We review a bunch of gross craft beers

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2015

Did anyone else spend a majority of 2014 on their knees, holding their fists in the air and cursing craft beer as loudly as possible? The shit is everywhere, the wet dream of thousands of beardos who made it their mission to make the most refreshing and easy to drink beverage in the world as unrefreshing and hard to drink as possible.

Apparently people love it, there’s about five craft beer events happening in Sydney every hour and your local pub now exclusively has beers named after random words like ‘Rusty Hop Barnacle Moose’ on tap.

About six months ago I was sent a six pack of various beers that people who are into steampunk would enjoy by a company called Hops & Craft, who run a subscription service that sends you six random craft beers every few months. The six pack sat on my desk, gathering dust until late last week, when I decided to put together a crack panel of beer drinkers (aka everyone working at Two Thousand / Golden Age Cinema who could knock off at 4pm) to review five of these nutty beers.

The panel consisted of:

Name: Hahna
Do you like craft beer? Normally no. But when I’m drunk I’ll drink anything.

Name: Willem
Do you like craft beer? Is Resch’s craft beer?

Name: Jessa
Do you like craft beer? Yes.

Name: Claire
Do you like craft beer? NO! I will usually avoid drinking it, I like embarrassingly simple beers like VB and Superdry -the latter because it has no preservatives and I’m a sensitive soul who is a bit allergic to preservatives. Not as allergic as I am to whimsy and fedoras though – both of which I associate with craft beer.

Name: Levins
Do you like craft beer? No. The hundreds of un-replied email invites to craft beer events in my inbox can testify.

The five beers to be tasted were:

Dos Blockos Pale Lager
Hopfen Fahrt IPA
3 Ravens Black Stout
Chai Fighter
Zeven Lemon Strawberry Blonde

We took a seat, reached for the bottle opener and started drinking.

BEER #1: Dos Blockos Pale Lager
What the label says: “A leafy flora with a candy shop aroma, sweet to the nostrils. The simple and refreshing taste sits on a low carbonation rounded by a hoppy bite after sipping.”

Claire: Has a distinct old pineapple juice aroma but a surprisingly light finish, this might be okay?
Jessa: I like! Goes down easy. 4 stars.
Levins: Not bad, pretty drinkable. It smelt like it was gonna be a piece of shit, but I reckon this is gonna be the best of the lot. This is the only lager of the bunch too, it’s rare for craft brewers to make lager – it may be easier to drink than an ale but it’s much harder to make.
Hahna: Attracts fruit flies. I see why they like it.
Willem: Not nearly as offensive as the label’s spiel. I would consider drinking this again, assuming it was free.

BEER #2: Hopfen Fahrt IPA
What the label says: This German IPA has come out bursting with fresh stone fruit, mandarin and grassy aromas. The flavour is choc full of spicy resinous hops, and is rounded out by a solid whack of bitterness.

Jessa: Smells musty. Tastes a bit like wet cardboard. 1 star.
Willem: A joke name that isn’t funny. Pungent, yeasty and too viscous for any self respecting beer. The joke is on us for having to drink it.
Levins: This is the worst. Tastes like someone spilt a coffee into a beer and decided “fuck it”. This will be tough to beat as the least drinkable.
Claire: Oh god, smells like blue cheese with quince paste (posh), looks like a cloudy UTI riddled urine sample and has a similar mouthfeel JKZ! Heaps fizzy. Good for standing around in cargo pants while laughing at the word ‘fahrt’.
Hahna: I can’t finish it because everyone’s comments are making me laugh or dry-heave the mouthful back into the cup.

BEER #3: 3 Ravens Black Stout
What the label says: A bold yet hospitable beer, with roasted and chocolate malts to call you in from the cold, sweet Munich and caramel malts to warm you and oatmeal to wrap you in silky comfort.

Willem: The espresso martini of the craft beer world. I can see the boys hitting this after a big night on the Cosmo’s at the annual craft beer disco.
Hahna: Reminds me of a cold cacao drink gone a bit funky in the sun then re-chilled. I prefer my chocolate in a solid form.
Claire: A thousand pardons m’lady, but this tastes like someone added a liberal spoonful of MILO to a beer. One time my dad put ice cubes in a milky MILO and my sister and I cried, similar effect.
Jessa: Chocolatey aroma and taste, so I’m a fan. Couldn’t sit on this all night though, one is enough. Easy drinking for a stout beer. 4 stars.
Levins: Smells like chocolate, tastes like cold coffee that someone put through a sodastream three days ago. Weirdly refreshing I guess? What’s with the coffee/beer combos though? Are craft beer fans too lazy to drink two separate beverages?

BEER #4: Chai Fighter
What the label says: The Chai Fighter is infused with Masala Chai tea sourced from the Berry Tea Shop.

Jessa: Eww. Smells gross. Tastes worse. An insult to Star Wars. 0 stars.
Hahna: Tastes like LIES! I can’t taste the chai! THEY LIE! LIARS!
Levins: Smells like the last thing I want to put in my mouth. Banana peels. These people have clearly never tasted chai before, but even if this tasted like chai it would still be fucked. This is the new worst.
Claire: Very sour on the nose, smells very specifically like raw chicken breast marinating in soy and garlic. It tastes like you have eaten the aforementioned earlier in the day and then burped. The aftertaste lingers and no amount of palate cleansing can erase the feeling that you maybe contracted salmonella from eating raw chicken.
Willem: If this were low carb it would be the official beer of the Bondi Yoga festival. Uniquely unpleasant, it doesn’t deserve to be labelled beer, it also doesn’t deserve to be brewed and bottled.
Bonus review by Kate: Like licking the inside of a Glebe Markets stall-holder’s bum bag. That hadn’t been opened since 2005.

BEER #5: Zeven Lemon Strawberry Blonde
What the label says: Having mastered the perfect balance between beer and cider, Zeven Lemon indeed combines the best of both worlds, adding natural strawberry juice to its brewed malted barley and wheat beer for a refreshing, delicious taste.

Willem: By the time I drink this I’m cursing the craft beer world. What is wrong with these people? It’s like they exist in an isolated, insular community with no interaction with the outside world to expose them to the idea that drinking beer can be a pleasant experience. Upsetting.
Levins: Not really beer, not really good. You can’t even taste the ‘real’ strawberries, if anyone was as stupid to want that in a beer they could just shove a strawberry in the neck and hopefully choke on it.
Hahna: Looks like cheap pink passion pop, tastes worse. Hurts my teeth (weird).
Claire: Burnt raisin toast. A beer perfect for those who prefer their Strawberry Cruiser’s ‘toasted’.
Jessa: It’s like if beer and a diet Vodka Cruiser got mixed together at somebody’s sweet 16th party. Not great. 1 star.

The review was over. We made our way back to our desks as the rest of the office scowled at us for loudly yelling “GROSS!” for a solid half hour. The upside of this experiment: nobody died! Plus, the Dos Blockos was pretty good! Maybe if more small breweries made lagers instead of thick, hoppy ales, the view of craft beer being largely un-drinkable would change?

One out of five ain’t bad right? If you’re a craft beer fan (or even a brewer!), don’t get upset, get in touch! Email us with some recommendations so we can do this again sometime with way less bitchy insults.

DISCLAIMER: Ten minutes after our tasting, Hahna broke out in hives. Please drink craft beer responsibly, if at all.

Where

Most of these beers are available when you sign up for Hops & Craft

REVIEW: Pho An, Bankstown

It’s all in the broth. It doesn’t matter how good the meat is, how well cooked the noodles are or how fresh the holy basil is, if the broth isn’t mind blowing, you’re dealing with a crap bowl of pho. A clear onion soup with some leaves in it.

The meat at Pho An in Bankstown is incredible. Thin, raw and abundant, it’s just one of the supporting actors in a bowl of pho tai. The star of the show is the broth, a rich, hearty and slightly sweet stock that will effectively ruin every other bowl of pho you eat in Sydney.

I love Bankstown and how many great dining options there are. My problem is that as soon as I get there, all I want to do is go to Pho An and smash bowl of pho so large it leaves me crippled and unable to eat for the next week.

I know that it’s not actually called Pho An, but I refuse to call it An Restaurant. It doesn’t feel like a restaurant inside – it feels more like a pub! Noisy, communal, cheap, but no beer. Instead we drink broth. Others have called this the McDonalds of pho joints, which works too – the pho comes out damn fast. You order a bowl and before you can think “oh shit did I accidentally order the one with tripe in it?”, it’s on your table, steaming hot and tripe free. You can order a bowl with tripe in it, or eight other variations including an array of chicken options, but in my fifty visits I’ve only ever had the pho tai. Those variations could well be life changing but my stomach refuses to ever let me find out.

One of the hardest things I’ve had to do in this life is share that bowl of pho in the picture up top with someone else. We were in Bankstown for the day and I actually wanted to eat at a few places that weren’t Pho An. You’ll read what they were over the next few weeks, but you won’t pay close attention. You’ll be thinking about pho.

Where
29 Greenfield Pde, Bankstown

When
Mon-Sun, 7am-9pm

How much
$14 a bowl

 

Ice cream tub and movie pairings

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2015

It’s eating-a-whole-tub-of-ice-cream-on-the-couch-and-watching-shit-movies weather. For about the same price as a waffle cone from a gourmet place you can get multiple litres of the stuff from the supermarket. Here are some movie/tub combos that are highly recommended.

Maggie Beer Burnt Fig, Honeycomb & Caramel ice cream
It’s Complicated

For the rich old white lady inside of all of us, it doesn’t get better than a Meryl Streep rom-com and tub of Maggie Beer’s finest. Meryl Streep could actually play Maggie Beer in a movie, they kind of look similar? Alec Baldwin kind of looks like a burnt fig as well. I have no idea what happens in It’s Complicated. I paid ten bucks for this little tub of ice cream and finished it before the opening credits were done. Highly recommended.

Splice Pine-Lime Swirl ice cream
Shrek

A big neon green thing that sounds like a great idea at the time but one hour after you started you hate yourself, but not quite enough to stop until it’s finished. That describes my relationship with this weird Splice ice cream that I just ate two litres of and the first Shrek movie which I just watched for the twentieth time in my life. It could’ve been worse – I could’ve bought two tubs and watched the sequel.

Four litres of Home Brand Neapolitan ice cream
Daredevil

If you’re about to spend your weekend binge watching an entire season of TV, you need at least four litres of Neapolitan. If you buy the really cheap stuff it’s not actually made from milk, rather some cool chemicals that will stop the ‘ice cream’ from melting at any point during your 13 hour TV marathon. You know what else has cool chemicals in it? The first episode of Daredevil! When he’s a kid he cops a vat of cool chems to the eyes and then develops superpowers. I ate the final litre of Neapolitan through my eyes and the only superpower I developed was type 2 diabetes.

REVIEW: THY Eatery, Bankstown

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2015

I hate cutlery. Knives and forks especially. A spoon I can live with and chopsticks are cool but nothing beats the high octane thrill of eating an entire meal with your hands. It doesn’t matter how fancy the restaurant is, if they send out any kind of meat on the bone, I’m picking that shit up faster than you can say “worst first date ever”.

There’s a silver bucket of cutlery on every table at Thy Vietnamese Eatery just begging to be ignored. The majority of their menu consists of bite sized Vietnamese specialties, hand picked by the gods of fingerfood. You might put a pair of chopsticks next to your plate so you look sophisticated on Instagram, but that’s all they’re good for.

Banh cuon is Thy’s signature dish. Freshly steamed rice pastry, rolled loosely around minced pork and chopped mushrooms. On the side there’s thick slices of Vietnamese ham, a pale processed meat with a sponginess that goes well with the wet rice pastry, broken into pieces with your hands and stuffed into your mouth after a brief dip into the sauce bowl.

Banh beo aren’t as messy to eat but after the banh cuon most of your arms are already covered in rice noodles and bean sprouts so you yell “fuck it” and try to pick up these cute little rice cakes with your elbows. The banh beo are topped with dried prawns, shallots and fried croutons, eight on your plate beside some more of that pale spongemeat you can use as an edible paddle for your food.

After two plates of ratchet hors-d’oeuvres, the main course is a banh xeo the size of a one year old, a bright yellow pancake, fried until crispy and filled with prawns, pork and bean sprouts. What it lacks in the satisfying crack of the banh xeo served at Que Huong in Cabramatta, Thy makes up for in sheer size. Tear into that metre long pancake (which is unfortunately filled mostly with bean sprouts), wrap it in herbs and lettuce, drown it in fish sauce and spill it all over your face while you flip off the cutlery bucket.

Your hands will stink for a good week after a meal here, but they’ll stink of victory. Victory over knives and forks.

Where
1/324 Chapel Rd South, Bankstown

When
Mon-Thu 9am-7pm, Fri-Sun 9am-9pm

How much
From $11

REVIEW: Que Huong, Cabramatta

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2015

Everyone’s got a dark little secret. Something embarrassing from their past that they’re not quick to admit around new people, out of fear of being mocked. But not all people are afraid of revealing dorky glimpses into their past. Some of us are even comfortable doing it just to begin a restaurant review in an mildly amusing way.

Five years ago I went on a holiday to Vietnam just because of a five minute clip from an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. I didn’t even have to see the full episode before I was throwing my money at a Flight Centre clerk. The clip was of Bourdain in Ho Chi Minh City, being taken out to breakfast for a dish I’d never heard of – banh xeo.

It was a big yellow crepe filled with prawns and pork that cracked gloriously when struck with a spoon. Broken into pieces, Bourdain then scooped the crepe bits into lettuce and herbs, dipped it in sauce and shovelled it into his mouth, muttering some classic Bourdain-ism about heroin or something.

Three months and three thousand dollars later I was at that same spot, shovelling crepes and making heroin jokes. It (and the subsequent Vietnamese holiday that followed my crepe breakfast) was worth every penny, but upon returning to Sydney I learnt that I could’ve saved a few grand by going to Cabramatta instead, where Que Huong serves a banh xeo that’s almost as good as Bourdain’s breakfast spot.

Banh xeo pops up on a few Vietnamese restaurant menus around Sydney, and too often it’s a soggy mess. Que Huong keeps things crunchy, even after a prolonged swim in the spicy fish sauce. Make sure you get a plate of banh khot, cute little deep fried cakes with a school prawn sitting proudly on top. Like banh xeo, the cakes are eaten with herbs and lettuce, but their insides are gooey and coconutty!

Pull up a seat out the front of Que Huong and ponder why the inside of the restaurant is filled with Cabra locals eating steak and chips. Then watch the most recent episode of Vietnam’s So You Think You Can Dance as it blares out of the TV at the bootleg DVD store across the road. Then say something profound about heroin.

Where
16/70 John St, Cabramatta

When
Mon-Sat, 11am-8pm

How much
Banh xeo $15
Banh khot $11

Pacifico Optical

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2015

I have a funny relationship with sunglasses. In that they generally make me look like a turd. It doesn’t matter if they’re a pair of $500 Pradas or some electric blue speed dealers from the servo, 95% of sunnies are a one way ticket to Turdsville. When I see a photo of two cool guys in a cool car wearing cool shades on their cool heads, I see myself in the beat up Camry stuck behind them in traffic, my eyes wincing in the harsh sunlight, in immense pain, forever.

Pacifico Optical have all the makings for a classic Andrew Levins turd costume: the idea of two bros from North Bondi who were inspired by the carefree coastal lifestyle, creating sunglasses in between bro-mantic swims in the clear blue water of the Pacific Ocean. But a miracle happened. I tried a pair of Pacific Optical’s new range of sunnies on – hell, I tried on their entire range, and they did not make me look like any more of a turd than I usually do!

For those of you who have more to look for in a pair of shades beyond “do they make me look turdy”, you can tick that hand crafted box, as well as the Italian designed acetate box and the German optic lenses box. They’re light on your nose and don’t squeeze your head, plus the price point is way affordable – at $159 they’re about the cost of two pairs of LeSpec’s, which we all know you lose within three hours of buying anyway.

Just before starting my “looking like a turd in literally every pair of sunglasses in the world” Facebook page, Pacifico Optical come along and ruin everything.

Where
Online

How much
$159

I ate an entire box of Gelato Messina’s ‘Festa Della Mamma’ gelato bon bons

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2015

Gelato Messina, Sydney’s two favourite words, have put together an extra special package for Mother’s Day this weekend. Does your mum call you a cheapskate each year after you give her a box of Roses or Quality Street that you picked up from the servo around the corner from her place? Why not wow her this year with Gelato Messina’s incredible selection of beautifully handcrafted, ice cream filled chocolate prisms? Or better yet, why not buy a box for yourself and eat them alone in a quiet corner of your office?

I highly recommend starting on the shiraz sorbet with dark chocolate ganache and popping candy, a delicate but delicious little sphere that melts ten times faster than the others in the box. After being amazed by how good the first one is, you may want to save the second one until last, but be warned: this might lead to you dripping cold chocolatey wine over your keyboard, which could delay your ‘I just ate an entire box of ice cream chocolates in about three minutes am I gonna die now?’ google search.

Other highlights include the roasted banana gelato with white chocolate ganache: a tiny yellow football that actually improves if you let it sit a while, the rich banana taste becoming considerably richer once the gelato softens beneath the hard ganache shell. The mandarin puree with salted butter caramel gelato is another winner, a cute dome of slightly sour gelato topped with rich caramel, wrapped in thick milk chocolate that gives way beneath your teeth with a satisfying crack.

Several times through my gelato bon bon voyage I thought ‘man, my mum would love these!’, but you know who else would love them? Me. Happy Mother’s Day to me.

See the full range of Festa Della Mamma bon bon’s and where you can pick them up from here.

REVIEW: Mary’s Kebab’s at Cliff Dive

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2015

It seems like it was yesterday that we were proudly announcing that Darlo late night drinkateria The Cliff Dive had opened a kitchen selling grilled things on sticks. It seems even sooner that we were joining the hordes praising the burger gods that Mary’s had opened a CBD joint, home to the best brekky burger we’d ever eaten three of before lunchtime at least twice.

As it turns out, the fellas at Cliff Dive and Mary’s like to keep themselves as busy as they do drunk and tattooed, as last week saw the Mary’s team move into Cliff Dive to open, of all things, a kebab kitchen. Could they work the same magic on the late night kebab that they had on the cheeseburger? There was only one way to find out. We had to eat all four of the kebabs on the menu.

Kebab one was the closest thing to a regular kebab, something similar to the chicken roll at El Jannah (a big compliment!), a chicken x garlic x pickle combo that you can turbo-size by adding chopped chicken hearts and livers to. Kebab two is the spicy one, the name ‘Devil Pork’ acting as a warning for the firey chilli kick folded in between the thin slices of pork and lettuce.

Kebab three let the team down a little, the promising combination of lamb and XO sauce being a little on the bland side, offering little in texture and bite, something easily fixed with a richer XO sauce (or maybe the addition of lamb hearts and liver?). All letdowns were forgotten after one bite of kebab four, the pumpkin and corn kebab stealing the show with the additional crunch of roasted chickpeas and a creamy garlic sauce. In all seriousness, my favourite of the kebabs might be this vegetarian option. What have I become?

If the only thing missing from Cliff Dive’s tiki and tinnie fest was a hairy man in a singlet making a shitload of kebabs in the corner, put your hands in the air. Mary’s have delivered again. As in, they’ve delivered another hit food spot. Mary’s don’t actually deliver yet, the bastards.

Where
The Cliff Dive, 16-18 Oxford Square, Darlinghurst

When
Thu-Sun from 7pm

How much
$9 – $12

REVIEW: Mary’s CBD

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2014

Beloved Newtown burger spot Mary’s wowed Sydney’s online burger eating ‘community’ when they announced that they’d be opening a franchise in the CBD. It was possibly the first time in history that anyone was excited about something from Newtown moving closer to their workplace. The productivity of human resource workers who worked within 10km of Pitt St Mall was down 75% for a solid 3 months. Every day they checked Broadsheet for news of Mary’s CBD opening, hoping to tag their co-workers in the comments before they were tagged themselves. “Omg, lunch date soon? This needs to happen! When.are.we.going?”

The wait ended last week when Mary’s CBD opened their doors on Castlereagh st, neighboured by numerous cafes which nobody you know has ever gone inside. The Mary’s crew warned everybody in the lead up – this city location was not going to be the dark, rock n roll dive bar that people have politely tolerated in Newtown. This was just going to be a simple takeaway joint, no seating, no Jack Daniels, minimal tattoos – and heaps of burgers, including their cheeseburger, veg burger and Mary’s burger, staples from their Newtown menu which are widely agreed to be the best burgers in Sydney.
Joining these burgers are two new ones, exclusive to the CBD store – the breakfast burger and the chicken burger.

The chicken burger is there to appease the fact that Mary’s CBD isn’t offering the baskets of fried chicken you can get in Newtown – instead you get a big hunk of fried thigh with a few bits of vegetables and some sauce. The chicken is crunchy, the bun is soft, it’s a good chicken burger for sure. But, it is completely overshadowed by the best thing on the menu – the breakfast burger.

Served at any time of the day, the breakfast burger is what starving yourself for a month then eating a Sausage’n Egg McMuffin must be like. A sausage patty, a hash brown, bacon, an optional egg and HP sauce in between a super soft bun. It’s messy, gooey and will make you shout expletives with every bite, which is a problem if you’ve opted to take your Mary’s burgers to the Westfield food court to devour. The breakfast burger is the kind of meal that will encourage you to get brutally hungover just so you can appreciate it even more.

Yes, it’s still just a fucking burger, but what sets Mary’s apart from most of Sydney’s other burger joints is their acknowledgement that a burger should be greasy, fatty and generally bad for you. The owners fell in love with a Macca’s cheeseburger and tried to do it better without fucking it up too much. While other burger chains are announcing new super low carb burger buns that look like wooden plates, Mary’s are embracing everyone’s favourite ‘sometimes food’ and ensuring that their offerings are as delicious as possible.

 

Where
154 Castlereagh St, Sydney

When
Mon-Sun, 10am-10pm

How much
$10 a burger

Images
Al Naturale

REVIEW: Burger Project

Originally published by Two Thousand in 2014

Restaurant reviewing can be a dangerous game. Wait, not dangerous – stupid. Everyone rushes to the newest food spot, desperate to get their review up first, or at the very least, before Simon Food Favourites gets his review up, complete with an exhausting photo essay on what the men’s toilet looks like. By the end of a new restaurant’s first week of business some 20 reviews will pop up on blogs or food websites, either praising or slandering the food they ate, delivering an ultimatum to their readers and then never returning, instead slogging their way through the long list of restaurants that are making their grand opening the following week.

One of the main problems with this ME FIRST ME I DID IT FIRST ME attitude of reviewing is that for most restaurants, the first week is a complete and utter debacle, a festival of mistakes compared to the what the restaurant will grow into over the next few months. This applies to a young couple making their break into the food world with their first jaffle popup or for a seasoned veteran with more Good Food Guide hats than he probably has regular hats, opening his latest offering, a fast food spot called Burger Project.

Man, for the amount of hype surrounding Burger Project over the last few weeks, you would think that ebola was opening the restaurant. But as you know, the figure behind Burger Project is not a terrifying virus that originated in the African continent, rather it is the ponytailed Sydney super-chef Neil Perry, of Rockpool and Spice Temple fame. Burger Project was announced in June this year, with a website that boasted ‘Where the taste and the purity begins’, amidst pictures of cows and an admirable message about sustainability – the essential ingredient to a good burger.

Having eaten Neil’s $24 wagyu burger at Rockpool and being outraged that he would even attempt to make his own ketchup (possibly the whitest outrage I’ve ever experienced), I decided that maybe Burger Project would not be for me. But the months rolled on and it became evident that Burger Project would be aiming for a cheaper price point. Pics from the launch event made their way onto Instagram and by god, things were looking pretty good! The hype started taking ahold of Sydney and when Burger Project opened two weeks ago there was a line stretching out to the escalators of World Square, and waits of up to an hour for a burger. Can you even begin to put yourself in the minds of these poor bloggers, waiting an hour for food that they don’t even get paid to write about?

After four days of being open the reviews were coming in thick and angry. People weren’t happy about everything on the menu except the thrice cooked fries, posting reviews with the level of utter disdain that should only be reserved for Neil Perry’s Qantas in-flight menu. When I went in earlier this week, Burger Project had just 48% likes on its Urbanspoon page. The hate for Burger Project had overpowered the hype. I ordered my burger cautiously, worried that I was about to unwrap Neil Perry’s fist between two buns, smearing rancid cheese on my face as he delivered an uppercut. But instead I unwrapped a burger. I took a bite and it was a burger. Just a fucking burger.

Those thrice cooked chips are great, crunchy and covered in vinegar salt. My mandarin soda was refreshing and the ice cream is cold. It all seemed to be in order. The staff were friendly and helpful – I asked one worker what the pavlova dessert was like and she said “ice cream” – and it’s cute to see Neil working behind the counter in his sweet little uniform, glaring at my photographer as he stood on a stool to get that important aerial shot of his milkshake.

So my review for Burger Project is the same advice I’ll give anyone who was emotionally scarred by dining there: It’s just a fucking burger. It’s ten bucks and it’s not bad. They appear to be listening to diner feedback too so if you wait a few weeks before heading in the burgers will probably be even better. But no matter how much better they make it, it will always just be a fucking burger. Relax.

Where
Shop 11.06, World Square, 644 George St, Sydney

When
Mon-Sun, 11am-3pm, 5pm-10pm

How much
From $7.90

Related links
The taste and purity begins here

Images
Al Kalyk