Aug. 12, 2021

One of the newest food trucks in Sioux Falls specializes in handcrafted burgers and fries, and features bacon jam as its “golden goose bestseller.”

Murphy Lundie returned to South Dakota to start Murph’s after spending several years managing a food truck in Portland, Ore.

The Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef offers a simple menu, but his burgers are filled with flavor, highlighted by his secret house sauce and signature bacon jam.

“That’s something I came up with when I was bored on another food truck one day about six years ago,” he said of the bacon jam. “It went really well in Portland, so I figured if one of the best vegetarian/vegan areas took it so well, I figured if I go in South Dakota, it’s probably going to go nuts. And it’s kind of going that way. It’s definitely the golden goose bestseller. That burger outsells everything.”

The Famous Murph Burger is a one-third-pound patty with house sauce, Swiss and American cheeses, lettuce, onion and the bacon jam.

The bacon jam also comes on the Irish Hangover, which adds a fried egg to the mix.

For the BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger, Lundie makes the barbecue sauce from scratch and smokes the bacon.

“It takes three to four days, sometimes five, depending on how big the pork bellies are to cure and then I can smoke them and then they have to cool down, so it takes a lot of prep beforehand and making sure that I always have stuff going and curing and smoking so that I don’t run out of it.”

A fourth burger is the Reggae, or regular, version of the Famous one without the bacon jam.

“It will never be an elaborate menu,” he said because of the limited space on the truck. “It will never be 10 burgers or 12 burgers – at the most five or six. Eventually, we’ll do specials and stuff too, fun stuff like once a week or something.”

Gluten-free buns are an option. Fries come with every meal. They come with the house sauce for dipping.

Lundie’s business name is Murph’s Butterguts, a nod to the restaurant he created with his imagination as a child.

“The way my dad tells it is he picked me up from day care, and I was like 3 or 4, and asked me what we did today, and I said, ‘We went to Butterguts.’ He said, ‘What’s Butterguts?’ And I was like, ‘It’s a restaurant down by Disneyland.’ ‘What do you do there?’ ‘We make pie and stuff.’

“We don’t have pie or nothing (for dessert on the food truck) yet, but maybe soon.”

Plans to have the food truck in a permanent spot fell through, so Lundie has focused on lunch sites hosted by businesses such as J&L Harley-Davidson and events like the recent Sioux River Folk Festival. Locations are posted on the Murph’s Butterguts page on Facebook. 

Upcoming bookings include the Scheels Hunt Expo from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, DownTown in MadTown from 6 to 9 p.m. Tuesday in Madison and Riverfest on Aug. 21 in downtown Sioux Falls.

His parents have been helping take customers’ orders and are proud of their son’s skills as a chef.

“At least 10 different people (at the folk festival at Newton Hills State Park) … made it a point to come back and say, ‘That was the best burger I’ve ever had,’ which I always say that, but I’m his dad. It’s nice to hear other people say it.” Jack Lundie said.

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