Burgies of Melby

With the pubs closed, fishing banned and footy postponed, I've had plenty of time to keep up with chores and take household responsibility. This pandemic is quickly turning me into a proper adult, causing me to leave my mid-twenties boyhood behind. In spite of that, I still insist on reviving this cheesy little blog. Boredom doesn't always breed the best in us so I took leave from my slow and laborious apprenticeship as a home cook and ordered Chloe and I some burgers. In a show of gustatory partnership, Chloe and I ordered the same burger. The Barbie contains double  beef, double cheese, bacon, Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce, onion rings and gherkin. The smashed patties and buns are soft and despite coming across as big on paper, the burger is actually easy to grasp and a very clean eating affair. Spillage, much like the burger in the last review, is minimal. The cheese here is melted to perfection and is a delight to pick off the wrapper. The sauce is sweet and tangy...

With COVID-19 dominating the news and a stage 3 lockdown upon us, life is becoming fairly dull. Without sports to watch or pubs to drink at, boredom has begun to kick in. A reduction in work hours has seen me stuck at home for the past three Tuesdays and I've quickly found myself with nothing to do on the day before hump day. This blog will therefore be making a return so I can feel like I'm doing something half-productive between watching episodes of Futurama. Since Chloe was out being essential at work, I was home alone. After knocking some quick chores on the head I decided to spice things up and browsed Uber Eats, looking for a good burger joint to review from the comfort of my couch. I landed on a restaurant called Sideshow Burgers and so on a quiet, sunlit autumn afternoon, I stayed inside, sat on my couch and ordered junk food. I bought the Snake Charmer and the SS Mackie, the former a burger, the latter mac and cheese croquettes. The Snake Charmer includes southern ...

Pinball and pool, beer and burgers; that's the best way to describe Bob's Diner. Throw in the Big Buck Hunter arcade game situated between the pinball machines and you can treat yourself to a quasi-redneck experience in the suburb of Doncaster. There's nothing hipster about the American style this restaurant tries to emulate. Tacked on to the local watering hole (the Doncaster Hotel), Bob's Diner might be guilty of following the burger trend that has swept over the city in the last decade, but that's where the insincerity stops. With the relentless chime of pokies and the endless stream of race commentary in the background, you can pull up a stool and hack into a burger while watching Race 8 at Dapto. Grab a bowl of onion rings and a pot of Carlton Draught to wash it all down and bam, you have yourself a quality meal. Yeah, I had a bowl of onion rings and a pot of Carlton Black to go with my Mac & Cheese Burger. With a creamy mac and cheese patty, bacon, tom...

The Fish & Burger Co. is one of the best burger joints in this city and really probably should've been the first review for this blog. Instead it has taken us until the 19th post to finally sit down and critique Melbourne's finest food. I had the Mac Daddy, which I have eyed off on many occasions without actually ordering it, opting for other burgers such as the Ol' School Cheese, Hey Hombre and the Double Chilli Cheese (all fantastic options). The Mac Daddy's selling point as a burger is that along with all the regular ingredients (beef, cheddar, onions, pickles, lettuce and secret sauce), it also packs a mac and cheese croquette. As a fan of all things pasta and cheese, I loved it, but as a lactose-intolerant individual, I also very much hated it. Intestinal discomfort aside, the Mac Daddy does have a couple of minor flaws. I don't feel that pickles belong with mac and cheese as the flavours don't compliment each other. Less of them would be nice (or j...

A new year means new burger adventures so today we set the GPS for Gorilla Grill in Maribyrnong and shot down the Calder Highway. Gorilla Grill is quite active on Instagram and they always post dashing photos of their fare so going there was an easy decision. Did the food live up to the hype in real life? I must admit it probably didn't. Chloe had the King Kong, which is a little small for its name. Sure, it has double beef, double cheese, double bacon and a triple serve of BBQ sauce, but a burger named after a giant, fearsome gorilla needs to be towering on the table, not neatly wrapped up. On top of that, it's a little dry and if you ignore the generous amount of BBQ sauce, there's not much flavour to it. Chloe thought it was a reasonable burger but she did agree that there's perhaps a little too much BBQ sauce. I had the Krusty Burger, which boasts 'Krusty' fried chicken, tomato, lettuce, cheese, aioli and bacon. The chicken was incredibly crispy,...

After an impromptu outing at Bundoora Park, Chloe and I got hungry and went searching for food. We found a burger joint just across the road in the new Polaris development, which has unfortunately taken over the old Larundel Mental Asylum and turned the derelict buildings into allegedly stylish apartments and shops (although the main building is still a crumbling mass of graffiti). With my ghost-hunting days behind me (the police apprehended me and a mate here a few years ago), I settled in for a burger with Chloe, thoughts of apparitions and asbestos far from my mind. Usually I'd comprehensively list the ingredients here, copying it straight from a menu I found on the internet. Flippin Burgers offers no such luxury so I'm going to go off the photo I took of the burgers and my faulty memory to describe what we ate. I'll start with the Chick Me Out, which is a very tasty burger that comprises of fried buttermilk chicken, slaw, cheese, pickles and mayo. Chloe ordered this o...