It’s that time of the year when Malta wears green and every food grill sells out of burgers & beer! Thanks to Just Burger, you can start enjoying the burger part of St. Patrick’s Day from today, and it already seems like it’s Patty galore on Paddy’s month!
Question is, how come all Malta suddenly becomes Irish-centric for 1 day? It mostly has to do with us succumbing to advertising and copying the rest of Europe. St. Patrick’s Day was meant as a day to eat and drink as much as you please in celebration… mostly the traditional Irish meal of bacon and cabbage. Guzzling shots of whiskey and unlimited cans of beer were not part of the original equation! A marketing campaign from Budweiser in the 80s convinced thirsty boozers that drinking beer and St. Patrick’s Day were one and the same. And eating places were quick to follow pace. No one loves a pseudo-holiday more than burger joints! So cheers to you, Irish people, for giving us a holiday where excess is not simply encouraged, but required!
Many burger joints have been turning their run of the mill burger, into a St. Patrick compatible one, year in, year out! Throwing in some Irish beef in the patty or add beer to the mix are the most common tricks of the trade we’ve documented. Some go to lengths to have their bun coloured green, whilst others have the guts to just rename their standard burger, and jump on the green bandwagon! What about the corned beef, flowing Guinness, peas, carrots, corn, stewed cabbage, potato pancakes and onions? Just Burger have stepped in, in time of need. Some of these typical Irish ingredients have found their way into their new March burger creation.
Guinness and onions are staples in Irish cuisine. Daniel from Just Burger, a humble young man who takes pride in his burger work, has assembled these two ingredients to create Guinness caramelized onions, infused with bay leaves and thyme, and cooked in butter & oil. This forms a sweet bed for the 140gr Angus beef patty that Just Burger use in all their monthly specials. The beef blend is very intriguing, robust and always expertly mastered like every fine piece of meat should be. It tastes 10001 times better than equivalently priced offerings from other express food magnates like McD or Burger King. As Daniel points out, the focus has to be on the quality of the meat. If that’s not good than your burger is no good. Throughout the time that Just Burger have been operating from Sliema, their burgers are always perfectly cooked to the requested temperature, and the seasoning is as simple as it gets, yet nothing short of flawless. This delicious patty is as juicy as it ought to be, and it’s grilled with so much love that it’s hard to come up with any level of complaints or shortcomings!
The beef is adorned with melted Irish cheddar. This is a mild cheese, which has a moderately strong flavour. It is matured for a lesser period than Vintage Irish Cheddar so it can be enjoyed even with apples and pears. It’s very laudable that Just Burger always make it a point to use different cheeses to flavour-up their burgers. This cheese was a very natural choice and really makes the whole burger stand out.
Can there ever be an Irish-themed Burger without the bacon? A scrumptious slab of smoked streaky bacon adds flavour and crunch to the equation. The bacon used is very, very smokey and we like that. When we hear the word bacon we always expect a good English breakfast style crisp. Do we always get that? Unfortunately no, but that’s not the case here. Crispy and not burned are big keywords, and Daniel does not disappoint. This bacon is crumbly and crunchy as the Lord of crunch commands! Flavour wise, it adds a rich layer of saltiness, as if a crispy bomb of saliferous flavor has just exploded inside your mouth. Just like Just Burger have set top standards when it comes to fries, they are now doing the same with bacon! Other burger joints should open their eyes and not hurry the process when it comes to bacon grilling. Today’s burger eaters don’t want soggy and limp bacon anymore.
There’s even more crunch in the form of a potato rosti. This pancake is made from shredded potato and thyme, grilled and then deep fried. For a simple food item with just one humble main ingredient, the rosti could prove to be surprisingly difficult to pin down. As much moisture as possible needs to be squeezed out from the potatoes to get a really crisp result, otherwise, the final product will be a soggy and lippy pancake… and just like bacon, no one likes that. The Rosti is a traditional Swiss fritter, so it’s a bit of a surprise that the Irish potato pancake equivalent, the Boxty, was not used here. Boxty also has flour and buttermilk as ingredients. However, this Rosti is authentically tasty, first-class crisp on the outside, and soft, meltingly and potatoish within. It’s of a level of goodness that it might seem as if this burger needs no other adornment to make it ace all scores.
But that’s not the case, as there’s one final Irish ingredient; pea shoots, which have been sourced locally. Pea shoots are the actual leaves of sugar snap peas. Peas shoots taste like fresh English peas, refreshingly crisp and a combination of sweet and grassy. These vegetables bring crunch like it wouldn’t seem possible. The Pea shoot season is frighteningly short so we’re glad that Just Burger have taken advantage of this very seasonal green and included it in their burger, instead of mushed-up peas. They are a terrific complement to what is one of the most well-rounded St. Patrick themed burgers we’ve experienced in the last 5 years.
The bun is sturdy enough to hold all these ingredients in place, without breaking a sweat. It’s a welcome game-changer from all the standard bakery buns we see most of the times. The burger itself does not have any excessive level of sogginess and that helps a lot too. The 5-star studded fries that Just Burger is synonym with, join the burger and they are superbly seasoned and crispy. We’ve tasted and tested them regularly, and they are truly worthy of this formidable burger.
With all these gratifying levels of goodness going on, have we just found out the crunchiest burger of the year? Yes, we might have! All layers have been conceived with abounding thought and much planning. This burger is just divine. Generally, it’s all about the beef, and while the beef blend is rich and heavenly, the accent of the other ingredients is almost as important for achieving such a congenial result. It took St. Patrick and a merry band of Irish people to drive someone to come up with the beefiest and most satisfying burger concoction for the greenest day of the year. There’s no questioning that.
Beware! Knowing that this Burger is only available for the month of March has one caveat. You might be returning for another one, before, during and after St. Paddy’s Day!
