Chef for Penn State fraternities expands off campus with catering, hot sauce line and more

George Salgado, creator of BurnSesh, has established a business working as a caterer and in-home personal chef for Penn State fraternities and sororities. Now, he’s expanding the brand, taking the business beyond campus and furthering his reach by dividing the brand into three distinct focuses: BurnSesh Chef, BurnSesh Sauce and BurnSesh Fit.

BurnSesh Chef covers Salgado’s catering and personal chef services, which he hopes to eventually expand into a food truck. It also includes made-to-order meal services, which Salgado says took off over the holiday season.

“I had people requesting holiday food for Thanksgiving and then ... for Christmas,” he said.

He decided to take a Puerto Rican approach to his holiday menu offerings, with options like slow-roasted pernil (pork), garlic mofongo (mashed plantains) and arroz con gondules (rice and pigeon peas), plus coquito (a Puerto Rican version of eggnog) and mantecadito cookies (similar to a thumbprint cookie).

“I tried to bring Puerto Rican food to State College,” Salgado said. “I feel like that’s a missed market ... I wanted to bring something new.”

He also wanted to provide plenty for customers to enjoy, noting his menu’s larger-than-average portions: “Every Puerto Rican restaurant or spot I’ve ever been to, they give you way too much food. I wanted to do that, too, and give people a lot, even when they’re not expecting it.”

He plans to offer similar holiday menus for all the major holidays, looking forward to Memorial Day and putting out a menu well in advance, giving time for potential clients to place orders. However, for in-house catering, he’s open for business and likewise open to adapting his cooking style to meet clients’ needs.

“I’ll try to talk to the client beforehand and see what their interests are, or what their dietary restrictions are, and I’ll try to build a menu that way, but I’ve gone into a house and they’ll say, ‘Just use whatever’s in the fridge.’ My fiancé says I’m very good with the ‘Chopped’ style of cooking,” Salgado joked, referencing the popular Food Network series. “If someone just gives me a basket (of food), I can make a good meal out of it.”

As for BurnSesh Sauce, that’s the leg of the brand that’s all about hot sauces, including a line of basic hot sauces in a handful of flavors, with additional limited edition flavors.

Salgado grows his own peppers, and after growing peppers through the summer and drying them, he said he has a fresh batch ready for his second season of hot sauces.

“The one that got me started was a smoked chipotle raspberry sauce,” he said. “I grew the cayenne peppers and the jalapeno peppers for that, and roasted them with the smoked chipotles, and added fresh raspberries, a little bit of honey and seasonings. That became my number one seller.”

Then, lastly, there’s BurnSesh Fit, which incorporates Salgado’s love for fitness into the brand. A certified trainer, he’s provided self-defense classes to his on-campus clients in the past, but he wants to expand that part of the business further.

“I like training people. I like teaching them to work out. I work out all the time, so I’d like to get more clients involved in fitness,” he said.

Inquiries for BurnSesh’s services and products — including catering and made-to-order meals, the hot sauces and BurnSesh Fit merch — can be made via Facebook or Instagram, at @BurnSesh or @BurnSeshChef, respectively. Salgado hopes to have the anticipated food truck up and running by the end of the year, or in early 2025, and will be releasing his latest line of hot sauces in the spring.