Burger-lover
Tim eats his way into Visions of a Burger with this guest blog. Read on!
Braza started as a purely Brazilian meat
place (lots of amazing meats on sword-sized skewers), but at some point they
decided that they needed to branch out, so they became “BBQ of the Americas”,
which essentially meant embracing and including the smoked meats of North
America and adding them to the wonderful roasted stuff from down south.
My little brother was up from Melbourne.
Knowing that he appreciates the ‘meat sweats’ as much as I do, I knew where I
had to take him to lunch! As soon as we got there, we knew it was going to be
burger time.
The Set up:
Now I should say that the price of the
burgers is a little on the higher side. If you’re hoping to drop $5-$10, you’ll
be sadly disappointed. On the flipside (and at the risk of giving away the
ending to this story), if you want to eat a burger that deserves to be a little more expensive, then this is the place for
you!
We both eschewed that basic desire that
calls men to the biggest possible burger available and went for the “BBQ Pork Burger”.
Now I have a slight obsessive tendency that
means I have to eat all of my fries before I can dip into the burger. On this
occasion, the shoestring fries were hot, crispy and salty. Sometimes the fries
can feel like the stomach filler you eat to keep yourself from buying a second
burger. On this occasion they were a delightful accompaniment.
The Burger:
And now, to the burger itself. It’s always
an encouraging sign when there is a skewer through the middle, helping to
maintain structural continuity. The bun was pretty standard. I don’t remember
if it was brioche or not. You could argue it was pretty much an ideal bun
because it did absolutely nothing to get in the way of the burger itself, which
was stacked with a base layer of coleslaw, meat patty, a solid amount of what tasted
like house-made pickles, and then a generous portion of smoked pulled pork (It should be noted 1: The amount of pulled
pork was generous. Nothing worse than paying more for a burger, only to see the
faintest suggestion of pork on it, and 2: it was well smoked! Punchy, but not
overwhelming. It’s really hard to pull of good pulled pork. It often ends up
dry & fairly tasteless. I’d go back to have the pork alone!). As my
only photo shows, this was a beautiful looking burger!
The First Bite:
I squished it down and the bun started
soaking up the juices. Once it started moving from the horizontal though, it
dripped a little with a mixture of meat juice and coleslaw dressing. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that until my
lips hit that burger and I tasted how tasty and juicy it was; suffering none of
the dried-out effect you can often get with smoked meats. The Coleslaw and
pickles added a crispness and tartness, helping to cut across the smoky-sweet
pork and rich beef patty.
The bun started to disintegrate about
half-way through, but I was sold by that time, warning my brother that things
were about to get a lot messier before they started to get any cleaner!
The Clean up:
I’d go out on a limb and say that this was
the nicest burger I’ve had since I’ve moved back to Sydney. It delivered bags
of flavour, good balance, and by the end of it (I mopped up every last skeric)
I couldn’t rouse up enough appetite to have a single scoop of gelato afterward.
During our lunch, we saw the staff carrying
around some pretty impressive meats that I’d love to have some other time, but
I left with no regrets. I most definitely ate a burger worth the $21 price tag
(fries included).
