Meat & Wine Co

Burger Reviewed: Gourmet Beef Burger

Venue: Meat & Wine Co

Date: 11/1/13

Today's burger adventure was one like no other. For the first time in Burger Friday history, we allowed not one, but two of the finest young ladies I know to score the burger using our precisely developed scorecard. Not only that, of the five people that made the trek to Meat & Wine Co, four of them were female.

Sitting in the booth of this trendy restaurant with modern decor surrounded by these beautiful women, I couldn't help but feel like Mario Balotelli when he sends one of his entourage to approach a girl in a night club to say "Balotelli will see you now".

Chauvinism aside, let me now present to you - Burger Friday's first gender neutral burger review (not really based on the numbers, but anyway)!

This burger was one of the better ones we have tried.

 In NBA terms, burgers would rate somewhere from the "White Mamba" Brian Scalabrine (YouTube it) to perenial All-Star and arguably the greatest of all time, Michael Jordan. Put it this way, this burger wouldn't be a starter in the All-Star game but it would have polled enough twitter votes to find a place on the bench - think someone like Kevin Love.

If you have read our review of the Merrywell burger you would have noticed a fake history lesson introducing a phenomenon known as the "grilling sweetspot" - Meat & Wine Co have made it to the promised land in that sense. The patty was charred on the outside and juicy and medium on the inside. The outside of the patty even had the perfect criss-cross grill lines that every Tom, Dick and Harry Styles have been trying to get in their backyards for generations.

The bun was on par - I would liken it to making 370 batting first at the Adelaide Oval. You won't get beaten badly from their but you just know the deck is going to be good for batting in days two and three.

The chips were good. As you can tell from the photo, they came in this copper coloured baseless metal ring that looked like the wedding rings that would be used if Stewart Loewe and Brian McMillan were to wed. No sauce was supplied but the waiter was more than happy to squeeze some Heinz Big Red into a cat food dish for us.

I do have a couple of gripes with the burger which on initial reading will sound like the burger is rubbish but as I will explain, it is not all bad.

The burger was under sauced. However, the patty was so juicy that things never really went dry.

There was no cheese. Admittedly, the burger had enough flavour to survive without the creamy nuttyness of the cheese.

There was no bacon. But the burger didn't suffer because of it as it did have these fried shards of battered onions which gave the burger the crunch you look for in charred bacon. It is kind of like in the NAB cup a few years back when if you hit the goal post and got three points - yeah you didn't get the goal but it was still a lot better than the behind.

The other thing I love was the pickle. Such a playful little pickle. Similar to Buckwheat on the movie The Little Rascals, "I love pickles!"

The sportsperson I would use to describe this burger would be that of Mario Balotelli. A man who was once involved in a car crash whilst having $25,000 on the passenger seat. When asked by police why he had such an exorbitant amount of money in his car he replied "because I'm rich". The reason I mention that story is because the place we reviewed is called Meat & Wine COMPANY - this name gives off a "big money" feel as you are eating at a company rather than a restaurant. And like Balotelli, this burger was better than most, but not quite good enough to play with the big boys.

Well worth the $25 for the burger and beer if you are in the area.  

Burger Friday Score: 36.33/50

 

Café Vue

Burger Reviewed: Blackmore Wagyu beef burger, Andrew’s Choice bacon & house fries

Venue: Café Vue

Date: 9/01/2013

Continuing the momentum of the new year, and proverbially spitting in the face of the oft quoted new years resolution of losing weight, the Burger Friday fellows ventured down to Shannon Bennett’s Café Vue to sample the Wagyu Beef burger for a burger rating.  

Café Vue on New Chancery Lane has become a bit of a Melbourne icon of recent times.  It typifies the Melbourne food scene, i.e. largely hidden down an inconspicuous laneway, serving great food and always busy.

The burger at Café Vue is often talked about in best burger circles. Unfortunately for the fellows, this did not quite reach it today. To be fair, having eaten the burger their multiple times before, it may have been that the summer time chef was on, as this was not as good as the previous burgers devoured. In tv parlance I think it is fair to suggest that it is a non-ratings period at the moment, so chances are that the key chefs might still be on holidays, whilst we get served up Huey’s Kitchen reruns all summer. Not that there is anything wrong with Huey, but it ain’t exactly Masterchef to watch.

Where the burger fell down for mine was in three areas. The patty, the bun and the Burger Friday factor.

Whilst boasting that it was Blackmores Wagyu beef, I was left a little underwhelmed with the patty itself. It was certainly cooked to a lovely and juicy medium. But on the meat scale of rock hard to crumble, it was certainly edging more towards the former rather than the latter. A patty for mine should hold reasonably well together, but have enough crumble for you to know that it is genuinely handmade and not a processed piece of meat. Here I was not so sure. It was getting a little to close to rissole territory for mine.  

The bun was just a little bit to dry and a bit to doughy. Given the patisseries they crank out there, I would expect better from their bakers.

But the biggest missing ingredient for me was the Burger Friday factor. The burger just lacked zing or tang. I was able to compensate for this with a bit of the jam pot of homemade sauce, which I must say was excellent, but would have loved some mustard or a pickle in the burger just to balance out the flavours of the meat and the cheese.

The house chips and homemade sauce were the highlight for mine. 

So all in all, whilst the review does not sound overly complimentary, this is definitively a burger that is well worth trying. It is a good burger and one that you would be happy to part with your hard earned for - unlike the Sri Lankan cricket team. Get around it if in the area. At least to try what the fuss is about.

Given that Café Vue is French, and in light of the upcoming Australian Open, I will dub this burger the Jo Wilfried Tsonga. It looks the goods (scarily similar to Muhammed Ali – the greatest of all time), and performs well, but when it comes to the crunch it just does not quite have the ability to compete with the real heavyweights. A perennial fourth round/quarter finalist, which evidently is where its score ended up.

Burger Friday Score: 38/50

The Precinct Hotel

Burger Reviewed: The Wagyu Beef Burger

Venue: The Precinct Hotel

Date: 8/1/2013

Ahhh the first burger of the new year. Walking towards the Precinct Hotel I got the same feeling I do on the morning of the first test for the summer - one of excitement. It is the same feeling I get after watching Richmond lose their round 1 match up and you just know that they are going to miss the finals for another year. I will begin this burview by issuing a sincere and heartfelt apology to our readership for the lack of reviews towards the later half of the year.

Our last review was back on the 14th of September meaning that whilst peaking early made Burger Friday's year a lot like Essendon's season, at least we made it to September. So to quote former possession of weapons convict T.I. and the Jonas Brothers (a poor man's One Direction) - "We're sorry".

We entered the Precinct Hotel and were surprised to find a absolute paddock of space for us to sit in. We promptly ordered the advertised $20 beer and burger deal and were given the table number 93 - a number best known for being the route which connects Newfoundland to Labrador. The year '93 was best known for the Essendon premiership, their first since back to back flags in 1984-85 - both of which Dustin Fletcher played in. That year in sport was also known for the Chicago Bulls completing the first of their two three-peats and Michael Jordan announcing his first retirement (seriously, MJ may be the greatest of all time but he is up their with Brett Favre in the worst of all time at retiring successfully. At least MJ pronounces his surname correctly).

History lesson aside, the burger itself is a tough one to describe as all of the individual ingredients that make up the burger could be criticised on their own but when combined into the unadulterated gloriousness that is meat wrapped in bread, the burger seems to work well.

Which leads me to the word I will use to describe this burger as a whole - workmanlike.

The patty was big and juicy but obviously processed. I would liken it to Russell Crowe's performance in the Les Miserables movie - forgettable. What was the casting manager thinking when he chose Russell Crowe for that part? Hasn't he heard of the insult to the music industry that is Russell's band - Thirty Odd Foot of Grunt (no, that name is not a joke).

The bun looked doughy on first peep but was needed to support the meaty beef patty. The bacon had barely kissed the grill. And the sauce combo of mayo and Heinz Big Red had combined with the lettuce shards to create a reasonable replica of McDonald's secret sauce.

This burger is an easy one to fix for the Precinct Hotel - add an 'erb or spice to the patty to give it a little kick and cook the bacon a little longer. The patty/bun/sauce combo is simple and effective, and with the changes recommended I would have no issue in rating this burger in the very high 30's.

The chips were the highlight. Well cooked, crunchy and plentiful. Some of the better we have had. But dipping sauce was non-existent.

The person whom this burger is most accurately compared to would be former Australian cricket captain Mark Taylor. He is not going to dance down the pitch and smack the opening quick back over his head or tug on David Hussey's shirt to stop him from running a second (if the stars play the renegades in the semi's I reckon we just line them up for a good old fashioned Donnybrook). But you know what you are getting from him.

I would recommend this burger if you are in the area and want a good honest feed.

 Score = 34/50

The Breslin Bar & Grill

Burger Reviewed: The Lamb Burger with feta and cumin

Venue: The Breslin Bar & Grill

Date: 14/9/2012

Today the Burger Friday Fellows ventured down to the banks of Southbank to check out the areas newest eatery - the Breslin Bar & Grill. A brand new venue which has recently popped up, the Breslin is one impressive venue. While bright and airy venues are the style de jour of most places nowadays, the Breslin is decked out in dark leather and low lighting, complete with faux antler fixtures. Walking into this place reminded me of that scene in Ace Ventura - When Nature Calls when Ace walks into that "lovely room of death". Hilarious. Just a place that to look at you would believe it would smell of rich mahogany and meat, and would not look amiss as a "Boss House" of Ralph Lauren.

So given the plush digs, and the promise of carnivorous delights associated with the name of the venue we were expecting big things. The burger itself comes out on a chopping board, with an arrangement of condiments, including pickled beetroot and twice cooked chips. Everything to date was positive, but to understand our rating, we have to break this burger down into its parts.

Being a meat lovers paradise, naturally the patty was the star of the show. A quality handmade patty of generous proportions which was cooked to a juicy medium. The quality of the patty was top notch and made me want to order a side of steak or pork ribs. I liken the patty to the annual MLB Home Run Derby - you were promised a big man smashing a pill as far as possible. And it delivered.

Unfortunately, the quality of the patty was taken over by the doughiness of the bun. It was burgeoning on unpleasant. While the meat to patty ratio was good, afterwards I felt like that guy on current affair that falls asleep 65 times a day spontaneously. While I enjoy a food coma as much as the next man, it oft arrives at that inconvenient time when you have work to finish off in the afternoon.

With a doughy bun, you really need the remaining ingredients on the burger to step in to counteract. While the addition of feta was an interesting inclusion which definitely gave the burger a little something extra, we didn't get the required freshness of the salads (unsurprising considering the nature of the service offering Breslin), the crispiness of the bacon or the tang of a sauce combination to really make this burger work. As a result, this burger did not rate well from a synergy point of view.

The chips were plentiful in supply and cooked well but much like the bun, they were a little chunky and just gave off an overly doughy/starchy feel that was like eating a whole potato. Cut each chip in half before cooking it and all of a sudden you have yourself a belter of a chip.

For me at the end of the day, this burger was probably like a young Gary Ablett Jnr in his first year. You can tell the Breslin are going to do very good things in the future, giving enough glimpses of the potential pedigree to come. While young Gary and the Breslin might not standout in there first year as the best going around currently, there is definitely a lot of potential there to suggest that they could go to great levels. I am looking forward to it.

Burger Friday Rating: 32.5/50