EatDrinkBrisbane

It’s embarrassing that it’s taken me this long to try Burger Urge. The Brisbane burger chain has been popular for a long time, and it’s not hard to count the reasons why.

First of all: are you hungry? Do you have a large appetite? Perhaps you’re hungover as shit, you’ve just run up Mt Coot-tha, or you’ve done an ‘awsum’ Zumba marathon. Burger Urge will take care of any raging appetite – the ‘large’ sized burgers are massive! Plus, they’ve mastered the art of making a huge burger that doesn’t fall apart.

Second: do you like tasty food? Get your mouth around a burger. I tried a Pestorella ($12.90), which had beef, pesto, mozarella and salad. D went for the Lamb Haloumi ($13.90), which was packed with lamb, haloumi, pesto, caramelised onion, salad, and relish. Both burgers were simply, but really tasty. The lamb and caramelised onion on D’s burger were cooked perfectly, and very flavoursome.

Third: healthy food is good, yes? I won’t lie. Dudes, recently D and I had a sausage roll sandwich (that’s a sausage roll stuffed in a slice of white, white bread) for lunch. Despite this, I do appreciate healthy and fresh food. I’m not sure of the nutritionals of Burger Urge, but the patties seem pretty lean, and all their produce is fresh and good quality.

Fourth: sweet potato fries. Oh yes.  The humble vegie known as white potato’s less evil, sweeter cousin, can indeed be chopped up, fried, and seasoned. For $5.90, we were served a massive bowl of these crispy, spicy, savoury delights. I would go back just for these guys.

Fifth: do you like money? I sure do. Sometimes it’s annoying paying for something that mostly comes out the other end, but at least at Burger Urge you are getting serious value. Some of the burgers come in ‘regular’ size, but all of them come in ‘large’ – and these burgers are large and in charge. No, they won’t be the biggest burger you’ve ever had, but for $10.40 (for the ‘Classic’). Hot damn. You could share this sucker, if you’re a wimp.

There you have it. When you add up the list of positives, versus the minor negatives (tooooo much pesto. Yes, there is such a thing) Burger Urge is clearly a place you must visit.

Burger Urge

Shop 3/156 Boundary St

West End (also at New Farm)

(07) 3844 8777

www.burgerurge.com.au

I think I’ve got a bit of a problem with fresh, proper Italian pasta. A little while ago I had a rather religious experience at Il Centro. I was more focussed on my fresh ravioli in Rome than the Colloseum. And, the other week, I had a little moment in Paddington.

D and I were at Grappino, an Italian restaurant that’s known as a bit of an institution. We ordered the famous veal medallions (Vitello Saltimbocca) , and the pasta marinara (Grappino’s Marinara). I also ordered a glass of Venetian Pinot Grigio (around $13), and D cheekily copied me. He is like that kid in preschool who does EVERYTHING you do, then gets hurt when you start yelling. Sheesh.

Anyway – the meals arrived promptly, delivered by one of our polite waiters. I was really excited about the veal, as Momma T had been raving about it for years. And if someone knows meat, by God it’s my mother.

The prosciutto on top of each plump medallion was sublime. Just gently fried, it was crispy but still had an easy chew to it, with a yummy salty touch. The veal itself was good, but not the best I’ve had. It tasted very lean, which is great, but it was also a bit chewy. The sauce it was in on the other hand – hold the phone. I resisted the urge to grab a spoon and start slurping the stuff up, soup-style. I’d definitely recommend ordering a side of bread to mop this sauce up. The veal comes with your choice of linguine or a side, and we chose the Caprese salad – it was a little on the small side, but the fresh buffalo bocconcini and juicy tomatoes saved it many times over.

The veal may have been a little disapointing, but the pasta (pictured – yes I am aware it’s a dreadful photo) more than made up for it. This is where my little ‘fresh pasta’ motor kicks in and I am taken over by a machine who simply must be stuffed with linguine. The seafood was plump and fresh, the sauce was creamy but had a tomato flavour that counteracted any sickly richness, and the pasta had that wonderful chew that only fresh al dente pasta can have.

Now, some people may baulk at the prices – the veal was $37.50, and the pasta $34.50 – but I thought the portions were pretty reasonably sized, and that an entree wasn’t needed.

After we finished we contemplated getting coffee or dessert (the home made self saucing pudding sounded pretty enticing), but we realised we just didn’t like sitting there. Grappino is decorated in a bit of an old-school, Italian trattoria style, with minimal furnishings and bare tabletops. The cool effect may be lost on me, as I just didn’t find it had a warm or welcoming ambience.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must find an altar somewhere in the wheat fields and pray to the pasta Gods.

Grappino Trattoria

226 Given Terrace
Brisbane QLD 4064

(07) 3367 0033

http://www.grappino.com.au

I’ve got a very special guest post for you guys this week. Meet Emma! We used to sell phones and teh internetz at a telecomm shop. We’re cool like that. Nowadays we both prefer writing about food to smiling through a stream of cusomter abuse.

Enjoy!

Recently a work pal and myself broke a dirty force of habit, all thanks to the lure of a newish Japanese
haunt at Hamilton. Instead of saying that we should go out to dinner together and then end up ‘drinking’ the equivalent of entrée, dinner and dessert in a bevy of tasty cocktails we actually made a formal reservation with the new Japanese kid on the block, Hosokawa on Racecourse Rd.

Hailing from a suburban west side upbringing, even just mentioning I had dins at Racecourse Rd on a school night makes me cool by association. The idea was to have achieve the near impossible- go out for a midweek meal that’s tasty and yet healthy without having to run a half marathon at the gym the next day. After all, summer is menacingly close now!Japanese seemed the obvious answer.

We had both heard good reports from friends and family that had already tried the place which recently opened, so maybe we placed our expectations a little high. The décor was what you would expect from a casual Japanese restaurant, simple, clean and minimalist. Service was friendly and speedy, although admittedly we had booked the ‘senior’ timeslot of 6pm so we could go straight after work.

I have a penchant for good hearty Udon soups with big chunks of vegies and crazy mushrooms or fresh seafood, however the menu had little variety on this front, with half served as cold. I however was still enthusiastic with our choices: scallops wrapped in bacon (Hotate- $7 for 2 pieces), simmered vegetables (Yasai Nimono, $12), handmade fishcakes (Satsuma Age, $8) and grilled squid with teriyaki sauce (Ikayaki, $12).

The scallops and vegie dish were the first to hit our table and we eyed them off with gusto. The vegie dish was great, all sorts of interesting and tasty vegetables and types of tofu to expand on my rich mental catalogue of vegetables from other cultures I might never know the name to- delicious regardless, with my favourite part being the soft fluffy potato balls, all in a tasty sauce and cute bowl. The scallops wrapped in bacon were also delicious and succulent with a more natural flavour, however rather small in portion size
for the price.

The first two dishes were followed in quick succession by the squid (which I was particularly looking forward to) and fishcake, not to mention the obligatory must of miso soup. I had high hopes for the squid, it looked rather special when it arrived- and had I taken it on surface value alone it would have scored top points. However I was disappointed to be greeted with a chewy texture and sauce that tasted suspiciously
the same as my vegie dish in flavour and consistency. I wanted to like it, I really did. Maybe they had an apprentice chef on, maybe they had their favourite episodes of 2 and a half men playing as their distraction, but this particular dish missed the mark a bit. The fish cake was good, succulent but lacking in flavour or condiments, the miso…..well it was miso!

We pondered our eclectic feelings over a glass or three of reasonably priced bubbly, which is always a winner. I would definitely be interested to try some of their other dishes, especially ones that had enticed the good reports from our friends and their larger sushi selection ($8- $12 for two pieces, or $32 for a platter of 11 pieces). Perhaps a lunch date is in order…followed by a dessert cocktail at a new schmick looking joint back towards the city I eyed off on the drive home- some habits never die hard!

Hosokawa

Japanese Restaurant

Shop 3/53 Racecourse Rd
Hamilton

(07) 3868 3762