Manburger from my local.

My local cafe-near-work prides itself on being slightly more interesting than your average sandwich shop. Its decor is aiming for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” with big black and white stills from the movie. Their main meals are all, except for the burger, named for movie stars, and it’s all very twee. The managers are a Korean couple, Phil and Jeanette, who do slightly odd things, like giving regular customers little random food gifts: a tiny slice off a friand; a half piece of toast with sugar and cinnamon; a bit of a cake that didn’t quite work out. You know the kind of people I’m talking about. Very generous. My treat on this occasion was a small piece of dry toasted sourdough fruit bread.

As you can gather from the title of my post, this is a Manburger, although every time I order it, Phil corrects me to make sure I say  “Ma’amburger” and we laugh. On this day, I’d told my cow orker Andy about my plans to eat big at lunch time, and he’s a chef, so was keen to see what all the fuss is about, and decided to join me. So I wandered up the road to see Phil and ordered a Ma’amburger and a Manburger.

The burger is more of a steak sandwich, truth be told, than a burger, as it contains marinated sandwich steak, rather than a minced beef burger patty, but in this world of flexibility when it comes to sandwiches, who’s quibbling? Australian beef, I will remind you, is mostly grass fed, leading to some serious animal flavour, as opposed tothe tender, but somewhat insipid grain-fed version. Aussie cows spend a lot of time roaming pretty much free range, growing muscle and burning fat. It’s not a totally lean meat though, unlike kangaroo, but that’s for another post. As well as a generous amount of steak, the burger comes with lettuce and tomato, BBQ sauce and a fair whack of Tabasco. I always ask for it spicy, which means more Tabasco than average. Also, being in the know, I ask for ‘everything’ which adds some fried egg and bacon to the concoction. The whole thing comes on a fabulously crusty white roll, and is deliciously greasy. I may as well mention at this point, that my diet generally tends towards the more fat and carb free end of the spectrum, so this is a regular, but infrequent departure into the world of ‘bad’ food for me.

Phil says “I will bring” and I head back to work to wait. When the sandwiches arrive, Andy descends on his, and disappears outside quickly for some alone time with his burger. I open mine, and I am greeted by the aroma of bread and steak and sauce. I work with a bunch of hardcore vegetarians, some of them vegans, and I have to admit that nothing warms my heart more than the chorus of “wow, who has food? that smells awesome!” from the throng. This thing is big. And soggy underneath. And really messy. I unwrapped it for the purpose of the pic, but I had to rewrap it to even pick it up, so as usual, I eat it wrapped, peeling as I go. It takes me about half an hour to get through it, although Andy returns after about 10 minutes saying “that was great. I inhaled mine. Thanks for telling me about them!” And I feel that my work here is done.

Crit

I’m a mother of two boys. I work selling organic produce to gullible locals, and in my spare time I run as far as I can. Oh, and I live in Australia, married to a US citizen.