burger

Jacks Newtown – A new year and a new front opens up in the Burger Wars

January 10, 2016 by Andrew Christie 4 Comments

Happy New Year. We’re back. I’ve been on a bit of a break over the last month, occupying myself with a fishing trip down to the Snowy Mountains, some eventful family Christmas celebrations, and a lot of work on my new novel.

But now we’re back to take 2016 seriously, noses to the grindstone, applying our stomachs to the eateries of Newtown.

While I was on holidays, I received a Christmas present from my employers – two tickets to a Sydney Festival event at Carriageworks. A German play called Woyzeck – a klassic, according to the interwebs.

It has to be said that Strop and I were a bit dubious, having already dismissed it back in October when we were in the process of choosing what Festival events we would attempt this year. The prospect of a play that was both in German, and very old, started alarm bells clanging away, but then, free tickets…

So on Saturday night we toddled up the hill. One of the benefits of living where we do is that we can walk to Carriageworks and home again easily, which is fine as long as it’s not raining. And Saturday night was dry and balmy, almost as if it was summer.

The plan was to get something to eat on King Street on the way to the theatre. Strop suggested a run at Rowda Ya Habibi because she never passes up an opportunity to have some of their cauliflower. I objected however, as we’d had barbecued cauliflower the night before. As a compromise, I suggested that we walk towards Rowda Ya Habibi and if nothing on the way took our fancy, there was the cauliflower as a fall-back. As it turned out we didn’t even get to King Street. The first new place we came to was Jacks Newtown, and Strop said “Ooh, let’s go there. I really fancy a burger.” Unlike the previous times we had walked past, there was no queue and it didn’t look as if they had already sold out.

Jacks is very minimalist with a spare, almost industrial set up. Lots of stainless steel and no clutter. It is very clean and efficient looking. There aren’t even any cash registers, just iPads.

The menu is minimalist too. You can have a plain burger, a cheeseburger, or a cheeseburger with bacon. And you can have any of those double. You can have fries, soda and Jack’s sauce (a kind of mustardy aioli). No chicken, and no fish but there is a vegetarian option. It is Newtown after all.

The burgers are modestly sized and reasonably priced, which is refreshing after years of bloated aspirational Gourmet Burgers. They come with lettuce, tomato, some kind of pickle and a mustardy sauce. The meat in our burgers was medium rare-ish, tender and tasty. The only thing I didn’t like about the burger was the bun. Which was soft, pappy and sweet. In other words it was American. Which I suppose is fair enough as Jacks is nothing if not a purveyor of American-style burgers. Anyway the buns are really just there to keep your fingers clean.

The soda comes out of a mixer machine in big paper cups. Strop has a set against all things Coca-Cola so she got tap water, also in a big paper cup, with ice delivered with a smile. Everything came in paper; the burgers and fries were on little paper trays as well. The fries are crinkle cut and come with lots of crunch.

There’s nothing fancy about the décor, a big black and white mural at one end, a big neon logo on the wall, and some tables and stools. That’s pretty much it.

All in all I’d be very happy to go back again.

So with our tummies full, but not too full, we set off to walk the rest of the way to Carriageworks.

Unfortunately, Woyzeck lived up to our fears. A Minimalist stage mostly occupied by a huge suspended net, German dialogue, and a cast who were so busy navigating their way around the constantly moving net that they barely had time to relate to each other let alone the audience. The music was good, but it was unclear why most of the cast we’re trying to sing like Tom Waits, other than because he wrote the music. The surtitles were positioned so far above the stage that you couldn’t read them and watch the action at the same time. It was drama without drama – or any emotional connection to the audience. Some of the audience must have enjoyed it though, judging by the whistling and stomping that accompanied the applause at the end. Strop and I looked at each other. Maybe it was just us, or maybe the others, who hadn’t drunk the koolaid had already walked out. There had been a few of those.

On the bright side though, our Festival experience can only improve from here.

Sydney International Terminal – Top Gear comes to Terminal 1

November 21, 2015 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

One of the lasting effects of The Quest (arguably its only legacy) has been to instil in Strop and me a great need to go out on Friday nights. If we don’t, we accelerate the aging process. We end up watching third-rate British crime shows on the ABC, and comforting ourselves with chocolate and whisky.

Friday night is the gateway to the weekend and, by embracing it as fully as our 9:30 curfew allows, we can engage a little known Einsteinian time-stretching effect, to make the weekend longer. It is an altogether better way to start the weekend than to leave it to the normal Saturday morning kick off. I can’t believe that it has taken the Quest to make me understand this fundamental law.

Whatever is going on Friday nights, Strop and I are always looking for an opportunity to turn it into an occasion for drinking, eating and hopefully some laughing.

Well this particular Friday night was a bit different. Keir, one of our multitudinous nephews (you will no doubt remember his famous appearances at the Amazon Steakhouse and Dean’s Diner), was setting off for London to fit in a few months of adventuring before starting uni next year. Strop had the bright idea of trying out the dining opportunities at the Sydney International Terminal, while we farewelled the ridiculously good-looking Keir.

On a ludicrously hot evening, the newly licensed Stropolina drove Strop to the airport, while I, being much more conscious of the state of the environment, caught the train. It was a race worthy of the Top Gear tossers, with me in the role of the one with long hair, the Stropolina as the overbearing one, and Strop as the short perky one. The race concluded on foot, with a sprint along the concourse. It is a bloody long way from one end of the terminal to the other and thoughtlessly, Keir had chosen an airline based solely on the fact that its check-in counter matched the initial of his first name. I finally caught up with Clarkson and Hammond at the check-in lines, where Keir and his entourage (Em, Tess, Will and Charlie) had that zoned-out look of resignation, that one adopts in airport queues. Our arrival was apparently the cue for Will and Charlie (of Mad Mex and Oldtown in Newtown fame) to start entertaining the crowd by limbo-ing their way beneath the retractable barrier thingys.

It was always going to be a struggle to get Will and Charlie to think about food when there was a world of temptation just behind them

Even the efforts of entertainers as sophisticated and nuanced as Will and Charlie were not enough to disguise the fact that being in a queue that you don’t have to be in is the most boring pastime known to humanity. So we left Keir to slowly wend his way towards counter K, and went off in search of alcohol and food.

The dining opportunities at the International Terminal are basically along the lines of a shopping centre food hall – but with Border Force.

We eventually found the airport equivalent of a pub, conveniently located right back down at the other end of the concourse. Unfortunately, the bar was understaffed and we arrived just after a thirty-strong tour group of Chinese travel agents. We eventually got some beers in, but Will and Charlie were too distracted by the arcade games machines to commit to any of the food on offer. While we drank up, and Keir filled in the bits of paper that Border Force were going to need, Will and Charlie re-enacted famous scenes from Top Gear series 19. We had to drag them away from their race around the Nurburgring when a disagreement about the correct line to take on turn 12 threatened to turn into an ugly argument about which of them was the real Stig.

Imagine how much fun they'd have if we put some coins in — Imagine how much fun they’d have if we put some coins in

Acknowledging the wide range of palate sophistication within the group, we decided to embrace the food hall concept, establishing a base camp at a centrally located table. From here each of us could forage for our food of choice, without driving the others crazy. Quite a few of us went the Mexican option, possibly in a nostalgic tribute to Will’s Iron Man period. The boys themselves were only ever going to be satisfied by burgers and chips, while Tess went for chicken and chips. Tess certainly won the battle of the chips. Fat and crunchy with actual potato flavour will always beat thin and flaccid with no discernible flavour. She couldn’t finish her chicken though, which enabled Strop and Em to indulge in the old family ritual of picking over someone else’s bones. I enjoyed my slow-cooked-pork nachos except for the weird liquid cheese stuff that I unwittingly agreed to because I couldn’t hear what the guy assembling my meal was saying. The rest though, was great.

Will suddenly realised he had a vegetable in his mouth and no one was paying attention

Eventually it was time for the man of the hour to step up and take off. After lots of group hugs, and a brief discussion of whether he is better looking than Daniel Craig, Keir disappeared into the tender embrace of Border Force, and the rest of us headed for the car park.

So, if you find yourself in a situation where you are going to have a meal at the International Terminal, take Will and Charlie with you. You’ll have a laugh if nothing else.

Off the map ramblings

November 2, 2014 by Andrew Christie 6 Comments

We’re back. Back to the sound of koels at midnight, and hot, jasmine-scented winds blowing through fake Halloween cobwebs. It’s good to be home.

When we set out on our big adventure six weeks ago I had high hopes of keeping the blog – if not actually relevant – at least occasionally updated. But there was far too much fun to be had to bother doing anything as boring as writing. At one point, as we mucked about in London and then Devon, I had some pretentious thoughts about saying something significant about The State Of The British Burger, but that was overtaken by the shock of finding ourselves lost in the souks of Marrakesh. Any spare energy that I might have had for writing was instead needed for bargaining the price of my fetching new red leather slippers down from stratospheric levels, to merely extortionate.

So this instalment is not a review of anything in particular, just a collection of rambling commentaries and notebook jottings.

The State Of The British Burger

British burgers have always been different from Australian burgers. The poms seem to think that the salad is not part of the burger – just something to be had on the side. This was true back in the 1970s when burgers were a strange and exotic thing in England. My first experience of this salad phobia was at a Wimpy Bar in Hampstead – the burger consisted of just a bun and a rissole, and the most memorable part was the bright red tomato-shaped ketchup bottle. Things are still a bit like that, the emphasis is very much on meat (or at least protein) in a bun. The meat also still tends to the rissole-like and is often a bit on the dry side. There are small improvements in some of the trendier pubs, where the salad is creeping stealthily from the side plate and insinuating itself between the bun and the meat. However, this raises the wider question of whether the appearance of burgers in English pubs is a good thing or not. On this subject, I am in two minds as usual. It has to be noted though, that the low proportion of salad, and the three-dimensional quality of the meat patty in most British burgers does tend to make them more structurally stable. So there is that. The best burger, and thus the most Australian-like (obviously), was at a hipster-run pub in Richmond-on-Thames. It had a good balance of meat to salad, and it stayed together long enough to be eaten. The White Cross was a nice pub actually. It had all the essentials: good ales, burgers, and wifi. So thank god for hipsters really.

In fact it is fair to say that English food generally is on the improve. We really started to notice this at the Orangerie at Kew Gardens. We were on our way to North Devon with a wet but compulsory stop at the historic gardens. When our orientation “train” trip ended, and it was still raining, we headed for the shelter of the Orangerie for some lunch. And amazingly the food was terrific: simple, wholesome and tasty. Soups, roast vegie salads, and good bread. We even got a decent coffee there. We didn’t expect that. We really didn’t. There had been an air of autumnal harvest feasting through the first week or so of our stay in London. The friends we stayed with have allotments and were keen to show them off in all their glory – especially the crunchy juicy apples straight off the tree. But what we didn’t expect was that the food concession places in tourist spots such as Kew and Lincolns Inn Fields would be so much improved.

Random Thoughts on Morocco

If you fly Royal Air Maroc don’t be concerned if your 737-800 only has 45 passengers out of a possible 180. No good can come of wondering what the other 135 passengers know that you don’t. Nor can any good come of noting that if there were more passengers, the crew wouldn’t have so much time to smoke up the back of the plane.

When arriving in Marrakesh it is wise to have the correct address for your riad. The correct phone number is also useful.

When Marrakesh locals offer to show you the way, sometimes they are actually just being helpful.

Stay in riads rather than hotels – they were universally comfortable and interesting even if the plumbing was a bit idiosyncratic.

There are a lot of courtyards in Morocco, and there are a lot of French people smoking in them at 8am.

Learning to say bonjour convincingly is more productive than huffing about the smell of cigarettes.

When you are lost in the souks, remember the old navigation trick: satellite dishes generally point south.

There is excellent orange juice to be had in Morocco. It comes from having excellent oranges.

Some of the best meals we had were on the road – travelling to and from the desert. Wonderful country-cooked tagines.

Fez v Marrkesh? Both. Marrakesh is crazed and edgy, Fez is smarter and more relaxed. You need a bit of both.

Go to the desert, like Australia it’s an essential part of the country.

Buy a stupid head scarf, you know you want to.

Take some Imodium.

On Being Home

Our arrival back in Sydney was marked by a queuing crisis in customs and a shouting match between taxi drivers. I blame the heat.

By Friday night we had mostly recovered from the jet lag, and headed for King Street. Out of habit really, and to remind ourselves of where we were up to. There was a lot of Halloween silliness going on, but as always King Street does things differently. You can never be sure whether the naughty-nurse-zombie outfit is regular Friday night gear or special for Halloween. On the way home we came across a heavy metal band blasting out frenzied riffs to the delight of the crowd beneath the I Have a Dream mural. They were the real thing: the bass player had a nazi helmet, eyeliner and a chain for a guitar strap.

It’s good to be home.

Back in the harness next week – we’ll be visiting Spencer Guthrie.

385 Deans Diner – Burgers and bereavement

August 8, 2014 by Andrew Christie 11 Comments

I was sitting down to start writing a different version of this blog when I got the call from the nursing home.

Last Friday night we went out to Deans Diner. My mother died on Saturday morning. There is no connection between these facts other than that I had been to see Mum on Friday just before I went to the Diner. Strop had planned the outing with our nephew Keir and his girlfriend Zoe, for some teenager-paced burger action. When I got there I was a bit under the weather with a cold, and worried about Mum’s complete lack of interest in food, and in life more generally. CityRail hadn’t helped my mood either. Not that they were doing anything special – just being their usual selves. So clearly I wasn’t really in the mood for a night out, but I was willing to make an effort, suck it up for the greater good. Take one for the Quest.

Strop has been very keen on the idea of Deans Diner, talking it up at every opportunity despite the fact that it really did not fall within The Rules (because: no plates). She had heard Good Things about the burgers from her network of connected young groovers (otherwise known as Facebook). And I can see the appeal: retro/original milkbar vibe, overlaid with 1950s aesthetics, and rock’n’roll burger stylings. The burgers come in lots of variations, all with suitably daggy RnR names, plus they do fresh-fried fish and chips, and for drinks there are spiders in colour themed candy-striped containers. They even have a few Greek specials and baklava for dessert (though I think they pronounce it differently than they do at 3 Olives).

Having talked up the burger joint for about a month, Strop, no doubt wanting to preserve the currency of that well known old proverb, Perversity Thy Name is Strop, ordered moussaka instead of a burger. As punishment, the Burger Gods elected to give the tattooed and dreadlocked staff the impression that Strop must be a vegetarian – the only logical reason to avoid a burger after all. So they gave her vegetarian moussaka instead of meaty moussaka. Apparently it was awful – although we only have her word for that – no one else was stupid enough to give it a try, as we were all perfectly happy with our meaty burgers. There was The King (Keir), The Queen (Zoe) and The Jackson Five (me). Splendid burgers one and all. The chips were a bit pallid and stodgy, but the ginger beer spiders were excellent, as were the staff. Friendly (except for punishing Strop), even though they were working flat out on a very busy Friday night. Later Strop and I had a brief discussion, trying to work out if they were hippies with tatts, or hipsters with dreads – an important distinction in the tribal inner west. Afterwards, Keir and Zoe went off in search of exotic desserts, while Strop and I toddled home to bed.

On Saturday morning I watched Mum dying on the floor of her room, surrounded by blue clad paramedics. I stood outside in the corridor with my hands on my head, hoping that I had made the right decision, telling them not to resuscitate her again.

Let her go. It was over. She was over it.

I knew it was going to be serious when I arrived to find two ambulances occupying the driveway of the nursing home. When I walked into her room, the oldest ambo asked who I was, double-checked I was her son, talking directly to me. Serious voice. While the others kept working, cross-checking the drugs, deciding what to do next. They had a pulse going again, but she wasn’t breathing herself, being ventilated by one of the blue heroes. While I listened to the explanations of what had happened I thought, so this is how it ends, lying on floor with your nightie cut open, tubes taped into your face, and cords stuck to your chest. I was glad she had knickers on.

Now as we deal with the mundane aftermath of death, I wonder why I don’t feel anything much. I don’t know what her life or her death meant. Do our deaths mean anything? Does it matter how we die?

Everyone is very nice to you when you are bereaved, which is great, but it leaves you in a pretty weird zone. A kind of bereavement bubble.

Dad was sitting in the corner of Mum’s room – not his usual chair – everything had been pushed aside to clear a space on the floor for the ambos to do their resurrection work. He looked smaller and older than I have ever seen him.

Later, after the ambos had gone, we sat in the room with Mum, back in her bed but still tubed up, waiting for the cops to come. We’re still not sure exactly why they were called. The doctor came later. With exasperatingly long pauses and hand wringing, he seemed genuinely concerned, upset that he still didn’t know what exactly had been wrong in the weeks leading up to her death. When you’re 91 it doesn’t really matter. In between visitors, we sat and waited, saying the things we hoped were the right things to say.

We heard later that three other residents of the nursing home had died in the past two weeks. Flu season.

349A – Buzzzbar – Blathering the night away

June 14, 2014 by Andrew Christie 2 Comments

Buzzzbar seems a very relaxed place. When I arrived, a woman was just leaving, trying to pay her bill with a small dog under each arm.

After quite a bit of e-communication, we have been promised a largish group for tonight’s outing, but everyone else is running various kinds of late, so I am the first to arrive. Buzzzbar (I have to be careful to get the spelling right without falling asleep) is a big place, with tables and lounges and a back courtyard that opens onto a lane off Enmore Road. There are plenty of seating opportunities, but mindful of the group we are expecting, I nab the large lounge area. It is a bit too nippy to be sitting outside, and anyway it will be smokey. That is one of the problems with dining in Sydney, you can’t eat outside without having to put up with smoke.

The staff seemed very concerned that I had turned up by myself, and were disconcertingly attentive for a while – until I had ordered a beer and some chips. I told the waiter that I was part of a much, much larger group that would be arriving soon, but he tried to convince me that I should join another table anyway. I resisted, convinced that Strop and the others would not leave me in the lurch.

Eventually the others arrived, first Strop who wasted no time ordering a glass of something smooth and red. Then Linda, Sue and Julian find us, and lastly, we are joined by Matilda. This is the full complement, except for my brother Steve who is always a late starter.

Linda and Sue are aunts to Matilda, who is not-quite sister to the Stropolina. Julian used to be a local, but has defected to Melbourne now. The evening takes a short sci-fi detour when Julian lifts his shirt to show us the blood sugar monitoring device he has plugged into his side. “I’m not diabetic. I just wanted to try it out because my company makes them,” he said, showing the flat-line read out on the portable monitor that is linked wirelessly to the probe in his side. That’s dedication, that is.

Caught in the headlights of Bentley Continental GT fantasies

Drinks are ordered and mistakes are made. Matilda is not drinking, which is a pity because she spent the rest of the night knocking everyone else’s drinks over. Linda and Sue ordered a bottle of shiraz from somewhere called Ram’s Leap which turned out to be eye-watering and drew unfortunate comparisons with Ram’s somethingelse, and a lame joke from mygoodself that involved crutching, and was poorly conceived at best.

Around about this time we moved to a proper table and started thinking seriously about food. The menu is fairly typical of pub/cafe fare. There is a From The Grill section, an intriguing From The Fried section, as well as a somewhat nostalgic From The Larder section. Under these headings there are burgers, steaks, schnitzels, lots of pastas, and some salads. In the end, our order ranges freely over the menu, with a couple of pastas, 2 bangers and mash, fish and chips, a burger and a schnitzel. Very democratic if you don’t count salad, which I often don’t.

While we waited for the food, conversation ranged far and wide. From the merits of the Bentley Continental GT as a form of transport to jazz venues and racist dogs. Somewhere during this interlude the Ram’s somethingelse ran out and was replaced by a much more pleasing Argentinian vintage. Dogs were a hot topic for a while, particularly Linda and Sue’s entertainingly loopy kelpie which, in the absence of wooly livestock at the local parks, makes do with cornering some hapless spadoodle and trying to eyeball it into submission. And we thought our dog was crazy.

There were nice tunes on the obligatory speaker system – everything from Hendrix to Duffy – but the atmosphere was spoiled a bit by the cigarette smells that kept wafting through, dragged inside by the flow-through ventilation. The courtyard space seemed to be very popular with teenagers, who seemed to be very interested in smoking in groups.

When the food arrived, everything came but the fettuccine carbonara, “It will be slightly delayed,” said the waiter, “as the chef has dropped it on the floor.” When it did arrive, it came with a poached egg on top, which seems to be a new trend according to my in-depth google research. My hamburger was good enough to hold its head up with the rest King St burgers, the bangers and mash were voted “Alright,” and the schnitzel “Fine.” There was no trace left of the fish and chips, but there was quite a lot of the fettuccine with prawns left, but this might have been because Matilda was so busy knocking things over.

In the end the food was kind of irrelevant. We were having a fine old time blathering away, (bulldogs vs pugs, Melbourne vs Sydney, Canberra hipsters – really?), and that is what Buzzzbar is all about. As we were getting ready to leave we were presented with complimentary homemade chocolate and orange truffle things on sticks. And they were extremely yummy.

326 – The Townie – It’s definitely a pub

May 10, 2014 by Andrew Christie 2 Comments

It is good to have finally made it to the wrong side of the tracks. I feel that the eateries over here in South Newtown will be more interesting and exotic than the ones we have been visiting lately. I am optimistic – which is a bit of a strange experience for me.

The Townie is a pub’s pub, and it’s not trying to be anything else. It’s not trying to be fashionable, or hip, or Irish. In fact it is barely trying to be a pub. It’s a bit grungy and down at heel, and it attracts a crowd that is less shiny and monied than those across the tracks at the Bank. The Townie is the student-group-house-living-room of pubs. You suspect that most of the patrons at the Townie have a bit of a soft spot for heavy metal bands and playstations.

It has all the usual pub things: screens, bars, TAB, smokers’ terrace, 70s movie posters and a slot car track. What more could you ask for? Well, some food, but we’ll get to that in a minute. I have a bit of a soft spot for the Townie, it is the sort of pub where the stranger at the next urinal will engage you in conversation about the etiquette of talking to other blokes at the urinal. “These young blokes don’t get it,” he says as he zips up and makes his way back to the bar. “They think it’s strange. Freaks ‘em out.” I note that he hasn’t bothered to wash his hands and resolve to avoid shaking his hand if the situation should arise later in the evening.

The Stropolina and I are the first to arrive and we nab a table upstairs near the Bistro. The barmaid is very pleasant if a bit eccentric. She doesn’t talk directly to you, instead providing a real-time commentary on the transaction as it proceeds. “Oh another Coopers Pale, what a surprise. And crisps? Chicken and lime? Too exotic, ha. That’ll be twelve dollars. Weekend prices hey, what’s that about.” Most of the time I had no idea what she was talking about. I just smiled and nodded, and handed over a twenty. Later she came around collecting empties and said, “Ooh look, you’ve made bowls,” (commenting on the way our family open crisp packets by tearing a hole in the side to create a bowl shaped receptacle that allows easy and efficient access to the crisps), “My lab partner taught me how to do that, I’d never seen it before.” She was gone before any witty responses had time to bubble to the surface, so we just kind of smiled and said “Who is she?” and, “What is that accent?”

When Strop arrived the conversation moved on to holidays and the Stropolina’s experiences in Morocco when she was on her first-year-out-of-school-overseas-adventure. Strop and I heard about her encounter with a group of local lads, who invited the Stropolina and her friends back to their apartment. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t mentioned this bit to us before, and luckily they turned out not to be white-slavers, but tagine cookers. They took the girls out around the markets buying ingredients for a slap-up tagine prepared back at the apartment. She didn’t go into what happened after the tagine was eaten. Strop and I like a bit of cous-cous, so maybe we should go to Morocco too, but in the meantime all this talk of food has us hungry. Time to get on with ordering some food of our own.

We are at a pub and that means the burger wars are back on. The menu is a big wall mounted affair featuring all the usual pub offerings. There are pizzas, schnitzels, and steaks, but surprisingly, only two burgers. One is the Townhall Beef Burger, and the other is a schnitzel and bacon burger. I note that there is also a schnitzel and bacon pizza – something of a theme developing there. I choose the eponymous Townhall Burger as does the Stropolina but she is adding cheese to hers, and Strop goes for the schnitzel and bacon burger. There is also a bowl of salt and pepper squid to share.

Having ordered the food, Strop goes to get another round of drinks, returning with three schooners and the news that “She’s the best barmaid in the world, but I don’t want to sleep with her.” It takes me a moment to realise that this is a reference to my experience with the barmaid at the Bank. She then informs us that the barmaid’s hard to place accent, is Israeli. So there’s that mystery solved.

It was only when I saw a collection of burgers lined up on the counter that I noticed that we didn’t seem to have a buzzer or a table number or anything to connect us to the food that we had paid for. Apparently the young woman taking orders had forgotten to give Strop a buzzer, so it was just lucky that my stomach had been getting my eyes to pay attention. Napkins were another absence. Strop eventually ducked behind the counter and helped herself to a handful for the table.

The burgers came in the open position, which always intrigues me. Do they think we’re going to eat a burger with a knife and fork, or is it just to make the application of tomato sauce easier? Assembling the burgers required a bit of manual deftness to avoid spillage, as I soon discover. Strop came a real cropper when her first bite resulted in her burger disassembling itself, and landing in her lap. “Bacon from arsehole to breakfast,” she commented, putting the napkins to good use, scraping aioli off her clothes.

The beef burgers are the traditional burger size (i.e. not too big) which I think is a good thing, and they come with pineapple, beetroot and the now ubiquitous aioli. But they haven’t been made with love, and unfortunately the burger experience is less than the sum of its parts. The chips were disappointing too, and for the first time in living memory I did not finish mine. None of us did.

The Townie has me conflicted. I enjoy the fact that they are not trying too hard, and are happy to just be a pub, but it would be great if they tried a bit harder on the food front. You can still be quirky and laid back, while putting a bit of love into the food you are offering.

Next stop is the Cafe Newtown, which is as close to the exotic temptress that is Enmore Road as we are going to get – for the moment anyway.