Grill'd

Having satisfied their public holiday coffee needs, the Bloggers turned their minds to their stomachs. They needed burgers. Stat.

Helpfully, Grill’d was well and truly open on this public holiday. When we walked past Grill’d on the way to find a coffee, we were particularly charmed by the number of people getting their 11.00am burger fix. They must have had worse nights than we did, as we were able to hold back until 11.45.

By the time we got to the burger joint, we had already closely studied the menu and selected our beasts as follows:

1. Booto went for the chicken and brie burger. Her selection resulted from her last Grill’d experience, which occurred during a visit to Grill’d in Prahran while heavily pregnant and desperate to fill up on contraband soft cheese. Today Booto’s dreams could be realised.

2. The Brains opted for the mustard and pickle number, which, on reflection, sounds like the type of thing a pregnant woman might crave. However, the Brains’ fondness for pickles has been a lifelong trait, which was the only reason for her selection.

3. The Deliberator went with the Cheeseburger. His reasons were obvious. It was a burger. With cheese. You’d be mad not to really.

4. The Sponge mixed it up a little and selected the steak sambo.

To avoid argument, we each ordered our own side of chips and made sure we had a representative of each dipping sauce on the table – herbed mayo, tomato relish and sweet chilli mayo.

The ordering process is simple and efficient, but it still managed to perplex the Deliberator who didn’t realise he had to decide on what type of bun he wanted (Panini or traditional), and then couldn’t land on a drink because Grill’d stocks Pepsi products which are reasonably unfamiliar to him. (For those who are interested, he ended up with Panini and a Pepsi Max). The Pepsi thing must have also struck the Sponge unawares, as he brought a red creaming soda back to the table. Being in a hamburger joint made him sentimental for sugary drinks and spiders.

The burgers arrived quickly, which was a blessing because with no alcohol to sustain our conversation, we had well and truly run out of things to say to each other. The burgers looked fabulous and fresh and we couldn’t wait to get into them, but disaster struck before we had the chance.

You see, Grill’d has a variety of extra sauces for those who feel they need them, and as each of us tends to add tomato sauce to everything we eat, we took advantage of this offer. The tomato sauce comes in these cute, plastic, tomato-shaped dispensers with the sauce itself arriving through the ‘stem’ of the tomato. The leaves of the tomato surrounding the stem act as a lid. The Deliberator, notoriously neat with his food (any sandwich the Deliberator makes only has right angles), carefully held the leaves/lid, opened his burger and neatly covered his pattie with the correct amount of t-sauce. The Brains, oblivious to the Deliberator’s delicate handling of the dispenser, grabbed it off him, opened her burger and managed to dump the lid (ie, the leaves) of the sauce dispenser onto her burger, followed quickly by three quarters of the contents of the dispenser. The Deliberator refused to give up his ration of napkins to help the Brains with this untenable situation (he’s trying to teach the Brains how to use napkins sparingly) and proceeded to mocked her incessantly.

Later, the Sponge, by this time thoroughly involved the steak sambo, went to add some t-sauce to his plate so he could dip his chips into it. Whether he had not seen the Brains’ screw up, or whether he’d seen it and completely forgotten about it, he managed to do exactly the same thing and tip the lid plus contents of the plastic tomato all over his plate. It was tomato sauce mayhem at our table, and Stinky wasn’t even there.

So how were the burgers? Delicious, we really liked them. The bread is fresh, the meat is tender and, in the case of the burgers, surprisingly lean, the other ingredients are clearly good quality and super fresh and the sauces are excellent. The Brains very much liked her mustard (particularly mixed with t-sauce) and the herbed mayo on the other burgers is thick and creamy with plenty of flavour. The chips are also delicious – they are crisp and golden and come in giant serves, absolutely covered in salt and herbs. The herbs on the chips are a bit much with the herb mayo dipping sauce and the herb mayo in the burgers, but if you substitute the dipping sauce with the sweet chilli mayo, the herbiness seems to even itself out.

In summary:

Service: Exactly what you would expect from a casual burger joint. The burgers come out in quick time too, which was no doubt a product of the sweat-shop style kitchen which appeared to simultaneously employ every teenager in the area.

Food: Great burgers that don’t make you feel too disgusting. Tasty chips. Good sized serves of everything.

Highlight: The high quality meat.

Lowlight: The crap tomato sauce dispenser. And the fact that they charge 70 cents for chip dipping sauce – surely that can be wrapped up in the price of the chips?

Rating: 4 herbed mayos out of 5

Will we be back: Yep, particularly as it’s the only burger joint on Beaufort.

Details: Grill’d is located next to the Astor Arcade, where Cinos used to be. They have an excellent website - www.grilld.com.au – which includes a copy of the menu. You can BYO booze and they’ll even give you wine glasses for next to nothing. A burger and chips will come in at around $17 per person.