The
Craft.

Jose Garcia and Rosa Ruth Flores opened Smashburger House & Wings on June 29, 2026, on Irving Park Road — the corner that was previously home to Taquizas Valdez.

What they put on the menu is a run of freshly made smash burgers built around flavors from around the world: teriyaki and grilled pineapple on the Hawaiian, jalapeño cream cheese and cherry bacon jam on the Popper, Nashville heat on another. The through-line is the technique, not the cuisine — every one of them starts as a ball of beef pressed thin on a hot flat-top.

The neighbourhood noticed quickly.

A smashburger is a technique before it's a menu item. A loose ball of fresh-ground beef goes onto steel that's already screaming, and gets pressed flat immediately — while the outside is still cold enough to take a crust rather than steam.

Pressing does two things at once. It puts every square millimetre of the patty in contact with the griddle, and it forces out moisture that would otherwise sit between the beef and the heat. What you get is a lace-thin browned edge across the whole underside instead of grill marks across part of it.

The catch is that you only get one shot. Press after the first thirty seconds and you're squeezing out rendered fat instead of water. Flip early and the crust hasn't set. So: press once, flip once, and cheese it while it's still on the steel so the cheese melts into the crust rather than sliding around on top of it.