Umami Monster

It’s Day Three in the Big Burger House, and once again I decided to go local for today’s offering. This was due to time constraints around use of the car – Nicola has a thing at 2:00pm in town, so I needed to get back in time to hand over the key. I chose our local, and still fairly new, burger joint: Gorilla Burger. We’ve been there a few times and found their offerings pretty good.

The Umami Monster is described as such: Smoked point end brisket with Beehive bacon bits, Fortune Favours Necromancer black beer cheese sauce, dill pickles and pink onions in a Brezelmania milk bun. There’s no Garage Project beer match as Gorilla Burger are pretty much joined at the hip to Fortune Favours Brewery, so I selected a Trailblazer as accompaniment. They’re also offering $1 fries at the moment, so I took those as well.

It looked like this: 

Gorilla Burger’s offerings are designed for picking up, none of your namby-pamby “eating burger with knife and fork” nonsense here. As you can see, however, this one’s going to be messy. Nevertheless, it held together until the end; the bun, though light and airy, did not sacrifice integrity. This is just as well as a heavy bun can make the whole experience hard work…they’ve hit just the right balance of consistency and structure.

The burger itself was tasty, full of umami as advertised. The burger contained both a patty and strips of brisket, with plenty of sauce, and pink onions. Bacon bits as described. The brisket was slow-cooked to be fall-apart tender, and hadn’t been over-smoked, as some brisket burgers are; which sometimes overpowers the actual beef flavour of the burger. The bun was topped off with a deep-fried pickle, which seems to be the thing these days. The fries were their standard-issue fries served with aioli.

“This IS a tasty burger!” I said to myself, and polished it off in short order. The first beef burger I’ve had (OK, only three days in), and easily the pick of the bunch so far. I score it 8/10.