Beastie Burgers

Beastie Burgers

Shop 6a Little Stanley St South Brisbane

Value: Adequate

Quality: Good

Atmosphere: Adequate

Beastie Burgers is one of the joints along South Bank that give me hope that South Bank is no longer the tacky tourist trap it used to be. Southbank was Street's Beach and stereotypical Australiana when I was a kid, even as recently as when I first moved to Brisbane back in 2006. These memories made me resistant to the idea of eating out in South Bank until very recently.  Finally getting over my preconceptions, I ventured over there the other day for lunch to discuss some work with a colleague, and thus the review.

Beastie Burgers is very bare-bones, but it's not a big deal. It is a burger place after all and they make it work pretty well. Service is simple and easy (order at the bar, pay and then a find a seat, they’ll bring your burger when its ready) then again it's a burger joint, so fair enough.  What impresses me most about Beastie is that unlike some chains I won’t mention here, they aren’t seduced by the dark side of gourmet burgers. They don’t have so many superfluous ingredients that the burger is too tall for a human mouth, nor do fillings try to rocket out from between the buns like they're on a slip-and-slide. For their commitment to this less-is-more philosophy I congratulate them, especially in the face of a rapidly expanding southern burger chain that certainly has a more-is-more philosophy.

Limiting the number of ingredients allows the quality of the patty to shine through. They're well packed mincemeat with little of that mince flavour that dominates home-made burgers, just a tinge of pink in the middle and nice charring on the outside of the patty itself.  The spartan ingredients kept the flavours simple and allowed the whole burger to meld into a single taste experience, rather than a confusing array of a dozen different things. The bun is also a positive, being appropriately toasted and firm as to not induce collapse, while being soft enough to not have the unpleasantness that biting into an overtoasted bun can have. The vegetables were also of a reasonably high quality and were suitably minimalist, compared to to many of their competitors.

Beastie Burgers is open 11am-10pm every day

My meal was the lunch special on the day and cost $10.50 with a can of drink, their burgers start around this price and go up to around $15-16.

Beastie Burgers is licensed however I didn’t drink this day and therefore didn’t get the price of their drinks.