Smash ’em Bro

One of the best places to eat burgers in Wellington is Grill Meats Beer. Unfortunately, they’re usually only open at lunchtimes on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so I didn’t consider them yesterday as a likely burger venue. When I got home, however, I found a Facebook post advertising their Burger Wellington entry, and disclosing the fact that they’d be open from Wednesday…information which would have been useful to me an hour earlier.

Oh well. Thursday was a bright sunny day, and I decided to take myself off to Zealandia for a walk and to see what I could see, not having been able to visit for three weeks. And after a refreshing walk around the sanctuary, what better way to relieve one’s appetite than with a burger? I took a detour on the way home and stopped off in Cuba Street to try their wares.

Grill Meats Beer’s burger offering this year is called Smash ’em Bro – a clear reference to the segment on sports comedy show The Crowd Goes Wild called “Smashed ‘Em, Bro”, where they summarise the best smashings – hard tackles where the tacklee is smashed – of the week. These are mostly garnered from rugby (both Loig and Union), but also sometimes include unintentional smashings from other sports, like netball. But I digress…the burger is described like this: Houseground beef patty with Swiss cheese, cheddar, pickles, red onion, lettuce and Epic Burger Sauce Vol 3 in a Brezelmania milk bun. The Garage Project beer match is Beer, so I had one. It looks like this: 

Again, a messy burger. Cutlery is provided, but I decided to forgo it. Also, this is another one without a side of chips and again, no offer from the waiter…which is a shame, as Grill Meats Beer do make tasty chips. Despite the mess, bun integrity was good, and the bun had been toasted. Overall, not a bad burger, but it was a bit…meh. This is GMB, folks! You’re supposed to be good at this stuff! Frankly, their normal burger is better than this, so I don’t know exactly what they’re trying to achieve. Again, a score of 7/10 from me.