Chickens Are Seoul Food

Burger Wellington is drawing to a close, and our opportunities for burgerisation are becoming fewer. I wanted to sample another local eatery, so, instead of making the burger-eating part of a wider outing, we made a special trip to our local beachfront café, Scorch-O-Rama in Scorching Bay.

Scorch-O-Rama does have the benefit of being open seven days a week – unlike many of the cafés  around Wellington, which have reduced hours, particularly in winter. We went on a Tuesday. Their burger is called Chickens Are Seoul Food, which pretty well flags what it’s going to be like: a Korean-flavoured chicken burger. It’s described on the WOAP website like this:

Korean buttermilk chicken with kimchi slaw, caramelised pineapple, and sticky honey spicy sauce in a Brezelmania charcoal bun, with squid chips.

It looks like this: 

There’s no Garage Project beer match, so I opted for local brewer Parrotdog’s Birdseye Hazy IPA instead.

As you can see, it’s in a charcoal bun. This only affects the colour, not the flavour, and it is quite a light, fluffy bun. Inside, the chicken thigh is covered in caramelised pineapple, and the kimchi slaw is underneath. This is again one to tackle with cutlery, not hands. I dug in. The generous portion of chicken is well spiced, and the kimchi gives a nice tang to counter the sweetness of the sticky sauce and the pineapple. There’s quite a chilli kick to the sauce as well. Instead of chips, it's served with polenta-crusted squid “chips”, which had been deep-fried. These are crunchy, perfectly-cooked sections of squid, which I really liked. This is a really well-put-together burger, and is one of my favourites of the competition so far. I scored it 8/10.