How hard is it to find a crispy chicken burger that’s tasty & tender, and not dry? Apparently, it is!
During our recent research for the Ultimate Chicken Burger, we ended up disappointed more times than happy and had to drive to KFC for some poultry consolation.
But what if KFC is having a bad day and lets you down with oily and crumbly chicken?
That’s where one of you came in and saved the day! Brian told us that there’s an unequalled chicken burger in his hometown, that’s just waiting to be discovered by us. So one sunny afternoon we went off to Bugibba square, where we found a bunch of lively people who welcomed us into Bistroteca. This restaurant is not new news to us. It originally opened in 2015 but was relaunched in December 2017 as a bistro concept. One of the key people behind this reinvention is Chef John Busuttil. John has been working incessantly in kitchens for 13 years, and even worked for a year as a private chef on a luxury yacht, berthing in 25 different ports! Once that adventure was over, we’ve spotted him here and there, driving the kitchen of a number of burger places, building peculiar and colourful burgers like no other. And that’s just what he did at Bistroteca. In the very enticing burger menu, we spot our Paella burger, a poultry creation inspired by classic Spanish cuisine.
Let’s delve into a quick historical observation. The original Paella Valenciana from the early 1800s consists of saffron-infused rice, cooked with rabbit, chicken, snails and different types of beans. The dish solely exists because of rice, as rice has existed in Valencia since forever. The 20th century, with the rise of popularity of Picasso & Dali, saw a burgeoning interest in all things Espanol. In 1950, Elizabeth David, a cookbook writer published his “Book of Mediterranean Food”, which included a recipe for Paella made from the untraditional combination of shrimp and chicken. Before long, gourmands all over England, Europe and America were serving all kinds of variants of the dish. The Paella of the 2000s evolved and transmuted shape, and today many Spanish restaurants serve a long list of paellas, including ones stocked with seafood and a variety of meats.
This burger has 3 main elements inspired by the Spanish Paella: chorizo, chicken and prawn. At the very base, there is a layer of red chard and 3 slices of chorizo. Red chard leaves are tender and have a taste similar to beet greens and spinach. The leaves are earthy, whilst the red crunchy stems are slightly sweet and have a similar taste and texture to bok choy stems. Every country has its own variety of sausage that people are proud of, and the Spanish have the Chorizo, which is a spicy dried and cured meat sausage. It’s somewhat similar to salami, though it has a very dense and almost chewy texture and adds a lot of richness and smokey flavour.
At the heart of this burger, there’s the premier element we’ve been looking for the whole time, the breaded chicken. This boneless thigh is tenderized with a mallet, rubbed in paprika and breaded in a mix of buttermilk, eggs, flour and panko breadcrumbs. Chicken thighs are more tender and juicier than other cuts, so it was a very good move to use thighs instead of something drier-by-nature like a breast. A good chef can really maximise the flavour from the tenderness of the chicken thighs itself, and this can be attested and tasted perfectly here. The chicken is the main attention grabber in this burger, and it’s succulent, and handcrafted with the right amount of crispy batter. From a texture perspective, it’s a massive step up from the king of express chicken burgers… KFC looks like a spongey breaded chicken in comparison! The chef was very open-handed with the portions too, as we get a whole thigh chopped in half! It also has a good diameter and thickness to it, and makes the whole burger two storey tall!
What’s a burger without sauce? This element has not been neglected as there’s a generous amount of prawn-based bisque sauce. Bisque is a smooth and creamy soup of French origin, classically based on a strained broth of crustaceans. Chef John uses carrots, leeks, onions, thyme, garlic, paprika and obviously prawns. Making a bisque is a very inventive method of extracting flavour from the prawns. It’s a time-consuming labour of love, but the result is a flawlessly creamy sauce with a thick consistency and delicious sea-flavour. This tangy sauce has a certain zip to it that works well with chicken.
No Paella burger worth its name would be such without a king prawn vigilant at the top, and this one is fried in tempura. Tempura is a popular Japanese dish of deep-fried seafood that is coated in a very light and airy batter, yielding a very consistent fry. In Japan, you’ll often find speciality restaurants that only serve tempura. Here the Tempura is made from egg white and fried at a very specific temperature so it gratifies the best result.
No burger is complete without the compulsory sister side dish, the fries. Problem is, what fries could live up to such a major-league burger? So we did not get your standard burger house fries, but sweet potato crisps! We’re big-time suckers for sweet potatoes, but these fabulous hand-sliced crisps are even grander than our all-time favourite Badass sweet & salty potatoes that started it all. We rarely tasted sweet potato chips so crispy, light and flavorful! Three bites in and we were hooked. We haven’t been this happy since Christmas time, and dare we say, we are ready to cross from one side of the island to Bugibba, just to savour these crisps again. There must surely be some sort of magic trick involved on how Chef John crisps these up equally on both sides, as the result is amazing. Our Top 5 Fries charts are trembling big time!
This Spanish-themed burger is hearty and every mouthful creates a deliciously tasty sensation. The meat to bun ratio is exceptional, as there’s much more chicken than bread, and that’s the way it should be. The bun is malleable and it almost fuses with the chicken, just like a moist, soft wrapper that’s subtle enough to let you appreciate the crispy texture of the thigh. As far as Spanish burgers go, it’s unchallenged and lonely at the very top of our burger charts. As a chicken burger, it’s racing triumphantly towards the top, and it seems that for the time being there’s very little in its way.
