“And it looked like a typical diner burger - apart from the tsunami of special sauce…”
Whenever I go to visit friends in Ireland, I always try to find a way to hit up Supermacs, the fast food burger chain of Ireland. It’s incredible - go into a big one, like Eyre Square in Galway, and you can get pizza and fried chicken too. It’s immense, and it’s an enjoyably messy scrum late on a Friday or Saturday night.
Their burgers are sauced to the max, and their chilli cheese fries are as filthy as they come. Take me here drunk and I’ll lob 20€ at food with reckless abandon. And as we all know, that’s about £50 at the moment.
However, on my last few visits, my compadres have insisted we go for a classier burger fare, and so Eddie Rocket’s it was. Now Eddie’s goes for a quasi 1950’s American diner vibe, think Ed’s Easy Diner and you’re on the right wavelength. Also, if you’ve seen last year’s excellent ‘The Guard’, then you’d recognise it. This one was plonked in a leisure park opposite a cinema, so maybe throw in a bit of out-of-town TGI Friday’s and a dash of Frankie & Bennie’s for good measure.
Buoyed by the presence of American cheese on the menu, I thought I’d hit up the embarrassingly-named Cheeez Please. The waitress promptly caused panic by looking all befuddled and saying: ‘You mean cheddar right? They’re the same thing’.
No, I didn’t mean cheddar. Hmmm.
Sitting up at the the counter, we were able to see the chef at work, pounding the meat onto the grill with a round patty smasher. Sadly, it stayed on the grill for way too long and the cheese was thrown on the patty literally seconds before it was put in the bun. Heartbreaking.
Seconds later it was in front of me. And it looked like a typical diner burger - apart from the tsunami of special sauce: a weird pale, nuclear yellow colour. Very off-putting. On first bite though, it wasn’t that bad. The patty was seasoned and had clung on to some juice, the sauce was mayo with a touch of mustardy-spice (only a tiny touch mind), and the veggies were plentiful and crisp.
The cheese had fought hard to melt, against the odds, but separated upon eating rather than stringily pulling away. But the bun. Oh, the bun. It was stale to the point of crunchy, and therefore repelled moisture. A real let down on an otherwise passable effort.
The hot wings that accompanied were solid, and the bacon cheese fries were covered in an awesome cinema-style nacho cheese, even if its main ingredient was clearly salt.
Nice try Eddie’s. But on my next trip though, the plan is most definitely Occupy Supermacs.
- Rob.
