Dang Burger’s Big Bang in Carpinteria

On the December day that I finally got my hands on a Dang Burger — attracted to the steady buzzing about this Carpinteria crave from social feeds and real people alike, it was my second attempt — I actually ordered two of them: the original, straight-up “Single Dang,” which was required, we can all agree, for evaluating the restaurant’s basic formula of smashed ground beef with yellow American cheese and fixings; and the “Hot Dang,” a special (since elevated to the permanent menu) featuring two patties, white American cheese, and spicy peppers. With fries, of course.

This was, I determined upon grabbing my tray, complete overkill. But this was for work, and I was hungry. So, yeah, I ate it all.

It helped that I started with the Single Dang, which fired up childhood memories of post-beach, fast-food satisfaction in the summertime. I hamburgled that away in a few bites, then tore into the Hot Dang, where more obvious cheffy skills showed in the herbed spicy mayo and use of both pasilla and jalapeño, creating layers of texture and flavor that you won’t find at Foster’s Freeze.

Being burger number two, that beast was harder to finish — I walked it off at the Carp Bluffs right afterward. But the combination confirmed what the founders Gil Craddock and Emery Hickenbotham had told me on my first visit a couple of weeks earlier, when I didn’t get to try a Dang Burger because it was a Tuesday and the kitchen was closed.

“We’re doing simple, nostalgic food, but doing it in-house and with better ingredients,” said Craddock, who cut his culinary teeth working on fancier, fishier dishes at Little Dom’s Seafood down the road and Rory’s Place in Ojai. “Our concept is to just make every ingredient better.”

It’s impossible to determine who invented the smashburger. The popular midcentury origin story — featuring a cook at Dairy Cheer in Kentucky who used a bean can in a pinch — runs counter to Depression-era evidence from, among other anecdotes, Oklahoma, where minced onions were incorporated into the meat to stretch limited supplies.

We do know that it was not invented by the 2007 launch of Denver’s Smashburger chain, although that certainly did nationalize the technique of, yes, smashing a patty onto a hot surface as it cooks, thereby adding flavorful char and turning a small amount of beef into a sandwich-sized serving. As hungry and/or haute Americans are wont to do, smashburgers are typically stacked with multiple patties, melty cheeses, special sauces, and various other accoutrements, classic and otherwise.

For many Santa Barbarans, our introduction to modern smashburger culture came through Third Window, the Haley Street brewery that started serving them in 2020 when pandemic rules mandated eating at otherwise drinking-only establishments. Those burgers remain a hit there and are popular elsewhere, from pop-ups like Mylestone BBQ to brick-and-mortars like Shalhoob’s “Shoobies” and Corner Tap’s sliders. Smashing is happening at home too — or at least at my house, where they’ve become our preferred burger style (Impossible meat works too, though you can skip the Jimmy Dean sausage version).

For the Dang Burger bros, who grew up here but didn’t meet ’til playing the same bill in “shitty” punk-rock bands in San Francisco, the introduction came during their L.A. days at places like Tripp and Yellow Paper. After bonding up north through their bands, Hickenbotham, a 2008 S.B. High grad, and Craddock — a 2011 Carp High grad whose parents owned the auto parts store where Rincon Brewing is now, across from Dang — followed each other down to Los Angeles.

“Maybe we’re codependent, or something like that,” laughed Hickenbotham, who worked at the Mollusk Surf Shops in S.F. and Venice Beach before getting into food. That came when, after gravitating back to this area during the pandemic, he got a raw bar job at Rory’s in Ojai, where Craddock was sous chef.

Their burger pop-ups started then too, named after a slang word they’d say to each other when something was cool. “It was just the best of a bunch of bad ideas,” said Hickenbotham of Dang. 

They slanged pop-up patties about three times a month for the better part of two years. “At first, they were wherever people would have us, and then we gained a following in Carpinteria,” said Craddock. Their home base became the parking lot behind the Sunburst Wine Bar, the brilliantly orange space opened in May 2021 by Ryan and Ashley Moore, owners of Lucky Llama and Heritage Goods, all on the same Carpinteria Avenue block right off of Linden.

[Click to enlarge] L-R: The fries are up; Dang Burger owners Gil Craddock (left) and Emery Hickenbotham; and some dang good looking burgers | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom

The problem was that the Dang Burger pop-up formula wasn’t quite legal. “We were at a crossroads of doing this or not,” said Craddock of their big October 2022 decision. “We knew we couldn’t keep doing pop-ups. We were gonna get caught eventually.”

Coincidentally, Sunburst’s remodel of its century-old building included a simple kitchen that wasn’t yet being used. So Craddock and Hickenbotham ponied up the money to go legit, investing in the hood and hot line to turn the kitchen into Dang Burger.

They were hoping to open by last summer, but — cue phrase that appears in every article ever written about a new business in Southern Santa Barbara County — permitting took forever. That may have been for the better, as Dang Burger was immediately slammed upon its November 11 debut. 

“We’ve been cooking for a while, but opening a restaurant is a whole different thing,” admitted Craddock, whose tiny staff making each burger to order must constantly deal with curious customer modifications. “People have strong opinions about toppings on their burgers.”

Aside from the very brief 2022 life of XO Burger in the Funk Zone, Dang Burger exists as the region’s only smashburger-focused restaurant. The menu is now just five burgers: the aforementioned Single and Hot Dang, a Double Dang, a homemade black-bean veggie patty (meat eaters I know approve), and the bare-bones Meat Bun Cheese, as well as fries, a Carpinteria-grown salad with Dang’s ranch dressing, boiled peanuts as a bar snack, and, for dessert, apple hand pies and “Mom’s” chocolate-chip cookies. 

Expect that to evolve, as the dudes get fired up when talking about specials like western bacon cheeseburgers, tuna melts, French dips, and egg salad sandwiches. “We might even do a bar burger one of these days,” said Hickenbotham of that thick-pattied style. “Who knows?”

Enjoying the ride is the ultimate goal. “We’re not super-serious guys,” said Hickenbotham. “Our plan is to have fun,” added Craddock. “And if this one goes well … maybe another?”

Dang Burger, 5080 Carpinteria Ave., Carpinteria; dangburger.com; @dang.burger