Story
Feeling Burgerly.
“That moment when you're hungry for a great burger and nothing else will do — but it's not just about the food. It's about recognizing good quality.”
A burger built by hand, in a town built the same way. The Burgerly is on Main Street in New Hope, Pennsylvania — sister river town to Lambertville, NJ. Small place, brioche bun, two friends who built it together. The story's below.
Co-Founder
Co-Founder Zachary Glover
The bridge between New Hope and Lambertville is the most-walked footbridge on the Delaware, and on a Saturday afternoon you can see why — people going one way with iced coffee, the other way with records from the antique shops, kids running ahead of their parents, a Pennsylvania town and a New Jersey town that have spent two hundred years pretending to be one. Zach lived on the Lambertville side first. He found these towns thirteen years ago, fell for the canal towpath and the galleries tucked into Victorian brick and the easy way Saturday becomes Sunday when there's no reason to leave, and he spent years walking the two of them as a customer before he ever thought about building inside them.
What he kept noticing was a gap. The towns had antique shops, galleries, a real dinner scene — but the burger most parents end up eating with their kids is at the drive-through that comes with a toy, a meal the parent endures because the kid likes it and the kid likes because the parent gives in. Zach has kids of his own and didn't want to keep making that trade. He's also an entrepreneur, and entrepreneurs who fall for a town tend to build inside it. But he needed a chef — and he had one in mind. Mark McLean was a Wall Street trader who'd walked off the floor years earlier to cook for a living, and a friend of Zach's for longer than that. Zach called and asked if Mark wanted to open a restaurant. Mark said no. So Zach asked if he'd been to New Hope and Lambertville. Mark said no. Zach said come down. He showed him both towns and the building on Main Street and asked what he thought. Mark said, "Well, I guess we're opening a restaurant."
What they built is a small place on Main Street they didn't mind sitting in themselves — a yellow neon Burgerly sign on the back wall, butcher-block tables under their elbows. They built it for the locals who already chose these towns and for the people who drive in from Philly or from New York for a long weekend or a wedding at one of the river houses up the road. Different palates, same standard. The kid orders a burger; the parent orders a burger; nobody talks for a minute when the food lands.
“Well, I guess we're opening a restaurant.”
Chef
Chef Mark McLean
Mark built his resume sideways. He never went to culinary school — read the CIA textbook on his own, cooked through college for his friends — and from the trading floor he found his way to the personal-chef circuit: two professional athletes in training, private dinners for high-net-worth clients across the NJ / metro-NY area, a stretch cooking for the Mayor of Johannesburg while the Mayor was visiting New York. He runs his catering arm, Remarkable Cuisine, alongside The Burgerly. The flavors at The Burgerly are his — a particular hand, sharpened across all of that other work, brought home to a place he and Zach built on Main Street.
The brisket-chuck-short-rib blend is his. The sauces are his. The brioche is here for a reason.
“I cook awesome food. Period.”
Inside The Burgerly
Inside, it sounds like a record collection.
The vibe isn't a genre — it's a generation of icons. Sinatra and Billie Holiday lean against Luther and Marvin; Prince and Michael Jackson lean against Black Coffee and Gregory Porter; the through-line is great work across four decades, anchored in Black musical excellence. Walk in and you see the same idea made out of objects instead of songs: framed jazz art beside a Picasso, Ray Charles a few frames over from Diana Ross, a yellow neon Burgerly sign anchoring the back wall, wood overhead, subway tile shoulder-high, parchment rolled out on butcher-block tables for every seating. None of it is themed. All of it is curated.
Most retro spaces display vinyl; here the vinyl shares shelf with cassette singles, CD jewel cases, and the Walkman your parents kept. That's deliberate. A parent walks in, sees Michael Jackson on the wall, and gets to tell their kid who Michael Jackson was — and that moment is what we built. It's why the playlist isn't background; it's why kids ask about the tapes; it's why the menu names are jokes about songs you already know. We score the place the way Zach would score a road trip with the kids in the back. The food just happens to be excellent.
The wall
The format collection
Placeholder until the cassette/CD/Walkman shadow box is built and installed.
The pass
What's Next
One restaurant, one Main Street — for now. There are more rooms in the works, and you'll hear about them first if you sign up below.
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