Anyway I was in Melbourne last week for work so eating out every night. I thought this would give me a good opportunity to get some pics and try out a few restaurants.
Monday and first off the ranks was a decent hamburger. I had read an article on the web not long ago about the best 10 burgers in Melbourne so thought what better place to start. The top place apparently is something called the Beatbox Kitchen. According to the article itwas on a rooftop in Swanston St so we headed there only to find the place is a bar. They do serve burgers but they didn't look that good and it certainly wasn't beatbox. A quick search thanks to wonders of technology showed that the Beatbox Kitchen is now mobile, and the only way to find where it's at is via twitter or Facebook http://www.beatboxkitchen.com/ and they didn't seem to be anywhere Monday night.
So I shelved the Beatbox Kitcher for another day and moved to what was supposedly number 2 on the list, the burger at Collins Kitchen in the Grand Hyatt. We trudged back across town to Collins St to checkout the Hyatt's burger offering, only to find they now only serve burgers on the weekend at lunchtime! Grr.
Having been bitten twice now I decided to take the time to enjoy a beer in the bar and do a little research before hiking all over Melbourne. Seems the only place we could find that was supposed to have a good burger, was open on a Monday and wasn't way out in the 'burbs was a place called Soda Rock Diner http://www.sodarock.com.au/. So we jumped a cab and headed to Chapel St.
The place was a little run down and fairly empty but it was a Monday. I decided to get the Two Tons of Fun burger, some Chilli fries and chocolate shake. Service was prompt and didn't take long for our burgers to arrive. They looked the part so score marks for presentation, but that's about the best of it. I know I ordered a burger that specifically didn't have lettuce or anything else resembling salad, but that was a mistake. Partly mine, but partly theirs too IMO for even offering it in the first place, after all the trekking and psyching up for a good burger I wanted something substantial hence the double patty but they didn't have anything on the larger side that had salad.
My other complaint with it was the patties were dry, they could do with not cooking them quite as long, bt that probably violates some stupid health standard. The shake was good, can definitely recommend that, my eating partner had the vanilla one and reported that it too was just as good. The last pice though was again a dissapointment. The chili itself was good and flavourful, but the chips tasted like they'd been cooked in 6 month old oil and lacked any decent crunch. I think with a soggier topping like chilli on fries you need thinner crunchier chips, not the thick fish and chips store style ones they used.
All in all I'm not sure how anyone put this place anywhere close to a top ten list, it was OK and if you're down that way probably a good place to stop for lunch, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat there again.
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