Burger Challenge at The Winston – Hobart, Tasmania

November 4, 2013

I’ll say it up front. I blame the beer!!

It was a Friday afternoon, work was done for the week, and Clown #2 casually suggested, “You want to try the Winston?”

“Giddy Up!!”, was my response!

And so it was that these two clowns found themselves chowing down at the eclectic little pub on the corner of Elizabeth and Federal streets known as The Winston!

Until I began this burger challenge I had never heard of The Winston (I’m sure it was called something else until only recently…Alley Cat maybe??), but the recommendations were coming in so thick and fast that they couldn’t be ignored!

Advertising themselves as being, “…home to great Australian and American food and beer…” I was intrigued as to what this actually meant but, as always, a little skeptical!

Let me tell you, this place delivered big time!!

Mac and cheese, buffalo wings with blue cheese sauce, hot dogs, beer battered onion rings, mushroom tacos(?!)…and then there are the occasional specials they like to throw into the mix such as Baltimore crab cakes, maple glazed donuts with bacon and, get this, a “700g Mother F!@#king Man Steak” (their words, not mine 🙂 )!!!

We were feeling peckish, so we tried their buffalo wings and onion rings first up. Good tangy sauce on the wings, perhaps a little bit mild for my liking, but not bad at all. The blue cheese sauce was a bit ‘take it or leave it’ for me, but Karen couldn’t get enough of it! The ~~life preservers~~ onion rings were absolutely epic!! Check out the size of these suckers! Really crunchy exterior, and so tender in the middle. Mmmm…

Buffalo wings and onion rings

And of course, that brings us to their burgers.

In the interests of a fair comparison, I went with the cheeseburger, comprising a beef patty, American cheese, pickles, diced onion and special sauce, with a side serve of fries. They had a few other varieties, but I forgot to take a photo of the menu…duh…

The photos really don’t do this burger justice. As I said, I blame the beer. Bloody good beer in fact! They had about a dozen odd varieties on tap, of which we had consumed more than one…support your local publican and all that…

Cheeseburger with bacon

Cheeseburger with lettuce

Let me just cut to the chase.

We have a new leader.

That’s right folks, it’s a big call but this is the best burger I have ever eaten!! I thought the Tasman Quartermaster’s efforts were going to be hard to beat, but this burger took the challenge to a whole new level!

Where TQ’s patty was an exercise in refined perfection, The Winston’s patty drops all pretences and simply screams, “Eat me mofo!!”

Chunky and perfectly cooked mince, crunchy exterior, tangy charcoal flavours permeating through from the grill marks…I hope I’m wrong but I really don’t think it can get any better than this!

Then you add the cheese, special sauce, fresh lettuce, sweet onions, awesome pickles that weren’t just there for decoration, and a delicious hunk of smoky bacon and you’ve got yourself a mouthful of absolute heaven!!

After our eyes finished rolling back in our heads, and we were once again capable of intelligible speech, we both agreed that the only teency-tiny improvement that could be made would be to increase the size of the bun. We both found it to be just a little bit narrow, resulting in a balancing act to ensure nothing squirted out the other side when taking a bite. But really, that’s being pretty pedantic…