Friday, January 11, 2013

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

 The Meat & Wine Co on Urbanspoon

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