Dining Out - Burger Project

Burger Project

I was cautious the first time I went to Burger Project, as big name chefs going into fast food or cheap food often don't seem to live up to the promises they make. It's either not as good or not as cheap as the market they're wanting to be in needs.

Well, Neil Perry (Rockpool, Spice Temple, and other locations) promises "Fast Food with Slow Food Values". They bring the descriptors like "grass fed, house ground beef" and "free range chicken" to a marketplace that is more accustomed to as cheap a product as we can get to make it.

It does come with a cost, but not as much of a cost as you'd expect from the big name chef and those descriptors, but with their classic (beef, pickle, tomato, lettuce, onion, sauce) at $9.90, and the American cheese at $10.90, it's a couple of dollars cheaper at least than the gourmet burger places often are.

First time I went (which was back in August 2015), I got the American cheese and a coke. I was shocked that this would be under $15, but it was $13.40. and the drink wasn't exactly small, being around 300ml or more glass.

^{Just look at that delicious cheese}

Returning to the present day, and I only found myself back there through a sequence of events that saw me being there. Firstly I was in Manly and my intended location was a 'could be as long as 30 minutes' wait. I wasn't that hungry yet, so I gave my number and went for a walk on the beach front. About 25 minutes later I got back and enquired and I was 'next' but 'maybe 10 to 15 minutes. I decided to pull the pin and go elsewhere, but nothing there grabbed me. After the ferry back into the city I wandered through the circular quay terminal to see what was across the street. I was surprised to see that Burger Project was in one of the buildings so decided to look at the options in there and ended up being there.

^{Burger looks to be sliding over a bit, but still delicious. Chips and house soda}

Being my third visit, I decided to try something from the chicken range, which is very limited, with currently just the two burgers on it, and they're basically the same burger with or without salted red chilli (which adds $1.60 to the price of the burger!). Feeling like some spice, I paid the extra and went with the Spicy Fried Chicken Katsu, composed of Free range chicken, salted red chilli, coleslaw, pickles, lettuce, and katsu sauce. I also paired it with chips and a house made Strawberry Soda, coming to just over $20.

The soda was nice, refreshing and contained obvious real strawberry with seeds existing in it. It was also nowhere near as sweet as commercial soft drinks are, which was a nice change. The chips were good, with a fair amount of crispy, hot and internal softness to them, though I could always do with a bit more colour to them (and a little more crunch from that)

The burger itself, well there was a decent amount of well fried chicken in it, and a not too soft slaw that mostly stayed in the bun while eating. The katsu sauce was there, but mostly disappeared under the chilli, which was equal parts excellent and overpowering. It might have been just a bit past that nice balance and into the 'all I can taste is burning' area of spicy food, where balance between the heat and the other things is lost. I still ate it all and really liked it, and it may just have been that day and a slightly heavy handed cook. If you like spicy burgers though, I'd say give this a go

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