Boom boom in the Burger & Lobster room.

 24 June 2024

 

BURGER & LOBSTER

105 Bree Street, Cape Town

 

The wife is a mailing list for the annual multiplicity of restaurant winter specials in the Peninsula and beyond and seems to want to work her way through the specials. I very merrily go along for the culinary journey. One must eat, must one not?

 

“The deals are so advantageous,“ she said. “Think of how much cheaper it’ll be to eat at these desirable establishments now, where you pay top dollar otherwise.”

 

Hmmm, I thought, we’ll be saving ourselves into bankruptcy court.

 

Tonight, it was an impromptu outing to Burger & Lobster, for the R189,00 special of a B & L cheeseburger, a lobster roll slider and B & L fries. The wife booked online (they have seatings at 16h00, 18h00 and 20h00) and was required to pay a deposit of R100,00 a head.  Obviously, even the AI operating the online booking system wouldn’t know that we were coming for the special but it did seem odd to pay a deposit of more than the price of one meal for dinner at 18h00 on a wintry Monday evening.

 

When we pulled in shortly after 18h00, the joint was already buzzing, well, booming with the deep, low throb of club track basslines, and quite busy and by 19h00 it seemed to be filled to capacity, mostly with an age demographic other than the one we find ourselves in.  The deep red lighting and the music does create a club like atmosphere, which is okay for short bursts but not exactly a comfortable dining ambience for me.

 

We ordered drinks and the aforementioned specials but then committed the novice error of upgrading (options suggested by our server) the B & L fries to truffle fries for the wife and sweet potato fries for me. These changes added respectively R55 and R30 to the cost of the meal (a price upgrade to which we hadn’t been alerted.) 

 

It was the winter special no more.

 

I thought we waited a bit long for our food, or at least it seemed longer than it should, but when it arrived, it was good.

The slider had substantial bits of lobster and the butter sauce elevated it to the level of unctuous and delectable.

 

The wife had asked for her burger patty to be cooked medium rare and my request was for mine to be as rare as possible. The requests were communicated to the chef who executed them perfectly. 

 

The wife’s patty was a perfect medium rare.

 

My burger patty was so rare it could’ve been beef tartare.

 

The burger is a big ‘un, with substantial patty and cheese, tomato and gherkin, and a bulbous soft bun. What you would call a mouthful of masterly mastication.  

 

“A tasty burger” is one of our favourite accolades for any dish, quoting Pulp Fiction. The B & L cheeseburger qualifies.

 

The sweet potato fries were perfectly crisp and morish. The truffle fries were good too; however, the wife felt that it’s a kind of rip off to charge that much more for B & L fries tarted up with truffle oil. According to reliable sources, no actual truffle would’ve been harmed in the making of the truffle oil anyway.

 

We finished off with a shared mini tower of Nutella and Oreo cheesecake, which was absolutely delightful, not cloyingly sweet and the right balance of texture, neither too dry nor too creamy. Absolutely delish. 

For a quick early Monday eve dinner, it sure helped to beat the Monday-slash-winter blues.

 

The bill, after deduction of the deposit, came to R486,00. The server quite helpfully pointed out that the number on the slip represented the nett balance and not the full bill, presumably to ensure that we understood that the tip should be calculated on the larger total amount, which we obviously did.

 

This winter special is quite good and the food is scrumptious. The place is vibey though the loud music is somewhat distracting and conversation can be a challenge.

 

There was a cohort at the table against the opposite wall who sang along to some obviously, to them, popular track and applauded it when it ended. 

 

We applauded too, for a slightly different reason.