Back to the drawing board Cafe Boardroom

Instead of making the trek into the city for our weekly burger ritual, we decided upon a place which was not too inconvenient for is. The Cafe Boardroom in Macquarie Park was our pick of the week.

The menu boasts a series of burgers, but the Mach 3 series of burgers caught our attention. These burgers come with a signature wagu beef patty, American mustard, housemade ketchup, diced onion, pickles and American cheese. Being in the mood for a double, we decided upon the Mach 2.

We were impressed that the burgers were extremely photogenic. Upon first look they masquerade as a great Macdonalds double quarter pounder.

But we were soon to discover that behind this mask it was all just a cover-up. Despite being photogenic there was little substance behind the facade.

We dived right in and took our first bite. The first thing we noticed was that the burger patties were piping hot. A good sign. 

But as we contained to eat, there were some obvious short comings.

For one thing, the burger patties were too dry- it required too much of our saliva to swallow these mouthfuls.  And not a drop of oil was to be seen to ooze off these patties. No fat content to speak of. The patties seemed like they had been made of reconstituted meat, then frozen, defrosted and finally heated on the grill. This meat quality seemed more like a scrappy meat off-cut that Macdonalds would ruse, rather than the juicy fat-marbling that you would except from a quality wagyu beef cut.

Moreover, the patties lacked flavour. Again, this is uncharacteristic of wagyu beef. Usually when a burger patty lacks such flavour, the chef covers up with this short-coming with copious amounts of sauce. But not so here. Even though the mustard dominated this burger, there was so little sauce to cover up the dryness of the patty.

And there was nothing housemade about the ketchup. It was reminiscent of a supermarket home brand. Upon requesting a ketchup side, we noticed that it was dispensed from a factory made pump rather than appearing to be a housemade sauce.

Maybe our patty standards are simply too high. But if this is the signature patty, we wouldn't want to see the basic one.

We won't even talk about the fries. Basic, boring, nothing special. 

This too can be yours for a precious $19.95. For that price, there are other places that deserve our well earned burger cash.

Some establishments are all about the burger. Others have a full menu and stick a burger in there just be to cool. The Boardroom cafe is in the latter category. Our new criteria is : Beware if it's not all about the burger!

Unless you work in Macquarie Park and can walk here, don't bother, you can hardly park here. Back to the drawing board Cafe Boardroom!