Mom’s Touch Smoky Smash Burger Review [Korean Food]

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Mom’s Touch, a Korean burger chain best known for its chicken burgers, released a new beef burger in September 2026: the Smoky Smash Burger. It’s the flagship of the chain’s new “Smash” lineup, which changes how Mom’s Touch cooks its beef patties: each one is pressed and grilled right after you order. I rarely buy beef burgers at a chicken-focused chain like this, but with a completely new cooking method, it seems Mom’s Touch is getting serious about expanding its beef lineup. It turned out to be quietly enjoyable, too. Let’s take a look.

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📋 At a Glance

• Product: Smoky Smash Burger
• Brand: Mom’s Touch (flagship of the Smash burger lineup)
• Price: in store 7,800 won single, 10,300 won combo / delivery apps 8,600 won single, 11,600 won combo
• Released: September 2026
• Build: pickles, tomato, white sauce, lettuce, cheese, ketchup, smoky meat crumble, smashed beef patty (Australian wagyu), Cajun seasoning
• Highlight: patties pressed and grilled to order, smash-style
• Verdict: ★3.5 — lacks true smash-burger crispness, but the smoky crumble and sauces make for a solid, serious beef burger.

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Smoky Smash Burger: Price and Highlights

Mom’s Touch has launched a smash burger lineup cooked in a completely different way from its existing burgers. As far as I know, because of kitchen space and equipment costs, Mom’s Touch surprisingly (?) cooks its beef burgers on commercial griddles instead of broilers. This time, the patties are pressed and grilled right after ordering, smash-style. True to the word “lineup,” three items came out, including the Grilled Burger and the Grilled Bacon Burger. Here’s the price for the Smoky Smash Burger.

• Smoky Smash Burger, in store: single 7,800 won, combo 10,300 won
• Smoky Smash Burger, delivery apps: single 8,600 won, combo 11,600 won

Based on the in-store price, it doesn’t seem very expensive for a new menu. As of writing, there also doesn’t appear to be any special discount event.

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Mom’s Touch Doubles Down on Beef

I wondered whether Mom’s Touch only does chicken burgers well, so I looked it up. Chicken burger sales are apparently close to saturation, while beef burger sales grew 60.7% this year compared with 2024 as the chain steadily added beef menus. Perhaps that’s why it combined various feedback to launch a burger with a proper grilled, smoky flavor. I ordered the regular Smoky Smash combo.

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What’s Inside the Burger

Let’s check the build. Surprisingly, it looks fairly classic and neat. According to the description, a smoky meat crumble with a fire-grilled flavor sits on top of the pressed smash patty. The beef patty reportedly uses Australian wagyu.

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Pressing ground beef hard onto the grill with a tool like a burger press is what’s called “smashing” or a “smashed style.” It maximizes the Maillard reaction for a crispy crust, and the quick cooking keeps juices from escaping, so the patties are usually quite thin. Frank Burger, another Korean chain, does this well (though some people say it’s almost deep-fried). This patty, however, looks thicker than I expected.

A Look at the Cross Section

Let’s cut it in half for a proper look. The visual itself is pretty good. Looking only at the thickness, though, the beef patty is about the same as a regular burger’s, or even a little thicker.

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From the top, there’s pickles, tomato, white sauce, lettuce, cheese, ketchup, meat crumble, the smashed beef patty, and Cajun seasoning, which is quite an elaborate build. Usually, a new cooking process alone would be enough of a focus, but as the flagship, this one clearly got extra effort.

As I mentioned, smashing is all about eating crispy beef, so this patty feels a bit thick for that. Looking at community reviews, it seems this isn’t just my location; the raw patty itself appears to come this way. Pressed properly, until you could almost see the griddle through it, it would be about as thin as a Korean pancake.

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Taste Test: Does the Smash Deliver?

Time to taste it. Even so, it’s a new menu that Mom’s Touch launched with real ambition, so I had quiet hopes. The thick look from the vegetables and patty (even though a smash patty shouldn’t be thick) is quite satisfying, too. I took a big bite.

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My clear takeaway: it’s a bit removed from what we usually picture with a smash burger, like that grease-soaked richness or a crust crisped by the Maillard reaction. Pressing did create some browning, but only on parts of the top and bottom rather than the whole patty. It definitely felt a little different from what I expected.

That said, there’s a surprising smoky flavor, and with melting cheese, ketchup, barbecue sauce, and just about every tasty sauce in there, the basic flavor is quite good. I also like that the lettuce is still generous, unlike at other chains where it keeps getting thinner and more finely chopped.

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The Meat Crumble Brings the Smoke

As I kept eating, I noticed that the smoky flavor actually came from the meat crumble, which seemed more like a side player. That part had a proper smoky taste, a bit like fire-grilled meat. The patty, as expected, only browned on the outside and was simply cooked through inside, so it wasn’t much different from other patties. Still, the patty itself tastes pretty good.

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How It Could Be More “Smash”

To really live up to its identity, I think the raw patty needs a little less meat so it can be pressed flatter. If that feels like too little beef, going with two thin patties as a double would work too. Focusing on those two things, greasy richness and crispness, might make it a better menu in the long run.

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Final Verdict: Not Crispy, but a Serious Beef Burger

Apart from that point, it was simply a clean, easy-to-eat burger. I’m not sure I’ll get the chance, but I’d like to try and review the other two burgers in the lineup, the ones without the meat crumble, someday.

Overall, it had a surprisingly clean taste and was easy to enjoy. The only letdown was that the patty lacked the crispy texture we expected. Setting that aside, the flavor itself offered decent value for money. If earlier Mom’s Touch beef burgers felt like token additions, this one is a genuine effort, so it’s well worth trying if you’re curious. For visitors to Korea, it’s also a fun chance to see a chicken-burger specialist take a serious swing at beef.

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For more on this beef burger lineup, built around patties pressed and grilled to order and Australian wagyu, see the (Korean source) BusinessPost report on the Mom’s Touch smash burger launch.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How much is the Mom’s Touch Smoky Smash Burger?

In store, it’s 7,800 won on its own or 10,300 won as a combo. On delivery apps, it’s 8,600 won single and 11,600 won combo, and there was no discount event at the time of writing.

Q. Is the Smoky Smash Burger actually crispy?

Not really. The patty is fairly thick, so the Maillard browning stays on the outside and you don’t get a true smash-burger crust. The smoky meat crumble, melting cheese, ketchup, and barbecue sauce still make the overall flavor quite good.

Q. What makes a smash burger different?

The patty is pressed hard onto the grill to build a crispy Maillard crust, and quick cooking limits juice loss, so the patty is usually thin. Mom’s Touch applies this by pressing and grilling each patty right after you order.