WHO IS THE BURGERMAN?
Gotham City has Batman. Central City has the Flash. Now, Norwich has the BurgerMan. Armed with literary skills and a palate so advanced I can dissect, grade and rank a burger in minutes. A hero to burger lovers but a villain to poor quality establishments. I aim to ensure that the good people of Norwich (UK) get the best of the best for their hard earned cash and on the odd occasion I have been known to leave Norfolk.
So who am I? Well I am a burger loving, food obsessed maniac with a love of writing. At the end of the day there is nothing worse than looking forward to a burger and getting a chewy overcooked flip flop in a soggy bun. This is what first started my quest. I still remember the first time I ever had a medium rare burger, I had just watched an episode of Gordon Ramsay's kitchen nightmares and was blown away to find out you could even eat a burger pink. Gordon ignited a fire in me, a fire that basically turned out to be hunger due to seeing so much juicy beef on TV. Baffled, confused and armed with a lot more swear words than I had previously known, it was not until a few months later when I happily strolled into Captain Americas Hamburger Heaven and was asked:
"How would you like your burger cooked?"
Norwich seems to have this weird fearful obsession of a mysterious health inspector that somehow puts a ban on the medium rare cooking of burgers. In a similar vein to Lord Voldemort his and or her name can never be spoken. No restaurant could tell me who it is, when they were informed of this ban, nor what actual legal standing it has (as far as I can tell so long as the burger is cooked properly it can be served as rare as you like it). So to be asked by the waitress how I would like it, I naturally went for as pink as possible. It was incredible. That first taste of medium rare cooking is purely sublime, like reaching enlightenment. It was a moment of pure bliss and also sadness. Sadness at what I had missed my whole life. Nineteen years of my life had passed by eating overcooked well done burgers. After this day I vowed never again.
You may be surprised to note, this was not the beginning of the BurgerMan. To become a hero one has to reach dark times, and boy, did they come. For a brief period I lived through rose tinted glasses, ordering medium rare burgers here, there and everywhere (in the 3 places in Norwich that would). Everything was seemingly great for a food obsessed burger nut. Then came the change, the influence of the fun hoovering health inspector gained quite considerable momentum. Slowly but surely burger joints began refusing to cook medium rare or stating that it could be done, just to disappointingly overcook them anyway. For a period Captain Americas was actually one of the worst offenders for this. If a steak was overcooked then it's perfectly justifiable to return it to the kitchen, but a burger seemed unworthy of such a meaty pedestal. Those few people who stood strong against overcooking became fewer and fewer until eventually we were one. Myself. It was in these dark times that I would comment satirically to establishments via harassing emails. Months passed, and on a whim I visited the Reindeer Pub on Dereham Road. I originally only wanted a pint but smelling the beef burgers cooking away on a scorching hot BBQ, I was lured in. Pointlessly, I asked for it medium rare. What was to come was not what I expected...
The pinkest,
juiciest,
most succulent,
hunk of prime beef steak burger. It blew my mind. I vividly remember asking the chef "what about the health Inspector?" and his rhetorical reply said it all...
"it tastes good right?!"
Good was an understatement, it was pure ecstasy. As intense and blissful as a blended smoothy consisting of LSD, herbal tea and unicorns (I imagine). Far better than any medium rare cooking that I could ever remember. The Reindeer single handedly restored my confidence that food establishments can stick a royal finger up to the health inspectors and put great quality produce and cooking over silly not actually legally binding laws. Now the trick with cooking burgers pink is that it has to be freshly ground beef of a good quality and be cooked at the correct temperature.
In a bid to rule out those establishments that use the health inspector as a scapegoat I set out to foil all those places making excuses and allowing their kitchens to send out sub par burgers. I would bow down no longer to lowering standards and restore order. It is my aim to review as many burger joints as possible around Norwich so that my readers will know exactly where to go for good quality burgers. Also reading is generally good for the brain so why not?