surfturf

Surfin n Turfin in Gzira

Summer just wouldn’t be summer without big, juicy burgers. Our next summer tour pit-stop lands us in the Gzira neighbourhood, where our burger radar picked up one creation loaded with both beef and sea flavour. The Crew is a family-run eatery that opened its doors last May in the heart of Gzira, just opposite Manoel Island. Stefania Scerri is the manager supreme and plans to run the establishment like a tight ship, with a crew of family members on the assist. Now we have a good hint where the name on the sign comes from. But why the nautical theme? The building has been a family heirloom for generations. Indeed, it was one of the oldest in all Gzira. In the 1940s, it was a popular bar with sailors. It was known as The Great War until grandma turned it into a grocer in the 1960s. Stefania’s father took over the grocer in the 1980s and kept it running until he recently retired. He also dabbled as a fisherman, and that further explains the whole marine motif of the eatery. As the decal on the wall says, welcome aboard!

With a cushy downstairs area decorated with original photos from a bygone time, an open kitchen that oozes the sweetest aromas and an appeasing terrace overlooking the Marina, this looks like the quintessential place to consume a surf and turf summer burger. Chef Georgia Dickens, who hails from Northampton, UK promises a burger that blends together land and sea through a combination of a 150gr beef patty and two prawns. The whole burger is dripped in their own version of a spicy mayo sauce that bolsters the overall richness.

The patty is made from a mix of beef with a good percentage of knuckle and chopped onions. The actual recipe was buried deep underground in a pirate’s chest by some sailor pictured on the wall. No one is to tell! Knuckle beef is flavourful and very lean and including it in the patty mix imparts an overall good beef texture. The patty is quite packed and leans towards a finer grind. It’s brushed with butter, grilled and finished in the oven. When cooking over a hot grill, fat helps prevents the beef from drying out, and the resulting char taste of this grill is very balanced, slightly smoky and totally delightful. There is no scientific analysis of what makes the best burger patty, so stop asking us when you see us around! It could be a specific percentage of fat content, a unique coarse texture or a distinct blend of beef cuts. Presumably, it’s a combination of all three. This buttery patty here is delicious with an abundance of texture. It has a rich, full, meaty sensation in your mouth and on the back of your tongue. It’s also seasoned flawlessly and cooked exceptionally well to the requested temperature. The beef is just juicy from start to finish. It’s a pretty thick patty with a hefty bite to it and fits the diameter of the bun like a jigsaw puzzle. It’s a proper burger patty done right in every conceivable way.

The surf part of the burger comes in the form of two prawns, with the shell left on. Steak and lobster is the name of the game for surf and turf, but as much as we like to eat lobster every day, you need to change it up once in a while. Prawns come in a variety of sizes and textures. These are chunky and fabulously succulent crustaceans, unleashing the turbocharged flavour of the ocean. All this goodness is sandwiched in a brioche bun that is spread with butter and lightly toasted. The tender bun is covered with a creamy sauce, made in-house, and then layered with lettuce. What’s a burger without sauce? This element has not been neglected here as there’s a generous amount of very spicy sriracha and lime mayo spread on both halves of the bun. This sauce is tangy and zesty and covers all the goodness of the land and sea. It deserves its place in this beef and prawn combination, and gives the whole burger just enough creaminess, to turn it into a marriage made in heaven! Yes, there will be an amount of creamy and dreamy sauce dripping down the side of your burger but if you are going to go surf and turf, let’s not cut corners! You don’t need a bib to eat this burger, but you might get your fingertips slightly saucy.

The construction and plating of this burger look as good as it tastes. This is one of those unassuming burgers full of superlative flavours because it’s done from the heart. Each bite mixes softness and tenderness with plenty of marine juice, alternating with crispy, crunchy bits for contrast. No burger is complete without the compulsory sister side dish, the fries. The skin-on potato chips are crispy, light and flavourful. Two bites in and we were hooked. However, The Crew also offer the option of hand-cut chunky chips for an extra charge. These are identical to the chips that come standard with their fish & chips cod dish. They are boiled, baked, fried and sprinkled with garlic. The triple cooking method and the actual size of the chips themselves are unequalled locally and deserve the full attention of any chips lover! Those thin potato sticks on Big7 have nothing on these chips! Our Top 5 Fries charts are trembling big time!

The menu is chockful of sea delicacies and the Fritto Misto catches our attention. This is a whole fish tank of sorts on a platter, and it looks ravishing. The calamari fritti are a golden pile of tangled tentacles, crisp and tender in all the right places and served with an in-house tartar sauce infused with parsley and olive oil. The prawns are plentiful and have a white compact pulp and rich creamy flavour, guaranteeing a mouthwatering result. An L2 sized king prawn is also present. It had that moist, firm flesh and a medium sweet flavour that we love so much. Every bite proved to be a lifting point and an immaculate outset for the beer-battered fried cod. Here, the flavour comes from the seasoning and the beer and is the same variety of cod as found in the Fish & Chips dish on the same menu. Take our word, the cornerstone of British culture is the best order on the menu. The fresh and flaky cod had a flavourful batter with a thick crust and was crisped to perfection. We washed down all the sea goodness with some Luscombe organic drinks. These are made in the UK and are crafted from classic English soft drinks and sparkling fruit juice. Every drink is entirely free from concentrates, additives, preservatives or artificial flavourings. The Lime crush was our favourite as it’s made from Sri Lankan limes and Sicilian lemons.

The Crew have taken the beef burger and shot it up the next level by adding the surf factor, hence created a star of a burger that is a tremendous surf and turf experience. This burger is one of those agreeable friends, a sort of reliable buddy whose purpose is to make you happy and make you feel full. It’s so good that it will make you want to learn to surf! August is the perfect time to get things crossed off that summer burger list, and if you’re like us and you’ve been eating beef burgers all winter long, a burger like this is the perfect summer treat. More burger joints should aim higher and stand up to the challenge of offering more seasonal burgers. As far as Gzira burger eateries go, The Crew are sailing triumphantly towards the finish line, and it seems that for the time being there’s very little in the way. Too much of a good thing is never enough, but don’t take our word for it. Just hop over to Gzira, as this is one summertime burger you must experience for yourself.

The Gold Standard Surf n Turf

Last September, after almost 6 years of checking and testing burgers in Malta and all over Europe, we found one that scored 90+ points in our books. What were the odds of finding a second one, anytime soon? Well, rejoice burger lovers, as today we have found a Surf & Turf burger with a Gold Star merit, in the most unexpected of places!

Never like in 2018, there has been such a peak in superior burgers and a spike in chef creativeness. Coming up with a Gold Standard burger is no easy feat. The Gold is reserved for those burgers that are extraordinary beyond belief. Those meat & bread creations that are handcrafted from scratch and display gastronomic techniques that are not usually associated with burger grilling. And so, can you imagine our bewilderment, when we came across one such burger, in a Sliema Take-Away?!

The typical Maltese Take-Away is generally not considered material for Gold Stars. Most are greasy corner shops, with no particular health standards, and are renown for frozen & reheated food. Everyone knows that, which is a very unfortunate matter. Chef Darren Zammit wanted to change that misconception. Having spent 12 years working in and out of kitchens in the UK, Darren moved to Malta with the intent of setting up a Take-Away concept with high-level Gourmet standards. He did that at Le Poisson in Bormla, elevating anything fish to new standards. You could have fresh pasta with fish and classic fish & chips cooked right there and then whilst you waited. Some 3 months ago Darren moved over to a new Take-Away, tucked away in Rudolph Street, Sliema, aptly named Sea Salt. And this is where we caught up with him, and his new burger-making venture. Darren immediately strikes you as a jolly and very hard working individual, with a penchant for quality gourmet food. Every dish, whether it’s a burger or a sea bass, is prepared on the spot, so it does take some time, as it’s cooked to the individual’s liking. Whilst you wait for your food, you get a free show of Darren literally juggling pots and pans, building all the components of your burger from scratch. This is a crazy concept, unlike anything we’ve ever seen… we wish all Take-Aways were like this!

The Gold Star surf & turf burger in question is made from a 180gr beef patty and is topped with deep fried floured calamari and a whole Sicilian red prawn. All is covered in bisque sauce, and sandwiched between a brioche bun drizzled in lemon vinaigrette and layered with rucola. The heart of every burger is the meat patty itself, but most would agree that surf & turf burgers are an exception as there are multiple key ingredients that make such a burger tick and work. Indeed, when you think of Surf & Turf, you probably think of a steak and lobster. Surf and turf’s origin story is shrouded in mystery, with different restaurants all across North America arguing for the onliest title of who did it first! It’s a curious combination that sprung from America’s fascination with the continental cuisine of the 60s. Together on a plate, surf & turf became a plush status symbol for the upwardly and fashionable class.

Enough gastronomic history. Let’s talk about the meat element. The patty is made from a combination of chuck & brisket, imported from Ireland. The patty is pan seared in olive oil so all juices are contained within and then left to rest. Chuck is a very popular beef cut to use in burgers, but adding brisket changes the flavour formula to something more unique and individual. Old school butchers made burgers mostly out of chuck, or more specifically, chuck roll. It’s as classic as you can get, yielding a high-fat burger made from the shoulder area of the animal that comes across as juicy rather than greasy. Hands down, it’s our favourite cut to grind. On the other hand, brisket is more of a blue-collar cut, as it has a distinct super beefy flavour profile that will yield a rich burger with an elevated attitude. Together they make a bomb of a patty that is buttery, has a robust flavour, but a soft airy texture filled with meaty juices. Only an ambitious cook will go the extra mile and make something as complex as a granulated burger, combining 2 diverse cuts of ground beef to create a loosely grained patty. This also illustrates a larger point about effort and technique, and why only a handful of burgers deserve the Gold standard in our books. No one can argue that the result is, well, a meaty delicacy. This isn’t just any burger, it’s an exquisitely complex burger with a patty that is carefully hand-ground, gently shaped and expertly sizzled. If the patty wasn’t impeccable, your burger would never live up to its juicy, beefy and satisfying potential. And this one was juicy, toothsome and as epically enjoyable as it can get.

As soon as you step into an express food shop called Sea Salt, the first thing you expect is fish & crustaceans. And this one does not disappoint. The next burger element worth of note is the calamari. Here they come as deep fried, flour-coated squid. Squid meat is firm and white with a mild, slightly sweet, almost nutty flavour. And most importantly it’s low in saturated fats. Frying calamari in deep-oil is one of the best squid-cooking methods. These crusty little morsels are the crispiest squid we’ve tasted so far this year. Just imagine the lightest, crispiest, melt-in-your-mouth-iest coating over the most tender squid, and this would be it! By comparison, they are a lot lighter than their Italian cousins, which are usually heavily coated with cornmeal. These fried calamari do hit the spot where it counts most. Squid tends to have a somewhat mild flavour, so one has to be attentive what sauce to use, as this would mask its delicate taste. We like it with salt alone, maybe a little lemon, but if you crave a sauce, there’s the prawn bisque.

The bisque sauce is a perfect addition here, as it brings forth an explosion of oceanic flavour, without afflicting the rest of the burger elements. This bisque is mainly made with a mix of browned veggies, flaming brandy and prawns. Bisque is a smooth and creamy French soup, usually interfused with crustaceans, and here it’s presented in sauce form. It adds a level of deeply rich creaminess and a velvety-smooth flavour of prawns and sea. The more you taste it, the more you wish there was. Which would bring in an engineering problem. Too much and the burger becomes too messy, whilst too little will result in you feeling robbed and cheated! This creamy, dreamy and tangy bisque dripping down the side of your burger is well justified. Listen, if we are going to go surf and turf with a burger, let’s not cut any corners! However, our burgers were very manageable to eat barehandedly, with no messy fingers aftermaths.

The last burger element packing a hefty sapid punch is the bright and fiery red prawn, filled with white and compact pulp. The melt-in-your-mouth texture and rich creamy flavour is what distinguishes this variety of Sicilian prawn from other oceanic counterparts. This makes it a bit more costly than other small seafood, but the tasting experience is worth every cent. Darren is not cutting any corners here and wanted to jam-pack his burger creation with seafood. All the beef and seafood are sandwiched in a pillowy yet sturdy toasted bun. This brioche bun is much wider than the standard variety we all know of. It’s also drizzled with a lemon vinaigrette made from lemons, olive oil, mustard and garlic, and it tastes amazing. Indeed, the first bite was sublime, the crunchy calamari and the juicy beef patty pairing exceptionally together, with a stupendous boost from the phenomenal bisque. Obviously, the red prawn has to be tasted separately, and its raison d’etre is to provide a gratifying bite intermission. This is for sure a decadent burger that will undoubtedly satisfy all seafood lovers. Such a burger will be very hard to beat. It’s surf and turf at its finest.

There’s one more thing. The fries! These are freshly cut potatoes that go through a 1½ day process of preparation. They are boiled in water & doused in vinegar and left to rest before they are blanched in an ice bath. They are ultimately deep fried until they end up in your mouth. We’re sure that Darren was inspired from his many years in the UK as this is a common pub snack all over the British Isles. These chunky and scrumptious potatoes have a very addictive salty-sourness, which we adore, and are definitely Top 5 Fries hitlist material. That salty, acidic crunch is totally addictive and unforgettable. Crave on, these tangy and crispy chips can be enjoyed for dinner time, lunch, and why not, even breakfast! We’re heading back to Sliema for some more…

The October Prawn Star

Just Burger, known for their unique and delicious burger specialities, want to feed our October cravings with a Prawn burger. Whilst everyone is topping burgers with sliced pickles, the Just Burger team have turned the classic condiment formula inside out, and put such an extravagant ingredient as the prawn at the very top as if they want to keep the summer vibes going! Will this be the congenial element to complement their now inimitable beef patty? We went to Sliema to see for ourselves.

This October burger, conceived by Leeanne, blends together land and sea through a combination of a 140gr Angus beef patty and breaded prawns. All is set on top of a bed of rucola leaves and pickled onions. The patty is topped with traditional cheddar cheese that bolsters the overall richness, and the whole burger is dripped in their own version of the thousand island dressing.

The Angus beef patty from Just Burger is top notch, and when it comes to the local express food scene, there is nothing comparable in this price range. It’s always seasoned flawlessly and cooked exceptionally well to the requested temperature. The beef is just crazy juicy from start to finish. The char taste of the grill is very balanced, slightly smoky and totally delightful. It’s neither too thick nor too flat and fits the diameter of the bun like a jigsaw puzzle. It’s a proper burger patty done right in every conceivable way.

The prawns are coated with crispy crumbs, and they are fried golden until they become some of the tastiest deep fried prawns we’ve tried out this year. You even get two of these sizeable tiger prawns. Prawns come in a variety of sizes and textures. These are chunky and fabulously succulent crustaceans, unleashing the turbocharged flavour of the ocean. All this goodness of the sea is covered with a thousand island “secret” sauce that is tangy and zesty and deserves its place on this burger as much as it does on a bed of greens. This typical American salad dressing is made from Tabasco, onions, ketchup, chives, vinegar and a few other ingredients that Just Burger won’t tell! We don’t know why this is called thousand island, but most probably it’s because one could come up with 1000 distinctive ways to enjoy it! It’s totally perfect with the beef and prawn combination, and gives the whole burger just enough creaminess, to turn it into a marriage made in heaven! Yes, there will be an amount of creamy and dreamy sauce dripping down the side of your burger but if you are going to go surf and turf, let’s not cut corners! You don’t need a bib to eat this burger, but you might get your fingertips slightly saucy.

Preserved onions in malt vinegar are a classic Maltese condiment usually associated with hobz biz-zejt! It’s quite unusual to find pickled onions in burgers, but they go beautifully with beef and cheese, as they taste sharp and sweet at the same time. They are crisp and together with the rucola, they provide a layer of extra vegetable crunch to the whole burger affair.

With this special offering for October, Just Burger have truly created a “Prawn star” of a burger, that tastes as good as ever and is a tremendous surf and turf experience. It does pile high, as it has a premium topping that barely fits into your mouth in one go. Yes, this one is big, juicy and loaded with flavours, and you’ll need to unlock your jaws and unstoppably dive in! This burger is one of those agreeable friends, a sort of reliable buddy whose purpose is to make you happy and make you feel full! Is this the ultimate surf and turf burger? You will decide when you go have a bite at it!

Hola it’s Paella time!

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.