Le Bistro is the main restaurant at the 5 star Radisson Blu Resort in St. Julians and is more than often associated with fine dining. Within the pages of its á la carte menu, we can spot what might initially look like an unassuming burger offering. And that’s when our burger radar turned curious and started beeping incessantly red… What is a commonplace burger doing amongst all these other gourmet food offerings?
We headed towards the quietest and most natureful part of St. Julians, where we met with Ramon, the Resort’s Culinary Director, who confessed that their burger offering is on their menu 365 days non-stop because it’s one of their most sought-after dishes. That’s sweet music to our ears! Indeed, Le Bistro came up with various iterations of their signature burger during the past years, and every 6 months or so, they fine-tune and change the formula to keep up with their patrons’ exigencies.
Still, you may ask, why are #MALTAburgers checking out a very conventional burger? Even though there’s only 1 burger option in the entire menu lineup, you can add a selection of ingredients to your burger and come up with a customised creation. We are game, and opt to add cheese and bacon, to forge a well known and loved, burger staple.
They say that the devil is in the detail, and that couldn’t be truer than today. Le Bistro design their menu around seasonal Mediterranean ingredients and the bold, dynamic flavours of the best local Maltese produce. Their farm-to-fork concept is to utilise local harvests whenever possible to both support our farmers and fishermen, and at the same time, be able to work with fresh raw materials, which always yield surpassing results. Indeed, at the heart of this burger, there is a 350gr minced beef patty, mixed with onions, ketchup, Worcester sauce and garlic. The vegetable part is composed of rucola leaves, 2 slices of tomatoes and 2 large pieces of very pickled gherkins. All is housed inside a toasted brioche bun, which is spread with a smokey brush of bbq sauce as the main dressing. That’s the standard burger offering, but you know us well by now, and we always like to jazz things up, and that’s where the extras come in: Let’s add 2 slabs of grilled back bacon and some smoked Applewood cheese in the mix.
So did our attempt to transmute Le Bistro’s burger into a Bacon Cheeseburger elevate this common staple into something more refined? The mighty 350gr of beef makes this a heavyweight contender, especially when compared to the run of the mill 120gr patties on offer in many of today’s burger joints. This is a thick and crusty patty that is mostly cooked well-done. In the wrong hands, the meat would have a predictably bad ending with much char and total dryness like we, unfortunately, experience too many a time. But luckily that’s not the case here, and this meat packs more than meets the eye. The patty has an impeccable amount of juice and moisture, yet it doesn’t gush down uncontrollably like a stream of gravy and cause a shameful mess. It’s undeniably moister in a favourable way than most of the common offerings we see day in, day out. It’s got enough juiciness that the chef should be proud of. The choice of beef, mixed with the other condiments played out well in this particular case, catapulting this burger much ahead of the curve.
A healthy dosage of cheese is unmistakably a pleasing partner for the beef. The Applewood cheddar is a fairly dense cheese, treated with smoke flavouring and coated with what tastes like paprika. There’s enough creamy cheese here without being too spicy. It does not leave a burnt aftertaste and cover any of the other flavours, which makes much common sense. The bacon slabs are very thick and quite delicious, with a nice chew, and the grilling execution is appreciated. The bacon does the job to flare up the overall zest, a notch or three. The BBQ sauce is devised in-house, with tomato ketchup, brown sauce, local honey and some other seasonings. It’s sweet yet tangy and has a good reason to be in this burger. You also get a red onion relish as a side, which you might want to add into the burger itself, even though we presume that was not the chef’s proposed use of this onion jam!
All of this adds up to a superbly big-size burger that works very well in the grand scheme of the local burger scene. It’s a burger for anyone who wants to experience a beef classic with an upgrade or two, as it’s overall pleasing and beefy. If you are a lover of bacon & cheese then there’s no single doubt that this is the burger you should try next. For the burger adventurer, who’s looking for somewhere chic and posh, this is the place to be! The environment and decor are 1 million times trendier than your everyday burger joint. And when the food is good, there’s no reason not to enjoy it in a distinguished dining place. And surprisingly enough, the price is comparable to most burger joints, but you get the 5-star sterling service and the exclusive class of a fine dining bistro.
Should you want to wind up your dinner in style, we got 2 magic words for you: Lemon layered cake and Sticky Brownie! The honey short-cake with pineapple cream curd infused with thyme is your best option if you love limoncello after dinner, but if you’re a chocoholic like we are, we have another option for you: a brownie jar filled with dark chocolate cubes, banana, toffee, salted caramel and white chocolate cream… That’s 2 more reasons to come back to Le Bistro for another round with their heavyweight 350gr burger!
