By Anto Coates
About a month ago,
my girlfriend and I were getting ready for a work function of hers when I
casually slipped one arm through a waistcoat.
"You’re not wearing that are you?” she said, her raised eyebrow confirming it
was not really a question. "But the guys
at Duke Carvell’s wear waistcoats,” I said, reminding her of her fulsome praise
for the bar staff’s attire only a week earlier.
"Yes but they’re cool,” she calmly replied, reminding me in just four words that
I had neither the ironic facial hair, nor the air of effortless underground
cool to wear a waistcoat Duke Carvell style.
It was in the hope
of soaking up a bit of that Carvell cool that I turned up for a lunchtime
burger, disparaging girlfriend in tow. Well not quite in tow, she was marginally
late as usual (2-4 minutes as her text informed me with such accuracy that I
couldn’t help but be suspicious). Fortunately I found comfort in a tap-poured
Emerson’s Pilsner while I waited.
Some 8 minutes
later she arrived and as time was regrettably brief, we ordered straight away.
For me it was the Ali Baba burger with fries and for her a starter of Zuppa
Fagioli bean soup and then a Meze platter, paired with a glass of Croft Chardonnay
and a coffee to finish.
Her soup was both delicious
and prompt in equal measure, and served with a stack of crispy toasted bread.
The soup somehow mimicked her own mother’s cooking style, in what is the best
example of "just like Mum used to make” cooking I’ve seen, because it genuinely
tasted like her mother had made it. After a peek into the kitchen to check that her mother wasn’t there, our mains arrived and my girlfriend cannily noticed
that her Meze platter was essentially just a dissected version of my Ali Baba
burger, with the ingredients making up the platter. This would have been more of a
negative but for the fact that the constituent parts were nearly as good on
their own as they were in the Ali Baba burger.
The marinated lamb was if anything a touch dry, but I thought that almost made
it more authentic, like a lamb sandwich you make the next day by picking the
bone clean with a carving knife – always better than the night before. The
mashed beetroot in the burger was a nice touch too – I’ve always thought the
fresh acid and intense, earthy flavours of beetroot do better without having to
contend with the often-mushy texture of the vegetable.
Overall I gave the
burger a 4/5, which I texted to 315 like the good little social networker I am
and trotted off planning what I’m going to cook on my newly won BBQ
this summer.