Ed eats

Just Burger
Ball Street
Paceville
Tel: 2704 1511

Food: 7/10
Service: 7/10
Ambience: 6/10
Value: 6/10
Overall: 6.5/10

Burgers are an unreasonably divisive food. They’re considered by many to be the little rubber stopper beneath the table leg that supports the menu of the gourmand.

They’re the Western world’s escape from proper nutrition and into fast food. They fly in face of accepted etiquette and practically force you to allow your hands in direct contact with your food. They even do away with cutlery and crockery and aren’t served as proper courses within a structured meal.

As we move further in the list of objections they become increasingly ludicrous. These are based on constructs we’ve created, largely to serve an outmoded way of life. I do, however, agree with the nutritional objections, at least statistically.

If we consider the number of burgers consumed daily around the planet, I’m sure there is a larger number of awful burgers that are made, sold and eaten than proper ones. This scary thought is enough to make even me shudder. Yet it does not cause me to automatically detest the dish altogether.

After all, the word burger is merely the description for a particular sandwich and we don’t wage war on sandwiches, even if they can’t fight back. McDonald’s, for instance, don’t seem to sell burgers at all. Every item on their menu that looks like a burger to the rest of the world is called a sandwich beneath the golden arches. And they are technically correct.

We can even dispel the ‘burgers equals fast food’ equation. If you’ve looked up chef Blumenthal’s search for burger perfection, a half-hour documentary about his quest for the perfect burger that documents months of research and travel, you might be inspired.

It also goes to show that a great burger is not a cheat approach to a meal. It is a sandwich that is planned carefully, requires attentive shopping, demands a reasonable amount of time for preparation and needs to be meticulously constructed.

And here we bump into the next burger controversy. A burger is meant to signify simplicity and affordability, it is meant to be the pinnacle of democratic sustenance, it fares worse when laboured and shifts from a simple delight all the way around into snobbery. And a burger snob can be highly irritating because it sounds like one is extolling the artistic value of a perfectly executed zebra crossing.

So, as is sensible when considering any kind of cuisine, it helps to approach burgers with a certain amount of balance and a temporary suspension of prejudice. Think of mincing meat you’d love to eat as a steak and baking a bun you’d be happy to put in your child’s lunchbox. Add fresh lettuce and a slice of tomato. And there’s your tasty and healthy sandwich you can call a burger without wincing.

You can go all the way if you like and infuse your bread with lemongrass and lime zest, preparing a crab and lobster patty while you stir a coriander and coconut reduction to dress it all with. But I suspect you might be stretching it a little.

So when I heard that there exists a purveyor of burgers that seems to be focusing purely on burgers, I was interested. A colleague mentioned that she’d tried their fare and that the place was called Just Burger. Great. Another opportunity for the nation to pluralise the restaurant’s name. I’m prepared to bet that there will be more people calling the place ‘Just Burgers’ before the year is out.

Yet the singular is significant. By the sound of things, Just Burger seemed to focus on serving a tiny menu rather than trying to force a hundred ways of stuffing a bun with ingredients. I just had to try this. The opinions were favourable so I picked a weekday and kidnapped a burger fanatic, gently coercing him to join my quest.

Inside the burger place, there was peace and quiet and a smell of grilled beef

The only thing uglier than Paceville by night is Paceville by day and Just Burger happens to have a construction site across the road. There’s a huge hole in the ground spanning a third of the block. Judging by the rest of Paceville, this must be the site for a multi-storey gentleman’s club.

Inside the burger place, however, there was peace and quiet and a smell of grilled beef. The decor is simple, functional and contemporary, as is the layout. It is long and narrow, with a counter at the very end where you’re expected to place your order. Your food is delivered to your table when it is done, so you only perform half of the service yourself. Think of a Gourmet Burger Kitchen without the tomato-shaped ketchup bottles.

The menu is simple – a beef burger that can be had as is, with cheese, with bacon, or both. Thoughtfully, there are two non-beef options in the form of a halloumi and a chickpea burger. That’s the menu right there. I wondered what this focus would translate to.

For us, the choice was simple. Cheese and bacon burgers with fries and a soft drink each. Priced at a tenner each, this isn’t exactly cheap. The man at the counter was helpful and friendly. The music in the background was great. The place just served as a neutral and functional backdrop to our conversation as we waited for our food to be served.

Burgers and chips are served in their little basket and my first reaction was that the burger looked small. The plain bun is perfectly toasted so it has a very thin and crisp shell and fresh innards. This is what one could consider the classic rendition, with a finely chopped pickle, lettuce, tomato, onion and a patty of medium thickness. It was cooked slightly pink on the inside so, even if frowned upon by some, keeps the meat from drying out. The result is perfectly enjoyable, even if I felt somehow short changed because of the portion size.

I wondered whether I should have ordered the optional extra patty but, by the end of the generous portion of chips, I was just about fine.

As luck would have it, I wound up trying the exact same burger the very next day. I was out with a dozen people and, on our way to a couple of beers, the notion of stopping for burgers for an early supper was floated. The name Just Burger popped up and we found ourselves seated at a long table there. Once again, service was helpful and friendly, with the man at the counter ably assisting the rowdy group with remarkable efficiency. I repeated my order for a bacon cheese burger to check for consistency and was happy that the burger was just as satisfying and tasty as the day before. I even got to taste the halloumi patty. It would be unfair to consider this as an alternative to beef because it tastes great in its own right.

Looking around a table at 12 happy faces is probably the best way to judge a place like Just Burger. This is a welcoming, functional and unpretentious space that serves tasty simplicity without faffing about with too much choice and this was reflected in the behaviour of everyone at table. We chatted, picked at chips and sipped our drinks, the food keeping everyone happy without getting in the way.

And there’s the charm of this type of food. It is the jeans of the gastronomy world, dressed up or down at will and fitting snugly wherever people want to meet and just enjoy each other’s company without really worrying much about the details on the periphery.

You can send e-mails about this column to ed.eatson@gmail.com or follow @edeats on Twitter.

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