The smash burger isn’t the towering, beefy, no-nonsense burger that’s come to define the American archetype. Unlike the drive-in burgers that came before it, the smash burger patty embraces flatness over heft, jaggedness over uniformity and crispiness over succulence.
That culinary approach is evident at 2 Potnas, a Black-owned restaurant that began as a food stand in Gentilly last year and expanded into a brick-and-mortar earlier this month in Mid-City. Inside a daisy-yellow building on Banks Street, the restaurant serves five variations of the smash burger, a relatively new style popularized in the early 2000s by fast-food chains.
Owner Jared Thomas created the recipes with a former business partner — a friend who is no longer part of the operation but whose role is still reflected in the restaurant’s name. Thomas had long been interested in opening a restaurant but did not want to complicate the menu…