Eating Croatian: Burgeraj, Zagreb

15 June 2018

BURGERAJ

Zagreb

There is no Starbucks or Burger King in Croatia. I saw one KFC outlet and apparently McDonalds has a presence but we never saw any. There is a Caffé Nero at Zagreb airport; we never saw another one. It seems that the well-known international fast food brands are not welcome or perhaps Croatians prefer their traditional foods. No, that cannot be it either; at first glance pizza is the Croatian national dish.

What Zagreb does have, however, just off its central square, (Ban Jelačić plac), is the 5 Big Five (that’s how the name is indicated) burger emporium, which is a damn fine imitation of a McDonalds or Burger King outlet, from the design and get up of the place, the light box menu high on the wall behind the counter, the uniformed and efficient serving staff, the basement toilets and the location smack dab in the tourist heart of the city.

My wife. Von-Mari, and I ate here on our first night in Zagreb, mostly because it was a few metres from the Daiona mini market where we’d stocked up on breakfast stuff, water and beer, and around the corner from our apartment building on the Dolac fresh produce market. I was carrying a bag of groceries and neither of us had the energy to explore the neighbourhood, even if, paradoxically and unknown to us at the time, there were literally dozens of restaurants around us. The café on the ground floor of our building and the similar establishment halfway down the stairs that led from Dolac market to the short pedestrian area leading to Ban Jelačić square, both looked, at first sight and cursory examination, like the dodgiest of pizza dives ever.

Plus, Von-Mari wanted a burger.

I ordered a double cheese burger, an ordinary cheese burger and two shakes (48 Kuna = about R100) and the entire meal was placed on the tray on the counter almost before I was given my change. Two minutes from order to delivery? That’s efficiency.

The best part was that we could not tell the difference between a 5 Big Five burger and a McDonalds burger. Not that I eat McDonalds; that’s the wife’s comment. “Decidedly average,” is how she also put it.

Seeing as how we’d paid about R2 per Kuna for currency we’d brought with us, I would guess that R96,00 was not a bad deal for an average fast food meal.

But wait, Zagreb has more burger brilliance to offer. The next day we embarked on a long and arduous journey on foot to find a Spar because the Daiona mini market was a tad expensive. On the way back (walking again, because of an Uber meltdown in Zagreb) we passed by Burgeraj, of which Von-Mari had taken note in her research on dining in Zagreb, as a highly rated burger bar. We were footsore, well one of us was, tired, hungry and thirsty and went in.

Zagreb has a great coffee and drinks culture. The streets of the Donji Grad (lower town) precinct are lined with bars and coffee shops, some with a covered, wooden deck extending part of the way into the street (leaving walking space on the pavement), unless it is a pedestrianised area where the tables are down the middle of the open space. Drinks are served from often tiny bars or cafés, but most customers choose to sit outside in warm weather, at small, standard tables or higher bar tables. This whole street culture is quite festive. The thing is that most of these joints serve only drinks and no food whatsoever. The other thing is that cappuccinos are generally smaller and stronger than we are used to in Cape Town and the wife had the ongoing issue that the coffee was served cold, or, at least, considerably colder than she likes, and she continually had to ask for additional warm milk. 

Burgeraj does not have an outside deck even if it is as small as any of the surrounding bars and thankfully it serves food and drink.

The alcoholic drink, and this made me feel right at home, is limited to craft beer. There is no shortage of big brand commercial beer, both local and international, in Croatia but in Zagreb craft beer seems to be a thing, as much as it is in Cape Town.

I don’t like craft beer much, specifically the ale types, and chose the only (craft) lager Burgeraj offers, as the least of the evils. With a name like San Servolo, it did not seem local, but the label suggested that it is. San Servolo hails from Istria, a peninsula shared by Croatia, Italy and Slovenia and is mostly wine country. It wasn't a bad brew but also not my 

type of crisp, bright lager.

My favourite beers over this holiday were Karlovačko (apparently the second most popular beer in the country), Staropramen (a Check brand) and Laško (a Slovenian brand.) The biggest brand, certainly in terms of promotional presence, is Ožujsko, which was the local equivalent of Lion Lager to me and I avoided it after the first taste.

Burgeraj occupies a space that must once have been a shop, going by the show windows to the street, in one of the typical four or five storey Austro-Hungarian style buildings of the older part of the city, and the exterior of the building has been cleaned up and painted in stark contrast to the dirty buildings around it, and of the whole area. The exteriors of the buildings are grimy and rundown, in great need of sandblasting and repair to restore them to their original glory. That part of the city would be spectacular, given the wonderful architecture if the years of damage caused by pollution could be made good.

Although Burgeraj is something of a beacon of refurbishment in its neighbourhood, the effect is somewhat spoilt by die scaffolding on the building next door and the giant rubble skip in front of it. Well. at least somebody is working on improving the street.

The dining space is limited, with about half of the interior (with a kitchen out of sight in the back) being taken up by the service counter, at which there are some barstools. Otherwise, there are only four small, square tables with banquette seating at the windows to the street. There is a beer and burger menu on a blackboard behind the counter, one side wall is covered with framed prints and there is large mural, or perhaps wallpaper, of tropical greenery on the opposite wall. The look and feel are funky student bar, but it is so tiny one wonders how the proprietors can make a living from this enterprise.

The printed, laminated menu gives a choice of five burgers, the basic and four variants, and there is a whole dissertation on their food philosophy at the bottom of the page. Artisanal, local and fresh is the motto.

The waitress, who spoke adequate English, had asked us whether we wanted the English menu, which we did and were grateful to have because we would have had difficulty translating the descriptions of the various burgers. I had a Translator app on my phone but typing in the entire menu would have been laborious and time consuming and one never knows how much is lost in translation.

It was intriguing, on reflection, to be given a complete English language menu in a restaurant that, on face value, did not seem to be an attraction to tourists. It is some distance away from the pedestrianised shopping precinct and is not an obvious fast food emporium. Elsewhere in Zagreb we came across bilingual menus but never again a separate menu just for our language preference.

Our waitress, the only visible staff member though three must have been someone in the kitchen, also immediately informed us that we would have to wait 25 minutes for our food. That was refreshing. Not only were we were warned of the wait, but we were also fed on schedule. We weren’t unhappy. There was no rush and it sounded like a guarantee of a properly homemade burger unlike the speedy Gonzalez style approach of 5 Big Five. 

The burgers were 44 Kuna (R88,00) each. Payment was cash only; another sign of a ruggedly individualistic approach.

I wanted the Bacon Cheese burger with “local smoked bacon, cheese, iceberg lettuce, cherry tomatoes, seasonal onions and Burgeraj sauce.”

Von-Mari’s choice was the Tamari mushroom burger with Tamari soy sauce, shiitake mushrooms, iceberg lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and Burgeraj sauce.”

I wondered what the anonymous “cheese” could be and why the mushroom burger was bereft of “seasonal onions.” Every foreign country has its mysteries.

Each burger came half wrapped in greaseproof paper and was served with crisp potato discs instead of standard French fries.

The burgers were good, with well cooked, handmade patties and titillating condiments. The taste, flavour and texture were way beyond and a good few levels up from 5 Big Five, or the comparable franchise burger, and any Cape Town gourmet burger aficionado would leave Burgeraj smiling. It is nothing but a compact, cute, unpretentious burger joint with a limited menu and the approach appears to be simplicity.

I don’t subscribe to the concept of a “gourmet” burger (or hot dog, for that matter) because all one wants is for a simple thing to be done well without fuss or frills.  It is a burger, not a 

deconstructed version of a classic French dish with a modern twist.

Burgeraj does burgers well.

While we were there, there was a young couple on the one side of us and sequentially on the other, first a mother with a pre-teenage daughter and then a father with a son of similar age. It was interesting that the parents brought their kids here rather than to the 5 Big Five, which was considerably cheaper, and I wondered whether it was the quality of the burgers or that the adults wanted to have a drink with their food. Unless the younger generation of Croatians have very high expectations of their burgers.

Anyway, if you ever find yourself in the Zagreb CBD craving a tasty burger and craft beer combo, look no further than Burgeraj.