Bar, which soft-opened last weekend.

They have also leased the former Caffeination shop a block away, at 2100 Chestnut St., to house a new location of their Black Turtle Coffee Co., Kook’s sibling next door in Brigantine.

Black Turtle, expected to open this spring on two floors, will offer work space for remote workers and students, as well as offer games such as shuffleboard.

Anderson and Gabrielle, coffee and burger aficionados, moved to Brigantine in 2020 from New York City. Seeing a shortage of options nearby, they started in the food business in October 2021 with Black Turtle, serving single-origin, organic, fair-trade coffee. They opened Kook next door in February 2022.

For now, the Philadelphia Kook location, across from the Murano condos, operates on the street level with a cocktail and beer bar serving a beach-style menu based on smashed Angus burgers, topped fries, wings, and other fried snacks and shakes — conventional ones as well as lavishly decorated, Instagrammable Shoobie Shakes, topped with full-size desserts (like a slice of Cheesecake Factory cheesecake or an ice cream sandwich) and served in souvenir glass mugs for $30.

Thirty bucks for a milkshake?

“The ingredients that we pour into that are just so extravagant and extreme that it becomes the price point,” Anderson said. “The margins on that milkshake are no greater than the margins on any other milkshake. You walk away with a souvenir glass and it’s about the experience. It’s a work of art. It’s just a fun experience to order one of those things, whether or not you’re on a date or you’re buying one for your kids. It feels fun and silly to be sitting there with this milkshake that’s standing almost two feet off the table.”

The second floor is being prepped for private events, while the third floor this spring will become a live-music and comedy venue called Jester Castle.

These are busy days for Anderson, 30, who was the subject of a New York Times profile in 2015 when he juggled law school studies at Seton Hall while also playing forward on the university’s Big East championship basketball team.

Anderson, now a lawyer with Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, missed part of the opening day of Kook Burger & Bar to make an appearance for his book Black Resilience: The Blueprint for Black Triumph in the Face of Racism (Post Hill Press, distributed by Simon & Schuster), which describes strategies for success and empowerment.

The restaurant business is a natural for a multitasker. “I got used to sleeping three or four hours a night,” he said. “Even though I have a really demanding job and I still work a significant amount of hours as a lawyer, there’s still a ton of extra time and room for me to have hobbies. I would rather open restaurants and coffee shops than watch Netflix.”