Tainted Love

We went to Te Papa for a talk about shore birds, and particularly bar-tailed godwits, and their migration to North Korea, on Monday. Sounds like an odd subject, but there are compelling reasons why the tiny New Zealand Pūkorokoro Shorebird Centre should be influencing North Korea’s government policy.

Afterwards, we went for lunch at nearby Fork & Brewer – the venue I’d been trying to get to last Friday. On a Monday, and past the normal office lunch hour, it was almost deserted…but, importantly, still open, and serving food. We settled in for their Burger Wellington offering, The Tainted Love.

It’s described on the WOAP site like this: Randwick Meats Wagyu and pork patty, with a Fork & Brewer Tainted Love juniper and passionfruit sour glaze, cabbage and daikon slaw, Kewpie mayonnaise, shichimi togarashi and tamarind infused tomato sauce, in a La Linda sesame milk bun, with crispy onion rings.

It looks like this: 

And how was it? Tasty! The patty was OK, despite being well-done. There is a conundrum here: if you include pork mince in your patty you need to cook it well, but the pork and the wagyu ensure that the burger doesn’t dry out and become chewy. Also, the coleslaw makes for a slippy-slideyness to the burger as whole, so I didn’t even attempt to pick this one up, it was straight in with the knife and fork. I couldn’t really notice the additional flavours of the ketchup, they’re lost in the overall mix.

The Garage Project beer match is again The Devil’s Lettuce, and this time, I tried it. The devil’s lettuce is a slang term for marijuana, and, sure enough, the ingredients listed contain terpenes, which are the type of compounds found in Mary Jane that give it it’s effects. It doesn’t specifically say it’s made with cannabis, because (I guess) laws and shit. Anyway, it was a pleasant enough IPA.

This was better than the souvlaki burger, and I quite liked this one, so I’m scoring it 8/10.