Burgies of Melby

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...

I was shouted a feed by Chloe's sister, Madi, at Demazzi Stone Grill in Essendon for my 23rd birthday. This restaurant has been on our list of places to go for burgers for a while now, so our visit was a little overdue. I came in with big expectations, having followed Demazzi Stone Grill on Instagram for a while and being told that this place offers the best burgers in Melbourne. Some of these expectations were met, others were exceeded, and some were left a little lacking. I had the Mack Burger. It packs double beef, double cheese, lettuce, pickles and mack sauce. I've written a lot about soft buns and soft patties, but this burger takes out the title for the softest I've ever eaten. It's like the proverbial hot knife through butter. The incredible softness means there's a complete lack of crispiness and crunch. It's an interesting trade-off, especially when crispiness and crunch evoke feelings of eating something fresh. This could be due to a lack of i...

Ah, Epping. One can say many things about this sprawling industrial suburb, both good and bad. Today I'll focus on one of the good things, and that is Laurie Dee's, located at Pacific Epping (or Epping Plaza, depending on who you are) just outside the cinemas. Good old Laurie Dee's is a little different to what we usually hit up when we're hungry for a burgy. There's no murals, or vegan and gluten-free options. The burgies don't have hipster names and onion rings aren't on the menu. There's not even that many burgies on offer, with just four to choose from. On top of that, they call out your order through a speaker system, which you can even hear from the toilets. One gets the feeling that this restaurant was selling burgies before they became cool. I had the Laurie Dee Double, which packs two freshly minced beef patties, grilled onions, melted cheddar, Special D Sauce, tomato, lettuce, diced pickles and green relish. The patties here aren't ...

Straight Six opened in Templestowe recently, adding another dining venue to the crowded Templestowe Village. I've been following this restaurant for a while on Instagram and I'm glad they've opened a store closer to home, saving us a trip all the way to Flemington. The Phar Lap - with its wagyu beef patty, American cheddar, Straight Six sauce, house pickles, blanched onions, lettuce, and tomato - tastes much like an 8bit With Cheese. That looks like lazy writing, but that's what it tastes like. If you blindfolded me and served up an 8bit With Cheese next to a Phar Lap, my guess would be as good as the toss of a coin. You could say both restaurants have nailed down their basic burgies. The Makybe Diva, which boasts a southern fried chicken fillet, American cheddar, slaw, chipotle aioli and, smokey barbecue sauce, is very good. The slaw isn't stuffed into the burgy to the point of overflowing, as can be the case with chicken burgies. The aioli and barbecue sauce m...