Clive's Everything Burger
$12 (burger only)
(choice of any three toppings included: bacon, cheddar, brie, avocado, mushrooms, fried egg)
The world-wide Kobe Beef fad of
apx. seven years ago never really got a foothold in our fair city. While over in New York, Halifax, Portland (and parts in-between) people treated their taste buds to the by-product of cows who had revelled in the pleasure of having sake mashed into their muscles, we on the island stayed happily behind the curve of burger progress.
Well now Clive's is on the scene with a Kobe burger offering. I didn't have great expectations going into this one (based on the banality encountered on a recent trip to Chateau Victoria's other restaurant, and the ho-
humness of a previous Kobe experience), and I have to admit Clive's didn't do much to blow me away.
The flavour of the beef is the obvious stand-out in this package. Though I prefer AAA Alberta, the Kobe burger patty is certainly better than your average mid-level or pub patty. Mostly it stands out here because there just isn't really a flavour for it to play off of. The cheddar Clive's employs is melted well, but is really a little bland. The fried egg is runny, but not enough so as to make you forget that there is an incredibly infinitesimal condiment offering in this unit: if there is, in fact, anything there at all. This burger could really benefit from some sort of
dijon aioli, but instead it appears to be brushed with butter which renders the lettuce saturated to maximum
sog levels.
Despite these issues and others (wilted onions whose taste is impossible to pick out in this package) this is not a bad burger. The bun is soft, and wraps itself around the patty quite well, and the bacon is of the lovely fried grease and salt variety that melts in your mouth like a fizzy candy centre. The texture and flavour of this unit is fairly pleasing, but it could be so much better if they just put some sort of fucking condiment on it and maybe some caramelized onions. Mayo isn't rocket science.
And now for your reading pleasure... MOWGLI FROM JUNGLE BOOK CHIMES IN!!!!!!!!
I knew we'd be in for a surprise attack from some overpriced food item on the menu the moment we stepped into this fancy extension of a hotel.
At $12, the Everything Burger comes at quite a bargain. The catch here is the monumental $3 you must splash out for a side order of salad.
WTF $3 for a salad??? I knew this shit was gonna happen!
Taste-wise, the fried egg is a beautiful addition to the burger. While Donald wished the egg could have been runnier, I like it just the way it is: dry and crispy (perfect complement to the juicy mushroom and patty). With that said, the mushrooms could and should have been cooked a little longer to really bring out the sweetness in it. The lack of sauces is a blatant way of telling the eater to savour the taste of the ingredients alone. This would be great if the ingredients themselves were actually THAT tasty. Instead the encounter with this burger reminded me more of that skinny bitch in high school who stresses out over gaining half a gram in body weight and drinks Diet Coke over the actual
goodie. The plating for this burger is also like all the skimpy clothes skinny bitch wears to impress the boys: shiny and minimal.
If they had focused less on presentation (style) and more on taste (substance), then perhaps I'd actually take skinny bitch to this place again for a nice candle-lit dinner, but for that night I had to settle with staring at Kennedy's sideburns.
VERDICT: Kobe Beef is still a little overrated, and Clive's itself is lacking in some very key areas.
