Mansfield’s Saucy Story

The Thistle Inn on Mulgrave Street in Thorndon has long had an association with Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand’s premier dead female author. It also claims to be New Zealand’s oldest surviving pub operating from its original site. Mansfield was a regular guest, and wrote one of her stories set there. Apparently it involved a lesbian affair, and is a bit of a saucy story.

After Saturday morning’s dance lesson, we nipped around the corner to the Thistle Inn to try their Mansfield’s Saucy Story entry in the Burger Wellington competition. It’s described like this:

Lamb burger with Zany Zeus yoghurt, zucchini, cucumber, kaffir lime, mint dollop and rocket in an Old Bakehouse bun. The Garage Project beer match is – you guessed it – Hakituri.

It looked like this:

What strikes you about this burger? For me, it was the sauce. Yes, I was able to eat it like a burger, but it was a messy business. The sauce was very runny, and quite a lot of it got distributed around the board on which it was served. The chips (not mentioned above) were in fact kumara crisps. Plus points: it was an actual burger, and despite the messiness, held together until the end. Minus points: the mess. Yes, I do want to look reasonably respectable after eating my lunch, not like I’ve been foraging in a trough. It was tasty, though, with the promised cucumber and mint “dollop” providing some refreshing counterpoint to the richness of the lamb burger. But it didn’t have the wow factor – it was a good, ordinary burger. I’m scoring it 7.