Quick burger @ Dikstein's Corner Bar

Dikstein's generally makes me my morning coffee (along with some of Melbourne's finest and most interesting muffins - Blueberry Crumble or Bread and Butter Pudding anyone? Oh yes!)

So I thought I would try one of their lunch offerings. I wasn't disappointed.

I got a waygu beef burger (Turkish roll, Gruyere, fried onion, bacon, and all the usual trimmings).

The patty was absolutely wonderful, moist, flavoursome and fresh tasting - no smelly beef here. And the rest of the burger was delicious.

It was a little expensive at $13 (but then so is everything they sell - other than the cheap pizzas to draw the Barristers in for a bottle of Wolf Blass or five), however I would recommend a visit.

Burger and beer @ 1000 Pound Bend, Lt Lonsdale

On my way back from work and in need of a quick dinner, I stopped in to meet a friend at Thousand Pound Bend for a burger and a beer.

I had the Wagyu beef burger and a Pint of Ruby Tuesday Red Ale.

There isn't too much to say on it to be perfectly honest. The burger was ok, the patty and cheese were nice, the salad, bun and mustard/mayo/sauce combination I could take or leave.

I've always loathed the over produced faux hipster vibe of Thousand Pound Bend and the half good-half average performance of their burger didn't change my thoughts on it too much.

The beer was lovely however, and given not many places have it, I suppose I'll go back if desperate.

100 things to like about Canberra reviews: Brodburger and Koko Black

Brodburger
Brodburger is well very known around Canberra, inevitably you will try this place within a month of living here. In fact it made the '100 things to like about Canberra' list. If you want a chuckle, check out list. It's pretty hilarious especially when one of the 100 things is 'closeness to Sydney'—you know a city is great when one of its 100 greatest things is its proximity to another city. Anyway I've been to burger few times now and have also tried Broddogs.

I've always found Brod's burgers really good and evidently, the rest of Canberra does too judging but the list and the fact that the line is always huge. Pro tip: phone order you meal in advance to skip the queues. Anyway the most recent time I went I was actually a little disappointed. It had been a good while since I'd had one, maybe 6 months or so and it definitely wasn't as good as I remember it.

I usually get the bacon and egg Brodburger. While the pattie used to be charry but still juicy, this time the patty was sort of wet and undercooked. Unless the beef used for a minced patty is truly amazing, I actually don't like my burgers done medium or medium rare. It was also pretty damn flavourless. This might have been partly because we picked up our burgers a little late and most of the aoli had slipped out of the burger and accumulated at the bottom of the bag, but I remember the patty itself being better flavoured than this. The rest of the burger was ok—the bread is always soft and perfect for a burger and the salad wilted but that was our fault for picking it up late; I would have preferred the bacon more crispy but it was really the patty that was the main bummer.



Koko Black
KB is another one on the Canberra 100 list; while again this is a little sad, this place is actually pretty good. The decor is suprisingly luxe for a place like this—lots of wood and upholstered leather—it reminded me of a library in an old house. The service was very pleasant and welcoming and the prices are definitely not exorbitant. The menu is pretty extensive and of course it's dominated by chocolate. I laughed a bit at the one savoury item on the menu—a sandwich—and joked to my friend that they would probably freak out if anyone ever ordered it. While I was tempted—it was a pastrami sandwich and I LOVE pastrami—I ended up going with the iced salted caramel ($8) instead. This was huge and very tasty—rich but smooth and very nicely flavoured. The size, though, meant I only managed to finish about half of it.

-R

Goneburger, St Kilda

So according to the sign in Goneburger’s new pop-up retail store, when something is ‘Goneburger’, it means a good thing has slipped between your fingers, you’ve lost something before you really knew what you had.

I wonder if they were talking about the quality of their burgers?

If I can be frank, a 100% Urbanspoon rating (which Goneburger had at the time Snowcrabnebula dined there), based on a not insignificant number of votes, is generally enough for most blogs to abrogate their judgment to the people and commence fawning. I think Goneburger was hoping for exactly this.

I have heard very good things about the burgers that the Goneburger food truck serves up. However at the pop-up restraint the speed, taste and quality that the brand is known for is unfortunately Goneburger.

I went for dinner with two friends, and between us we ordered two Beef and Bacon Burgers (Organic beef patty, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, Spanish onion, pickle, crispy bacon, caramalised onion,  tomato sauce and mustard based ‘special sauce’ all on a Brioche bun), a Beef Burger (as above, just without the crispy bacon and caramalised onion) and two bowls of their ‘famous’ crispy chips.

Starting with the positives:

- The service was friendly, even though they seemed to be quite overstretched.
- The chips were super duper crispy and really nicely spiced.
- The place was located in the lobby of a 4 star hotel in St Kilda, so the bathrooms were nice, and they were offering a tray of free breakfast pastries for some unknown reason (this reviewer did not partake). 

Moving on to the negatives (or rather, the rest of the review):

Something was clearly going awry in the House of Goneburger. The place wasn’t busy (it can really only seat perhaps 25 people spread between inside and outside) and there would have been a maximum of 15 guests when I was there. However, it took more than 10 minutes of waiting at the counter for my order to be taken (albeit with repeated apologies) and a further 35 minutes for the burgers to arrive. Now I get that things go wrong in food service, and when I have a table of people to talk to, a bit over half an hour for food isn’t unforgiveable. But when it arrives after a long wait, I need the food to be good.

Unfortunately, the burgers were not particularly nice. I had the Beef and Bacon, and here is my report:

The brioche bun (when will burger joints stop offering freaking brioche buns) was exceedingly dry and particularly unappetizing. It was soaked in the ‘special’ mustard sauce top and bottom and I can say without hesitation that was the only thing that made it edible.

The bacon was OK. I guess it is hard to screw up bacon. It was sufficiently crispy. Bully Goneburger.

The caramalised onions were alright – a bit sweet, but apropos of nothing. They didn’t really suit the burger, especially given it already had raw Spanish onion. The burger certainly wouldn’t have suffered from their omission and it didn’t gain anything from having them there.

The patty was very disappointing. It just tasted of nothing and was quite dry. It was still pinkish right towards the centre, but the cook was a bit uneven. It had a nice melt of American cheese on top, but that was all I could really taste. Given the beef that Goneburger use is meant to be premium it was sad not to be able to taste the quality and their grillwork is clearly doing quite a disservice to the meat.

The salad was fresh enough and the pickles were nice. But that wasn’t going to redeem the burger.

My dining companion with the other Beef and Bacon reported similar things, although the recipient of the Beef Burger was more complimentary – particularly regarding the cook and taste of his patty. He had just returned from a burger odyssey in the States so his judgment was not to be discounted. However, at best that means the pop-up Goneburger produces an inconsistently good product, as opposed to a bad one.

So there you have it, 100% Urbanspoon ratings are not always indicative of a 100% experience. Caveat emptor. Your burger mileage may vary.

#throwbackthursday roundup of a dozen quick photoless reviews (part IV)

Izakaya Chuji
This used to be M's and his parent's go to for Japanese before he met me. He took me here a couple of times for dates and I was never particularly impressed. But of it is the dankness of the place; it is very dimly lit but this combined with the rundowness of the decor (e.g. ripped seats) makes for a rather depressing ambiance. The food is in a similar vein to Izakaya Hachibeh (see below) but Hachibeh does it  better. The menu is very extensive and the prices are OK but there are certainly cheaper and better Japanese places in town. The sashimi here has always been pretty fresh but again there is definitely better elsewhere; the udon is again OK but the tempura dipped in the soup made it a bit unpleasant for me personally and the broth definitely needed a stronger dashi flavour. This place isn't bad, it's just been left a bit behind but better and newer places.



Mr Burger
We used to absolutely love Mr Burger. The burgers were fantastic, a thick lovely nicely cooked, charry and flavoursome patty with plenty of onions, American cheese and BBQ sauce. The chips were also amazing, super crispy on the outside, soft and pluffy on the inside and plenty of chicken salt. Prices were also good and the staff very friendly. Celebs came here, but that odd looking red headed guy from It's a Date. Not sure if the celebs still come here but we've certainly stopped. Ever since the chain expanded, quality has significantly deteriorated. We've tried a few of the outlets and they're all pretty subpar now. The patties are now thin and with a rubbery texture, no chariness more like braised and soggy. The chips were still nice but the now very very mediocre burgers kinda kill the enjoyment.



Ba'get
This chain is kinda a safe, whitey place to get a banh mi. They do a decent banh mi, certainly not as authentic or tasty as some of those you get from Vietnamese bakeries but it'll do in a pinch in the CBD. Prices are fairly reasonable, but again not as good as in the aforementioned bakeries. I do like the complimentary pandan tea they have on offer inside the shop. However, the best reason to go to Ba'get are the litle cassava cakes they sell. These are DELICIOUS—chewy, coconutty and not too sweet—and well worth going into a Ba'get for.



Little Lamb
There are a few of these scattered around Melbourne but I've only been to the one in the CBD. Came here with a friend on a cold night, perfect for hot pot. Waited a short while before being shown to our table, though; this place is very popular with international students and is thus generally very busy. Little Lamb serves all you can eat hotpot for around $25-30 per person. The ingredients they use are perfectly good for hotpot and has enough of mostly everything you'd want to throw in without having a huge variety. It's a buffet so you help yourself to ingredients. The buffet area is very cramped though so it doesn't exactly make it the best experience but people keep coming back nonetheless. All in all not a bad choice for hotpot.



Izakaya Hachibeh
This is usually our choice when we want a Japanese izakaya style place. The menu here is huge so you might have trouble selecting but everything we've ever had here has been fresh and tasty. The sashimi is fresh and good here, as are the gigantic katsu curry dons (a favourite of ours). As you should expect from an izakaya (with the notable exception of the overpriced Izakaya Den), the prices are very very reasonable. The service is also very friendly and they are happy to accommodate your requests. The decor isn't amazing (again, this is an izakaya not a super upmarket establishment) but certainly better than Chuji's,



David's
Came here for yum cha after the recommendation from a good friend of ours. David's is sorta tucked away in a small street off Chapel St. It's not too difficult to find, though, as there are signs on the main street pointing you the way. When you arrive, you immediately realise that David's is quite different to your average Chinese restaurant. The decor is quite Westernised and well presented. The place is also staffed by young quite attractive Asian females who offer friendly but fast service. David's yum cha is I guess what you could describe as an all you can east. For something like $35-40 you can have as much dumplings etc as you want, both sweet and savoury. Unfortunately the food itself wasn't very good so I wasn't inclined to ask for very much. There were a lot of dumplings but they were just OK and some of the stuff I actually found surprisingly greasy. There weren't any of my favourite yum cha offerings like lo mai gai or Malay cake. It kind of felt like mediocre dumpling after mediocre dumpling, followed by sweet (e.g. chocolate) dumplings for dessert.



Donwoori
This Korean BBQ place is situated near the QV Markets on Victoria St, very close to Wooga which I believe is owned by the same people. Unlike at Wooga, Donwoori doesn't have an advertised phone number so you can't book but even though it's a pretty small restaurant, it's generally not too difficult to get a table on most nights. They are also very accommodating with pushing tables together if you have a bigger party. The service is friendly as is the manager who likes to talk and shake the hands of the customers. The banchan here is unlimited and DELICIOUS. If I could have some of that kimchi everyday I would be more than content. The menu is very very similar to that of Wooga's with very good vaue BBQ set menus and some other dishes. The food is delicious; the meat is of a good quality and I love the stews/soups and the drinks are very reasonably priced.



Movida
Movida due to its reputation around town and the tininess of the restaurant, is a place you generally have to book well in advance for. If you don't manage to secure a table, you can always try your luck walking in and often they can seat you at the bar. The food here is very good, I remember it being for some reason marginally better than Aqui's and usually has a slightly different menu. The bread they serve here, which I've heard before is housemade, is excellent. You have to pay something like $1 pp for it but it all goes to charity. The beef tartare here is a must try; super flavoursome and moreish while being a very generous portion for the price. Unfortunately when we came here my friend T and I got some pretty bad service, mostly just being ignored throughout the evening by wait staff while they fawned over other tables



Movida Aqui
While Movida Aqui in some ways is quite a contrast to the original Movida. For starters, Aqui is a lot bigger and brightly lit than Movida. The expanded size means that bookings here are much easier to acquire. That said, especially for a weekend, you still generally have to book a couple of days in advance. The menu is pretty similar but as previously mentioned there are some differences. I don't think I've ever seen the tartare on the menu at Aqui but from what I recall the menus are a similar length. Get the pulpo (octopus) if you ever see it here, sometimes on the proper menu and sometimes as a special, as it's delicious and well, octopus is just one of the best (and most underrated) seafoods isn't it? The Jamon Iberico is great (I think they only do paletilla, the 'inferior' but still ridiculously delicious front leg, here though) and it is one of the few places in Australia where they hand slice it; many other places (incorrectly) use a machine. To reiterate what I said above, the food here is perhaps a slight notch below that of Movida original but it is still very very good. The service, however, is much better and this combined with the ease of booking is why I much more often go to Aqui than the original.



Chez Olivier
Since PM24, much to our devastation, closed down not too long ago we've never found a French restaurant which really comes close to what PM24 offered up. Chez Olivier isn't terrible, definitely something more in the classic French bistro style than the upmarket feel of PM24. However, Chez Olivier charge about the same prices. The portions also aren't as generous as those at PM and the food generally is not as good. On the occasion that I came I go a mid-cuit de thon (seared tuna) and a steak. The tuna was pretty tasty and well cooked while the steak I got was very overcooked. I asked for à point (medium rare) but got well done; I didn't send it back though because in all honestly I felt bad for the waiters who were lovely and I just generally couldn't be arsed. T much better luck with his main of a cassoulet though, which was rich and had a great depth of flavour, just how a cassoulet should be.



Maedaya
Maedaya is definitely one of the most popular restaurants in Melbourne, with something like thousands of ratings on Urbanspoon. We came here early to avoid the crowds as they don't take bookings. However, we couldn't really see what the fuss was about. The menu is very extensive—you order on ipads and they use the same ordering interface as Sushi Hotaru—and the prices are pretty decent, but the quality of the food left us a little wanting. The sashimi salad we had was quite frankly pretty terrible with a lacklustre and overly acidic dressing over some not very fresh sashimi and a mountain of mesclun mix. Their famous yakitori is definitely tasty and if I had to come again, I'd definitely get more of that. The other dishes we had, some cold dishes including squid, miso beans and an udon soup however, were very unremarkable.



Little Ramen Bar
LRB is located in a very busy little part of Lt Bourke St right near +39 and Shanghai Street dumplings. The space here is very small and even with the tiny tables, there is a very limited seating inside. This partly contributes to the lines you often see outside but this place is also just generally very popular. In our opinion, though, there are definitely better ramen places in Canberra. We'd recommend you hop a couple of streets over to nearby DonToo if you want better and cheaper ramen. Firstly I know it's 'traditional' but I personally really dislike the thin slices of rolled charsiu they use here. I find it renders it a very fatty, jellied cut piece of meat to bite into and chew and while many actually prefer this, I'm not one of them. It's also quite an expensive bowl of ramen once you add all the things to make it a actually tasty bowl of noodles. You have to pay extra for butter, corn, and even garlic which means that you are easily paying $15 for what is a pretty average bowl of ramen.



Hell of the North
We were very excited to come here after hearing great things and immediately walking in the door we bumped into an old colleague of M's and his girlfriend, who reiterated that the food at this place to die for. However, while we really liked our starters, we found the mains disappointing. The starters of beef tartare the chicken liver parfait really were delicious and I would consider coming back just to have these again. The parfait was smooth and very nicely flavoured with none of that that irony strong flavour you sometimes get with liver parfaits/patés. The tartare was also very tasty but needed more spice; fortunately there were bottles of tabasco and other hot sauce at the table which we happily shook over the raw beef. I had a Milawa chicken dish and M the pork which were very mediocre to the point where we don't exactly recall the specifics. However, what we do remember is that the mains were a big let down and nowhere near as nice as the entrees.

Burgers @ Dandenong Pavilion

After having a bad experience at Grand Trailer Park Taverna with R, I was reluctant to visit its progenitor, Dandenong Pavilion. My apprehensions were also deepened by its distance from the Melbourne CBD, a 45 minute drive in medium traffic didn’t exactly have me in the best spirits on arrival. However, I was very impressed.

In this case, the great Urbanspoon score and positive reviews were well justified, this place is great! I ordered the ‘Frank Underwood’ (three types of beef in a medium rare patty, two kinds of American cheese, a mac cheese and mash croquet, lashings of mustard, ketchup and specials sauce, with chips doused in cooked pickled onions, diced pickles and cheese sauce) and my dining companion got the beef burger (extra large patty, American cheese, salad, deli pickle, onion, mustard on a brioche bun, with fresh fries and house made ketchup).

The Frank Underwood was a sensation, I have not been as impressed with a burger for a good long time. The patty was perfectly cooked (well spiced, medium rare on the inside, crisp caramelised crust on the outside), the cheese mix was great, the special sauce definitely special. The croquet was a little bland, it was crisp, cheesy and had a nice texture inside, it just needed salt and something to give it a kick, but it certainly didn’t ruin the burger. Neither did the bun, which although a brioche variant, was just the right amount of sweet to cut through the beef and cheese mountain that was the Frank Underwood.

The chips were also an excellent accompaniment. The onions had been cooked in vinegar and were just divine combined with the diced pickle and the cheese sauce. The potato itself was crunchy and beautifully golden, with a nice peppery kick.

My dining companion generally likes his food a little more bland/conservative than I do, however he described the beef burger as delicious and beautifully flavoured. I stole one of his chips which were just as nice, despite lacking the elaborate topping of mine.

Sadly I only found out at the end that there was a ‘secret’ burger menu with a wider range of special burger treats, make sure to request this upfront when you go, they all looked great!

-M

Le Grill @ Nevermind Bar and Cones Gelato

Le Grill is definitely our pick for some of the best burgers and American style food in Melbourne. Somewhat hidden away in a pub on Burwood Rd in Hawthorn, it's worth the extra effort to find and get to. While the downstairs part has very little seating, upstairs there's a nice alfresco area, albeit exposing you to some drunk 18 year olds.

We came here on a weekday evening with a couple of friends and each got a burger and a few sides to share. I got the Le Grill cheeseburger with bacon and M got the double version of mine. The burgers were very tasty—juicy and flavoursome. They were a good size but not super big, so left a bit of space for the delicious sides. I also loved that the burgers came with some sides complimentary, in this case some slaw and what seemed like house-made pickles.

We all got the following sides to share: the poutine, the waffle-cut fries, and the buffalo wings; all were delicious. The poutine we were really looking forward to because we love the stuff; how can you go wrong with chips, cheese curds and gravy? Here they made their own curds and I wish you got more on the poutine, but that's my only real complaint about the dish. It was delicious and moreish and the table polished it off in little time. The waffle fries were also surprisingly good. I wasn't sure what to expect what these were super crispy and very nicely seasoned. The wings were also surprisingly good, not wet and tasteless like at some other places but sticky and moreish. The sauce (I wanna say blue cheese?) that accompanied them was also surprisingly tasty.

We'll definitely be back and next time we'd like to try their pulled pork and their other stuff from the grill.

Cones
After dinner we went to nearby Glenferrie Rd and Cones to grab a nice cream partially due to the warm evening and partially due to the fact that the coffee shop we wanted to go to had no more alfresco seating and the interior was ridiculously warm and muggy. Due to having been burnt by milky gelatos before I chose the strawberry sorbet. This had a pretty nice flavour but inevitably I found it too sweet and cloying. The texture was also too soft and melted for my liking. M thought the same about his lemon flavoured gelato but had less trouble with the sweetness. Our companions seem to enjoy their cones, however.

Quick review: Grand Trailer Park Taverna, Melbourne

We had been talking about coming to this place for a few days now and finally found a time to do it, having missed an opportunity the day before as it was closed for a private function. Perhaps because it was a weekend, the place was a lot emptier than we expected: the inside tables were practically empty and even the al fresco area wasn't filled. So we chose a table outside and straight away I was excited by the condiments station at the table: ketchup, mustard, tabasco and wet towels! For some reason I love it when you can help yourself sauce at the table; it's probably a large factor behind my love for Vietnamese restaurants. Unfortunately, though, the meal went pretty well downhill from there.

Firstly, the chips ($6.50 for a not very large 'large' size) were disappointing—oil laden and not particularly crisp. M and I both chose the McDowell (which seems like their analogue of the Big Mac—double beef, double cheese, lettuce and a creamy sauce) burger and added bacon. Because, ya know, bacon makes everything better. At $17.50 each, it definitely doesn't come cheap, so we were expecting something pretty spectacular. Biting into it, the initial reaction was good enough—cheesy and flavoursome. After subsequent bites though we quickly cottoned on to the mediocrity of the burger. The patty, while flavoursome, was excessively ground up so that it almost had that foamy sausage consistency. As M pointed out, it was the kind of patty you used to get from your 90's fish & chips takeaway. The extra processing might help the patty if the meat you're starting with isn't spectacular but GTPT describe their beef as 'premium'...hmmm. The bread was also a big downer as it was dry and rather unpleasant, whereas to me, a good burger bun should be chewy and spongy. So while the burger was tasty enough, it definitely didn't justify its premium price tag. The search for the best burger in Melbourne continues...