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Monday, September 6, 2010

Grill'd, Rosalie

Never been a massive fan of burgers. I could count the number of McDonalds burgers I've eaten on one hand, in part because they were pretty light-on for franchises around the little country town were I grew up, but mostly because they're shit. Vegemite, coriander and Big Macs, I hate them all.
Recently however, there's been a bit of a swing towards the old burger. I'll attribute this to the relative convenience of Oporto's Neutral Bay to my old house in Sydney, and a shift away from Subway following a  stop at Subway North Richmond towards the end of last year. 
North Richmond is about an hour from Sydney, north-westish, at the bottom of the mountains on you're way to Orange, Mudgee, Dubbo etc. It's a shit-hole. Apart from few poor souls who live there because they work for The Land newspaper, the local inhabitants are as rough as hessian undies.
One this one occassion I was hauling arse to Mudgee for work. Between Sydney and Mudgee there's few, if any, decent places to stop so Subway was really your last shot for the next two-and-bit hours. Anyway, I was sitting down chewing my way through my second six inches of pizza-rie goodness when two of the most obscenely fat people, a couple, the guy with a dragon tattooed on his forearm (I pressumed from his favourite Chinese menu), lumbered in. They ordered three foot-longs, a bag of cookies, sat a table across from me and proceeded to stuff 3/4 of it all into the mouths and the rest across their fat faces.
"Is this it? Is this what've become?" Well, it wasn't, the lad, he had the best part of 60 kegs on me, but for a moment the three different small goods and orange cheese I was eating just didn't taste the same.
I won't say that was the last time I ate Subway, it wasn't, some times it's just the best of a bad bunch, and it's still the safest fast food to eat in Moree, but it certainly slipped a few pegs. I do also have fond memories of Subway, though that was less about their menu and more about the convenience of one of my school mates working there, offering a safe-harbour, of sorts, while I tried to manage an illicit student-boarding mitress trist during my final year at boarding school. Another, inappropriate, story.
And, thus this trend to burgers. That and watching a shit-tonne of Man v Food on Discovery Travel and Living. That man is a machine.
My other house mate first dragged me to Grill'd. She'd been bangin' on about it for ages, so one hung-over Sunday we finally headed down to Rosalie for lunch (they're everywhere though).
There's a pretty expansive menu, massive beef burgers, Moroccan Lamb, chicken, for the pale, they've got vegetable burgers ... however in my state that day I opted for the Mini Moo (they've all got clever names like that) with salad, which is pretty much a beef patty, tomato, cos, cheddar and their (of course) famous "spicy" sauce.  You can get any of them on a traditional sesame bun or a panini. I just go the traditional, you don't need to go all la-di-da, confusing shit with "fancy" buns on a simple old burger. (Same goes for serving bacon and eggs with focaccia; Benson's Cafe, Orange I'm thinking of you.) For the difficult, you can get Gluten free as well.
That and a side of their chips pretty much sorted me out.
I've been back there probably a dozen time since over the last few months and just ordered the same. The burger's big enough, and their chips are massive, and bloody good too; lightly battered, seasoned, and I think some kind of oregano and thyme set-up.
They're just good. I at least tell myself there's an element of health to them. They're not dripping with fat anyway or full of gristle. And, as has been my litmus test in the past, they seem to be relatively free of fatty patrons.
They're worth a look. Handy for lunch, and opened for dinner. Though I've never quite felt the urge, they're also licensed and have a fridge full beer and wine next to the Euro soft drinks and vitamin waters. They're fresh, quick and reasonably priced.
Perhaps the only mark against Grill'd is that the last time I was there we saw one of our "darlings of the pool" there with one of our brilliant, though nonetheless tip-rat Wallabies, which really just unsettled me. Still that's no fault of Grill'ds. Burger-wise; 10/10.

http://www.grilld.com.au/

Grill'd on Urbanspoon

1 comment:

  1. hey love this even tho i am leaving oz and wont get to sample any more of ur delicious eateries or fine home cooking ;-) keep it up..
    have been to grill'd in melbourne and second ur 10/10 yum yum yum

    ciara ireland

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