Burgerlove

2 George St
South Melbourne, VIC 3205
https://burgerlove.com.au/

You’re in for a treat today- another post by everyone’s favourite blogging sidekick, Chris! What’s the occasion this time? Well, read on and it’ll become pretty obvious!

First things first: I can’t do a review of Burgerlove without first declaring how incredibly biased I am. To explain why, perhaps a little history lesson is necessary:

You see, Burgerlove wasn’t always called Burgerlove. Back in ye olde times of early 2015, when I was working in an office in South Melbourne, one of my coworkers happened to discover a tasty and very reasonably priced cafe nearby called Cafe 51. They had your standard cafe fare- coffees, sandwiches, and salads, but most importantly, they made a very, very mean burger.

Soon, the entire office was craving Cafe 51 burgers. Our Friday burger order became a Friday Cafe 51 visit. Their small corner-shop couldn’t fit any group of 4 or more, but there were some dusty tables in the dingy car park out the back where we could sit down and be served. Team meetings would become impromptu Cafe 51 meetings. Anyone might offer to do a “mini run”, getting a round of their $2 mini cheeseburgers for whoever wanted one when they made their lunch trip. Cafe 51 became practically ingrained into our office’s culture.

Oh, those glorious, heady days.

You see, it’s not just that Cafe 51’s burgers were good quality. They had a great range of interesting and unusual burgers, moving all the way from their “traditional” Juicy Lucy (two patties molded together with cheese in the middle) to the Death By Chocolate, a burger consisting of beef, bacon, cheese, Nutella, and popping candy between waffle buns.

My personal favourites included their breakfast burger (beef, hash brown, egg, and bacon) and their “squargers”, which was actually two half-size burgers consisting of meat and cheese with a sauce that I really loved (but can’t remember the name of) between doughy turkish-roll-styled buns.

Anyway, fast forward two years and suddenly Cafe 51 is not such a hidden gem anymore. Oh, and it’s not called Cafe 51 either. No, it’s Burgerlove, a name certainly more apropos to their core produce, and they now have 3 locations each with enough space to actually swing a cat in, unlike before.

You’d think my constant raving about Burgerlove would be enough to convince Ming to take us there to blog it by now, but as it turns out, such is the schedule of a food blogger in a fast-growing scene like Melbourne that it was only the other week that we finally managed to make a visit!

As if in an attempt to derail us one last time, Ming’s camera decided to have a little breakdown and refuse to turn on as soon as we arrived. Our stomachs rumbling, we had no choice but to press on and make do with iPhone photos for the night, so you can put down your pitchforks if you perceive a drop in photo quality!

Walking into Burgerlove is kind of like entering a boys clubhouse, the plain brick walls offset by wooden installations and graffiti art murals, so consider your visit here an initiation into one of the finest Burger Clubs in town. They’ve clearly embraced the social media surrounding their food, as not only are the walls lined with photos from their fans, but there’s even a little photo booth in the corner that automatically prints out any Instagram photo with the #burgerlove hashtag!

Clearly Ming didn’t realise how filling the burgers were here when she asked to order the Chilli Cheese Fries ($7.9), but like hell if I was going to argue with her. My favourite thing about these was that they tasted like actual legitimate chilli, complete with a bit of kick, as opposed to just having some generic chilli sauce slathered over the fries. The melted American-style cheese and the chicken salt made these fries just the right kind of bad.

Now, to be honest, I had tried The CFK ($10) quite a while back and hadn’t been terribly impressed with it, but after hearing all my friends rave about it decided I should give it another shot. Naturally, I was a fool for ever doubting them! This time, I found the garlicky chicken delightfully crispy and full of flavour. Ming found this to be overly salty for her tastes (the symphony of salt to accompany the chorus of chicken and bacon, I suppose), but personally I enjoyed every bite of this.

When I first saw the Juicy Lucy ($10) burger in the 51 days, they advertised it as “The Ultimate Cheeseburger”, and I have to admit, that’s pretty bang on the money here. Aside from a generous helping of cheese in this burger, the patty itself- which is actually two patties molded together- contains a little reservoir of cheese in the middle, which oozes out as you bite into it.

I mean, just look at that bad boy. The best bit? The beef has a real good quality taste to it, with the bacon topping off the flavour just right. Every bite into this a little trip into cheeseburger heaven. (But uh, if you like some salad in your burger, maybe try something else)

Look, the only downside of Burgerlove is that I simply can’t have it all the time lest I become a bloated mess. After finishing our burgers and barely half of the fries, we were pretty stuffed, and yet there’s far larger burgers on the menu (The Paralyzer, anyone?). You also definitely can’t question the value- for $27.90 at any other gourmet burger joint you’d be lucky to get a single side for your two burgers, and might leave hungry nonetheless.

Rating: 14 / 20 – I don’t know how I’m supposed to put an objective score on something I love so much but HERE YOU GO.
This rating reflects my (Chris’) personal experience at the time of visit.