Australia’s love affair with the burger has hit new heights thanks to a fresh wave of gourmet offerings and an online audience that can’t get enough.
Summer: the long hot season of sunny beach days, barbecues and… burgers? From a fast-food favourite to a gourmet Instagram sensation, burgers have managed to entice young and old over the past decade, proving especially popular with Millennials and the younger ‘Z’ generation. It’s been a heck of a rise for a simple meal – a ground beef patty in a bun, at its most basic – that, once transported to Australia from America in the 1930s, was more likely to be dished up in a local milk bar than a trendy eatery.
But it’s been a rise tinged with its own Aussie flavour – literally, thanks to the addition of pineapple and beetroot, which gave the burger here its own proud identity. Though less commonly seen now than in its heyday, the Australian burger has nonetheless survived, even as American fast-food giants McDonald’s and Hungry Jacks have popped up everywhere from Innaloo to Ingham since first arriving on these shores in 1971. Nowadays, food blogs and magazine pages are dedicated exclusively to finding the country’s best burgers, and it’s an enterprise that sees social media flooded with mouth-watering images of chargrilled patties and spongy brioche buns oozing cheese.
In recent years, a league of top chefs have vied for that prize themselves, venturing out of the fine-dining world to found gourmet burger joints. Daniel Wilson is one example, establishing Huxtaburger in Melbourne in 2011 while still running his hatted Huxtable restaurant (now closed); superstar chef Neil Perry is another, opening Burger Project in Sydney in 2014 as a way to sell a quick and easy version of the famous burger offered at his Rockpool Bar & Grill restaurant. Both brands are now running in cities around the country, alongside similar chains such as Grill’d, Betty’s Burgers and Chur Burger. So how best to present this new generation of high-quality burgers with a flair worthy of their newfound status? We’ve put together a range of super-stylish serving options to suit any establishment.
