My score: 3/5
Upstairs, 87 Bourke Street, Melbourne, 9972 3699
For every clean-eater enjoying a chia smoothie or paleo popsicle there will be five people chomping on a greasy, grainy, cheesy burger with extra stodge on the side. That doesn’t mean burgers win, it’s just to say that food is in a polarising place right now with the health kick and ‘fully sick’ brigades both tending to the extreme.
New burger joint Grand Trailer Park Taverna doesn’t need to carry all this baggage. It’s just having fun with beef, brioche and booze (spiked milkshakes!), and fair enough, especially when happy customers can loll about on the covered balcony, keeping a benign eye on the Christmas crush while special sauce runs down their arms. (But please, let’s ban smoking in outdoor dining areas today.) Inside, the room is decked with picnic tables and open-sided caravans and you’re supposed to feel like you’re sitting in a US trailer park. It’s a cute, nonsensical concept from the ‘why not?’ school of design.
The menu plays with pop culture references (I spotted House of Cards and Coming to America before my Long Island Iced Tea slushie kicked in). The burgers themselves are tasty, messy and purposely overwhelming – the Francis Underwood, for example, includes a mac and cheese croquette which is silly carb-on-carb overload – but suddenly it’s gone. The buns (brioche or fluffy white) and beef patties are fine, the chips are okay, the cheese is purposely plasticky and the service (order at the counter, take a number) is upbeat.
It is what it is: cheap, crave-sating food that makes people eat like Cookie Monsters and say (or Facebook) ridiculous things like ‘Noms! Buuurrrrger!’ right before they enter a food coma. Desserts continue the overloadin’ upsizin’ theme: icecream is sprinkled with lumpy sherbet; waffles are stodgy and served with Nutella. I found Grand Trailer Park disposable but not unlikeable: it’s surely in for a hot summer.
See their website.
More outdoor eating:
Montalto Piazza Cafe, 33 Red Hill-Shoreham Road, Red Hill South, 5989 8412.
The piazza is a sprawling joy with sunny and shady spots, and simple pizzas, burgers and salads. Punctuate your meal with a stroll past the kitchen garden to the sculpture paddock over yonder.
The Baths Cafe, 251 Esplanade, Brighton, 9539 7004.
Find a spot under a beach umbrella and settle in for snacks, brunch or an easygoing meal with a bay view.
Union Dining, 270-272 Swan Street, Richmond, 9428 2988.
The rooftop terrace is a lovely spot for snacking (crumbed aspagarus, quail skewers) and drinking (‘hard lemonade’, perhaps) but call ahead in case it’s booked for a party. Enter via Brighton Street.
First published in The Age, December 14, 2014.
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