Mountbatten Hotel, Haymarket Sydney

I had an intense craving for a hamburger the other day: a real burger with a thick beef pattie sandwiched between a toasted sesame seed bun, served with a token salad and a huge pile of golden crunchy chips.

The traditional burger flipper at your Aussie milk bar is a dying breed (and almost extinct in the CBD) but thankfully the humble hamburger can still be found at your local corner pub. And so we end up at one of my oft-frequented watering holes, the Mountbatten Hotel.

I've lost count of the menu overhauls here over the past three years (there was Chinese, Thai, Italian then Aussie bistro) but its latest incarnation is definitely pub grub (bangers and mash, nachos, steak sangers and pasta).


Good Old Hamburger $9.00
Lettuce, tomatoes and fried onions with chips
Extras $1 each (egg, beetroot, cheese, bacon, pineapple and avocado)

The burger looks small but halfway through it suddenly seems a lot bigger. This is primarily due to the substantial patty, about two fingers thick, and reassuringly misshapen like a handmade beef patty should be. The patty is studded with diced onion, the disc surface deliciously charred with a mouthwatering pattern of grill mark stripes.



The chips are sturdy straws of gold. We alternate between mouthfuls of burger and shoved-in handfuls of salted chips (drizzled with happy splashes of tomato sauce of course).



The bun is fresh and soft, its surface toasted, the lettuce is crisp and the tomato juicy. But it's the patty that's the star here and it's imparting of pure bliss makes it worth every penny and more.

Long live the Aussie hamburger.

Next time I'm ordering it with beetroot. In true Aussie style.

Mountbatten Hotel
701 George St Haymarket, Sydney
Tel: +61 02 9280 4700

Related GrabYourFork posts:
Mountbatten Hotel, Dec 2004
Mountbatten Hotel, Oct 2004