The Hunter

Today’s burger was the first that I’ve tried whose choice wasn’t dictated by proximity or time pressure. I took a look through all the burgers listed as “Wellington Suburbs” on the Location drop-down on the Burger Wellington page, to see what was going on in the Eastern suburbs generally. There’s a lot! From this shortlist I selected Arcimboldi in Seatoun, who are offering a venison burger. It’s called The Hunter, and it sounds like this: Awatoru Wildfood venison patty with millionaire's bacon, fried onions, rocket and Dijon Zany Zeus crème fraîche in a Zaida's sesame bun, with housecut fries. Sounds good, huh?

The Garage Project beer match is Cereal Milk Stout. Made with cornflakes, apparently. It comes with instructions: shake the can by inverting it three times, open and pour vigorously into a glass. It does not have a widget inside the can, of the kind found in Guinness (and other) cans in the UK. Instead, it is injected with liquid nitrogen, and it is this that gives the classic head beloved of stout and porter drinkers:

The burger itself looked like this:

This is a burger that could easily be picked up by hand, and I proceeded to do so. The first bite produced the inevitable squirt of juices from the opposite end of the burger, so it was a bit messy to eat. But bun integrity was good, and the burger wasn’t dried out as can happen with venison  - I suspect the addition of some pork fat into the patty to prevent this - and well flavoured with rosemary. I wish my hand-cut chips came out as well as theirs did…but for that I’d probably need to buy a deep-fat fryer. Which I’m not going to do. The barbecue sauce for the chips was tangy and full-flavoured. This was a pretty delicious burger. Even better than yesterday’s?...Yes. So I give it 9/10 (gotta leave myself some wiggle room for something truly spectacular!)

I’m going to have to plan my next burger adventures around work, as I’m going to be spending quite some time at Zealandia over the following week. I’m going to investigate further afield than Eastern suburbs so that I can feed myself on the way to and from Karori.