Pineappétit

Burgess takes passion for food to new restaurant on Pensacola Street

By St. Clair Murraine
Outlook staff writer

Sam Burgess’s passion for cooking has led him to making some decisions that would make most people scratch their heads. 

Take for example the day he graduated from FAMU. Before his walk across the stage he was prepping food for two celebrations later in the day – one for him and the other for a friend.

All on the same day. 

“I don’t know how but I made it happen,” said Burgess, a 28-year-old whose degree has nothing to do with cooking. 

But it’s what he wanted to do more than anything else while he was working towards degrees in allied health pre-occupational therapy and sports management. Burgess also wanted to play football.

He played the game while growing up in his native Cleveland, Ohio, and described his talent then as “decent.” He tested his ability in his freshman year in 2011 in an attempt to walk onto the FAMU football team.

All the time cooking was tugging as his heartstrings. His love of cooking led him to selling food on the weekends from a friend’s apartment instead of jockeying for time in the weight room.

That was more than 10 years ago and today Burgess is owner of Pineappetit, operating a food tuck and a restaurant. He opened the restaurant at 2037 West Pensacola Street last Thursday, three years after taking his culinary skills to the streets in a bright yellow truck.

He developed what has become a staple now – servicing a spicy selection of dishes on a pineapple half. Customers who visit his website (www.pineappetit.com), the food truck or the new brick and mortar location will find that the choices are plentiful.

 Salmon and shrimp dishes are most popular. Lobster tail is added to the mix on the weekends.

On opening day at the new location, Burgess greeted a steady flow of customers on one of his trips from the kitchen. Music pumping from a black speaker box kept them entertained.

He called the open-day experience surreal.

“It’s a blessing to see it come to fruition,” he said. “It’s just a true testament to all the hard work leading up to this point.”

Since starting up with the food truck in 2018, Burgess has been putting in long hours to achieve at what is a labor intensive business. The personal sacrifices aren’t something that he’s willing to curtail, though. 

“It a lot of late nights, early mornings but you get dedicated to your craft,” Burgess said. “When you’re financially invested it makes it easier to get up. It makes it easier to work those long hours because I’m doing something for me; for my future. It’s what I signed up for.”

Burgess learned his way around the kitchen early. He recalled learning the basics as a 10-year-old and by his junior year in high school cooking at home was a fulltime responsibility.

Many of the recipes he learned from his parents and grandparents will be feature in a cook book with mostly his own creation.

“It’s always been a passion,” he said. “My parents and grandparents are all cooks. The passion started there and as I got older, I surrounded myself with people who were business owners themselves.”

Networking has paid off big for Burgess. He’d been able to operate his food truck in the right places with the help of other business owners. Southwood. Thomasville, Killearn and the Southside of town are some of the places where he’s parked.

Moving around has connected him with many different demographics, although college students make up a large portion of his clientele. He credits social media and word-of-mouth for the rapid growth of his business.

Many like Matthew St. Fleur and Ray Benton have tried Burgess’s cooking after he made a personal pitch to them. The two men were playing a pick-up basketball game with Burgess when he invited them to try his food truck.

Both were there on opening day of the restaurant.

“Now I don’t have to chase him down,” said St. Fleur. “I can just come straight to the location. I don’t have to look online to know if he will be here or there.”

Benton said he’s been a repeat food truck customer because of the customer service. And, of course, the food.

“The food was amazing,” he said, recalling his first visit. “The way he treated me as a customer I felt valued so that’s why we’re here right now.

“It’s nice to vibe in his place.”