What does Two Robbers’ pub burger actually look like? An investigation into Philly Reddit’s Burgergate.
No, the pub burger from the Lodge by Two Robbers does not have a disintegrating patty.
A picture is worth a thousand words, or at least 974 Reddit upvotes.
A photo of a sad-looking burger wrongfully attributed to Two Robbers — the homegrown hard seltzer-turned-hard soda brand with bars in Fishtown and South Philly — has been circulating on the r/Philly subreddit since last Wednesday, when user Seraphanarie posted a since-deleted photo of a flier they claimed their boyfriend found while walking in Fishtown.
“Two Robbers Pub Burger,” the flier reads in bold all-caps font. “This is literally the burger that came out [on] October 10, 2025.”
The heinous-looking burger in question: A barely-there beef patty so crumbly it doesn’t stick together sandwiched between a dry, unseeded bun. The scene is so dismal that the cheese is falling off the side of the burger, almost as if it’s trying to run away.
“The people need to know!!” the Reddit post was titled, with a caption that said, “whoever posted this is doing the lord’s work.”
The burger in question supposedly hailed from Two Robbers Lodge, the beverage company’s cozy South Philly offshoot. Twin brothers Vivek and Vikram Nayar founded Two Robbers in 2019 as a bespoke hard seltzer brand before pivoting to canned vodka sodas in 2024. The company opened a futuristic tasting room in Fishtown at 1221 Frankford Ave. in 2023, and added the Lodge — a homey pub inside the former Hawthornes space in South Philly — earlier this year.
Both locations are known for serving simple yet well-executed burgers, with the Lodge’s Pub Burger clocking at a sturdy 8 ounces of custom Pat LaFrieda dry-aged beef and ground chuck.
So when the flier emerged, Philly’s Redditors, like us, wanted to know: What gives?
The post received close to 1,000 upvotes and over 170 comments, with Redditors poking fun at anyone who has high expectations of a burger from a seltzer bar.
“This is what you get for ordering a burger at a craft seltzeria,” one user commented. Another said it looked like a burger they made at home: “It was horrible.”
In actuality, the flier may be nothing but a ketchup-covered smear campaign. A reverse Google image search traces the photo back to a 2018 post on the meme aggregator 9GAG titled “Nasty Burger.” An Inquirer reporter could not confirm that a physical flier existed after several walks around Fishtown, and the original poster declined to comment, citing the “overwhelming” amount of attention they had received.
Two Robbers co-owner Vivek Nayar said he was in his car after a trip to the bank Wednesday afternoon when he was bombarded with texts from coworkers about the Reddit post. He started seething straightaway.
“We immediately knew when we saw the photo [that] it wasn’t our burger. It wasn’t our restaurant,” Nayar told The Inquirer last week. “Just thinking about that picture makes me sick.”
Less than a couple of hours later, Nayar had revived his own Reddit account, posting a passionate defense in r/philly.
“I just wanted to come on here to tell you all, it’s not our f—ing burger and that photo wasn’t even taken at our restaurant … those aren’t our fries, that’s not our table, that’s not our plates," he wrote. “Truly a DIABOLICAL move for someone to go out on [Reddit] and post this.”
Nayar’s screed has been upvoted more than 2,500 times. The 35-year-old Olde Kensington resident — who claims he is “too old” for Reddit — said he was surprised by the positivity his post has received, with some users even going as far to wonder if Burgergate was just a masterful attempt at guerrilla marketing.
“I wish I was that smart,” Nayar said.
Defenders said that the Lodge’s burger “looks thicc” and was worthy of a visit.
Burgergate is not the first time Two Robbers has polarized Philadelphia. As the Nayars prepared to open their controversial moss-green tasting room in Fishtown, community members took to Facebook to complain about the paint job. For months after, a rowhouse across the street had signs that read “I Hate Two Robbers” hung in the window. They’ve since been taken down.
Nayar said he doesn’t view the incidents as connected. Fishtowners were just coping with perpetual gentrification. Whoever posted the flier is just a hater, Nayar said. He doesn’t care to investigate further.
“It’s hard for me to blame people for piling on,” Nayar said. “If I saw a post like that and had nothing to do with Two Robbers, I would find it hilarious.”