There’s a new burger in town and it’s a contender to take Melbourne’s best burger crown from Neil Perry’s Rockpool Bar and Grill. It’s from a joint called Huxtaburger, the choice of hangout for a new breed on Smith St, the Huxtabogan, and costs $10 to Perry’s $23.
There’s a lot that’s good about the burger, each one named after a character in the The Cosby Show. My favourite is “The Bill” which at $10 is a patty of grass-fed Moondara wagyu with egg, pineapple and beetroot in a Breadtop bun, which if anything is its failing because each time I’ve eaten one the bottom is sodden and falling apart.
But at $10, the burger punches with flavour and in my book is a match for the infamous Andrew’s burger in Albert Park. Match with crinkle cut chips and an ironically bad beer such as Fosters, bought in as a joke but sold out in the first week to the amazement of the owners, and you have a winner.
Now those of you who follow me on Twitter will say I’m getting even creating the Huxtabogan character when, with their bar next door to the burger joint opening, I could have simple have referred to Huxta[insert name here].
The back story is that I live next door to Huxtaburger and 8.30am one Sunday morning I took their drilling and hammering into my wall and raised it an axe, which I ground away on Twitter. You see in the rush to open Huxtaburger before Christmas their builder, rather than take on extra staff, decided to build out of the legal building hours annoying all the residents in my flats.
It would have ended there is Huxtable’s chef Daniel Wilson had told the builder to stop working out of hours. What I found out two nights later was that he had instructed the builder to keep on working out of hours. That led to me confronting the owners at Huxtable mid-service one Tuesday night. They wanted to talk about it. But there is nothing to negotiate when the law is being broken is there?
My axe grinding aside, the burgers are among the best in Melbourne. But with $10 (and less) burgers comes a different crowd. They crowd the pavement and make it difficult to pass by and more often than stand in my doorway blocking the entrance, and thus the Huxtabogan was christened.
Anyway, the burgers are a welcome addition to the burger scene which I last documented a few years back. Let’s now also keep a track of the progress of the Huxtabogan across the north side of town.
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