He’s turning the tables.
For 3 many years, Mike Puma worked on Wall Street. In 2013, he formed the Gotham Burger Social Club, an exclusive society for finance guys dedicated to trying and rating town’s best burgers. The group applied the identical analytical skills they used to rate stocks as buy or sell to studying the perfect patties.
It took off, eventually attracting some 200,000 Instagram followers and spawning a series of popups with hours-long lines.
Earlier this month, Puma took an enormous leap and opened a burger joint — also called Gotham Burger Social Club — of his own on the Lower East Side. He’s left banking — and his Barney’s suits and ties — behind, in favor of a cowboy hat and kerchief.
“I all the time loved restaurants and cooking,” said Puma, who lives in Battery Park City together with his wife. “The transition from finance to this got here very naturally.”
The centerpiece of the short menu is the Gotham Smash, an Oklahoma-style burger. The patty consists of Puma’s own custom beef mix and thinly sliced onions are smashed into the burger while it cooks on a flattop grill. It’s topped with melted American cheese, ketchup, mustard, a secret sauce much like thousand island dressing and a pickle. All of it comes together on a toasted potato bun.
“It’s a really nostalgic burger – you bite into it and it brings you back to your childhood, but with higher ingredients you grew up on,” the Brooklyn native said. “There are lots of familiar notes.”
Customers are loving it.
“It’s the perfect burger I’ve ever had – I really like the toasted bun, and the standard of the meat is insane,” said Priscilla Hernandez, a 31-year-old who lives in Yonkers. Last Saturday, she trekked out within the cold to eat on the restaurant with two friends.“Nothing compares to Gotham Burger.”
Sylvia Sawires, a 27-year-old Upper East Sider, who follows Puma on social media and had been eagerly awaiting his opening, agrees. The chowhound recently sampled the acclaimed $33 burger from Au Cheval in Soho and preferred Gotham’s.
“It’s so good,” she said. “A very good smash burger is best than any regular patty.”
Puma said his burgers are so tasty, he converted “more vegetarians that I can count.”
He added, “It’s definitely a degree of pride.”
One other thing he’s pleased with is his spot’s affordability. The Gotham Smash with a single patty is just $8 — not bad in a town and at a time when buzzy burgers are pushing past the $30 mark.
“Nobody needs an enormous bonus to eat here,” he said.
Back when he and club members would rate burgers on a scale of 1 to 10, Puma told The Post, “A ten is what you continually seek for, but you could never get there.”
Pound for pound, he believes he’s achieved perfection, nonetheless elusive, together with his burger.
“I mean obviously it’s a ten – it’s an ideal burger, but I’d somewhat other people rate it,” he said. “Someone yesterday said it’s an 11 out of 10. It’s higher when other people say it.”
Puma has no skilled training within the kitchen and was initially hesitant to open his own place, but friends and fans encouraged him.
“This is larger than a pop-up,” someone told him as his food-world star rose.
He has no regrets leaving finance behind — even when he’s working greater than the 80-hour weeks he clocked because the longtime director of investments at Oppenheimer.
“I’m definitely working harder than ever … I clean toilets, I wipe down tables,” Puma said of his profession change. “But I’m having more fun.”
