Wannaburger Edinburgh
Wannaburger?
Frankly, my answer to that one is "not really" or "hardly ever". Even before the McLibel case when two London anarchists put the US's biggest burger chain under the spotlight, even before Eric Schlosser penned Fast Food Nation, the charms of this iconic US dish were lost on me.
I have tried to like it, honest. I have been to some of the best burger joints in Manhattan, but still I don't get it. The universally pappy bun is the first stumbling block. Then I want to add garlic and parsley to the patty to make it more interesting. If the whole point is the plain taste of seared beef, why not eat a steak? Who can taste the meat anyway with all that vinegary mustard and tomato ketchup?
I was hoping to be converted by Wannaburger, a "gourmet" burger operation in Edinburgh. It certainly looks the part, with conspiratorial booth seating and squirty bottles of French's mustard on every table. From a sourcing perspective, it's a cut above your average burger joint, using 100% fully traceable Aberdeen Angus beef (that way you know that it isn't "Scotch" by way of Ireland, Botswana or Brazil) and freerange chicken. The burger buns are "baked fresh every day" apparently.
In the interests of fairness, I took two mates who are partial to a good burger. Secretly I was planning a chip binge. I try to show restraint - I have no chip pan at home - but being Glaswegian, I am genetically programmed to have a weakness for spuds in all fried forms. In the event, the chips were a huge disappointment.
These crinkle-cut specimens could have been homemade, but their granular, vapid interiors made them taste awfully like standard boughtin jobs. You couldn't object to the buns, except to say that they were pretty boring, but then burger buns always are.
The burger menu does that thing of putting the definite article before each option - "The Blue Cheese", "The Italiano", "The Hawaiian", "The Camembert" etcetera - and there are not much short of 20 formulas, nearly all available with beef, chicken or bean. My vegetarian beanburger - The Cajun - seemed to be made from a mixture of legumes. It was almost totally characterless, save for an overlay of chilli heat. I was hoping for that interesting "blackened" herby taste you get from a true Cajun spice mix, but it didn't happen. Inconsequential smears of mayo and red relish soaked into the bun leaving it soggy and starchy.
The meaty burgers had more going for them: pink, as promised, with a competent smokeseared grill taste. "The Cheese" used what tasted like a nippy, mature cheddar, not the customary plastic gloop. "The Bacon and Guacamole" variant sported rashers of Ayrshire back bacon that seemed to be dry-cured, and the avocado element tasted fresh and home-made.
Side orders - which come for free on quieter days of the week - included an unremarkable coleslaw and a mouth-mugging smoky-sweet barbecue sauce. (If you want to experience a brilliant barbecue sauce, then check out the Memphis barbecue chicken served at the excellent Anderson in Fortrose.)
I find the American habit of drinking milk with meat (or drinking coffee with hot food, for that matter) fundamentally alien, but sweet shakes are part of the burger experience. We toyed with a banana and peanut butter option, but that sounded too much like a meal in itself, so we went for the vanilla shake which tasted like icecream blitzed with milk.
One US dish I do love is a New York baked cheesecake, but Wannaburger's was way below par, with wet crumbs and a sticky, gluey mass that clamped itself to the roof of the mouth and showed absolutely no sign of ever having seen the inside of an oven. The chocolate brownie was cloyingly sweet and had a squidginess about it that suggested the inclusion of syrup or some humectant substance, rather than accurate baking.
Lots of people would have loved it, but served with ice cream, and after a burger, I'd have to lie down on the floor and groan.
Wannaburger is inexpensive, the service is fine and it's an easy, unchallenging place in which to eat. It betters most restaurants in its category, but that's not saying much.