Well, careful now, that burger could be worst for you than you think…

I had the pleasure (?) of having lunch with some colleagues in Luigi Malone’s in Temple Bar, Dublin recently and ordered a burger for lunch:

Can I have that medium, please?

Certainly Sir!

Now you can’t beat a properly done burger and, with a slight edge on me from a surfeit of Guinness the previous evening, I waited with gleeful anticipation for my cure.

Well Holy Mother of God when the item arrived the smile disappeared from my face pretty quickly. What had started out as a good looking burger was incinerated beyond belief and had only a fleeting relationship with ‘medium’ at some time in its distant past.

I spoke with a very polite manager who explained that it was the policy of Luigi Malone’s to server burgers well done. When I asked him why that was the response I got was:

It’s a health and safety matter. I’m sure you would appreciate that as a chef.

Thank God for that – saved by a quick thinking restaurateur. I didn’t get the exact health and safety reason for the policy (although I did press the manager) but I can’t help drawing the conclusion that either:

• The meat is so shite that to serve it less that incinerated would poison people;
• The chef can’t do anything other than well done (perhaps he’s an Irish BBQ expert);
• The waiting staff, bless them, couldn’t handle the increased workload (3 burgers x 5 degrees of ‘doneness’ = 15 things to remember… Ahhhhhhhhh!)

Personally I thing that the burnt yoke that landed in front of me could have chipped my teeth. And, if a waiter dropped the order, could crack tiles or fracture bones should it land on an unsuspecting customer.

Not to be outdone, the Porterhouse pub in Temple Bar has joined the BBC club. At least they offer you a fine choice of beer to get pissed with, saving you the pain of trying to eat the damn thing.

18/02/2009:

A new contender: Fitzers of Temple Bar. (Today the Fitzers homepage shows “Account suspended”, so perhaps they need to revisit their shite burger pricing structure…). I feel that they need a special mention – at €15.95 (courtesy of menupages.ie) they are obviously going for the “more money than sense” market. Make your choice:

1 Fitzers Burger or 16 McDonals Euro saver burgers!