Smash Bay Burgers: A CT "Must Eat" Burger

Bussing tables, washing dishes, prep work, and something like flipping burgers are most people’s foot-in-the-door in the hospitality industry.

Austen Bass isn’t most people. In fact, he did it backwards.

After a long career in the technology field, and with no restaurant experience, you’ll now find him smashing, flipping, and assembling burgers inside of his Smash Bay food trailer, typically parked at a Connecticut brewery near you.

“I don’t have a background in food; I’m a computer nerd,” Bass says. “I have a computer science degree and way, way back, had a successful career in web design working for Levi’s, Dockers, Flash Games, and South Park when I worked on southparkstudios.com. It was about a 20-year career. Then, in 2016, I founded a financial planning company called Facet Wealth that I started with five guys. We had no money, no funding, and I worked for free for about a year until we got an angel round in funding, then another round, and it ended up being over $200 million in funding.”

In 2019, Bass was done with Facet Wealth, saying that it was tough to commute to Baltimore (where the company was based), in addition to having a family, including a daughter who’s a “super athlete.”

“I was a hockey coach and on the board of directors for my daughter’s hockey organization,” he says. “It was rough flying there weekly. I was managing 10 people because I’m director of technology. I talked to the CEO and said I was burnt out and couldn’t take it anymore. He said, no problem and I bowed out, came home, and was doing consulting work, but since I did the company, my consulting work kinda dried up. I never intended on doing anything with food. I’m talking to my wife and I had no clue what I was gonna do. I’m not gonna do nothing. “I’m not formally trained, never went to culinary school, but I was always that guy that cooked. Coming from a single mom, she taught me how to cook since I was like six and I always loved it.”

Bass uses presses that are more like plates you’d find at your local gym. Each one weighs three pounds. Instead of mashing his patties into the griddle, he give each a light press and lets the weight handle the rest. The result is a deep brown sear and caramelization. Bass says he can tell when it’s time to flip his burgers over when he lifts up a press and the beef’s edges begin to curl. After the flip, cheese goes on and they only cook about another minute or so before he starts to assemble your burger.

Always a passion, Bass said if you had a party, he was always down to cook, no matter how many people were there. Grilling, coming up with recipes, making sauces, you name it he was into it. Something that became his cookout standard, though, were his smash burgers, that always received high marks. They loved it and his friends and family told him he should start his own burger business.

While food trucks aren’t uncommon, one thing Bass saw was a hole in the market for not just a food truck, but one that was all about quality. Feeling like he could compete, he started testing his burgers out more and more on his inner circle, wanting brutally honest feedback. With a little experimenting done, his next step was to get more serious about it.

“I did research on trucks and trailers and bought this one in Virginia,” he says. “They delivered it up here and all of a sudden, I had a big food truck sitting in my driveway, so I guess this is gonna happen. I really had to learn how to use it. It was a trainwreck to start. The soft opening after I joined the Cheshire Chamber of Commerce was cooking in their parking lot for them, like 30 people. I had problems with the grill; burgers were sticking to the press. I ended up shutting it down. The president of the chamber was like, ‘You’re gonna refund all these people.’ It was so frustrating. I’m thinking, what did I get myself into? I blew it. I can’t do this. Lots of self-doubt and second guessing myself. I sat there miserable thinking I made the biggest mistake and wasted $60,000 on this truck.”

Bass’ misery was short lived. Instead of being down in the dumps, he felt the best way to get over it was to do something from his web design past and he wrote up a postmortem of what went well, what went wrong, and “how I’m gonna freakin’ fix it.”

In addition to his postmortem, Bass consulted with a few close friends in the industry that he said were extremely helpful, Dino Maniatis, who owns Hornet’s Nest Deli in Branford, and Viron Rondos, owner and chef of Viron Rondo Osteria in Cheshire.

“I worked at making it better and more efficient,” Bass explains. “Instead of doing one burger at a time, it’s two, then four, now six. Getting the oil temperature for the fries right. I chipped away at doing things the right way and learned. By almost the end of year one, I gained more confidence and knew I could do this. I started to get a little bit of a loyal following, then by the end of year two, people are really starting to show up for my food. We were in a Connecticut Magazine food truck feature, a full page, and (my burger) was the cover photo, and that got us hired more. Now we’ve got some swagger and clout behind our name. People are starting to come to breweries for me and the brewery owners started to realize that. It’s a tough journey, but the advice I’d give? If you wanna do this, especially if you’re not formally trained, stick with it. It’s fine to be down and second guess yourself, but pick your ass up off the ground and figure it out. If you do that, you can do it.”

What was also part of Bass’ burger learning process were experimenting with different brioche buns (currently he uses Hartford Baking Co.) and settling on a ground beef blend with a high fat content from North Haven’s Ferraro’s Market as that fat is imperative for optimal juiciness and so it won’t stick to the flat top.

The Burnside, if you like a little spice in your life.

The Fig and Brie upfront, The Classic in the back, are a result of Bass’ R&D.

“I ate so many burgers during experimentation to nail it down,” he says. “Different buns, meats, sauces, fat content. I figured out the formula that I love.”

Soon, Bass is planning to bottle and sell Smash Bay’s secret burger sauce.

“It’s a fatty burger because when that thing cooks at a super high temp, and they’re thin, it burns a lot of the fat off, like when I scrape it (the griddle), there a ton of fat that comes off,” Bass says. “The patty loses a lot, but you’re cooking it so fast that you still retain a lot, too. My burger won’t drip fat and grease everywhere when you eat it. If it’s too lean, you’ll get a less juicy burger.”

What Smash Bay offers, burger wise, as of now, are The Classic (American cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, ultra caramelized grilled onions, Smash Bay Classic Sauce), The BBQ Bliss (cheddar, bacon, BBQ sauce, jalapeños, crispy onions), The Buffalo (bacon, buffalo sauce, blue cheese, lettuce, tomato), The Burnside (pepper jack, cayenne-habanero aioli, grilled onions, Fresno chiles, baby arugula), and a unique one that his friends and family loved during those early experimentation days, The Fig and Brie with grilled brie, fig jam, caramelized onions, and baby arugula.  

Where you’ll typically find Bass smashing and serving his brand of burgers are at Connecticut breweries. Alvarium Beer Company, Black Hog Brewing, Twelve Percent Beer Project, and Caius Farm Brewery have been some of his regular stops.

In 2026, at the latter, Smash Bay will be a regular at Caius, every Saturday for what they’re calling Smash Bay Saturdays.

To get your hands on a burger, because, I mean, you’re most like craving one right now, keep an eye out on Smash Bay’s Instagram and on their calendar to find out when and where you can get your hands and mouth on one of their smash burgers.

smashbayct.com