Last updated on October 31, 2016
The competition for the best burgers in Brisbane goes on, and Getta Burger is certainly a swinging contender. If you haven’t heard about or seen pictures of their gut-busting burgers loaded with hearty (or heart-stopping) serves of meat, cheese, and sauce, then you must have been in social media lockdown over the last few months. Vegetarians, look away now.
More popular food is going into Clayfield. Doughnut Time moved in last year. Now Getta Burger has crossed the river and set up in this bit of suburbia (and has taken up residence at the same junction, though across from Doughnut Time). The denizens of the north have certainly found it, with lines outside each day.
At this Getta Burger outlet, they have stuck to their formula of keeping their burgers to a few ingredients in different combinations and proportions, and mostly takeaway with limited seating for eating in-house. The main colour is a bright yellow, and there is no fancy decor. Because it is mainly geared for takeaways, they don’t have to worry about providing plates, utensils, or water. If you manage to get a table (very slim chance of that around regular mealtimes), and you want something to wash your food down with, you’ll have to buy it. Of note, they stock American soft drink varieties, including cherry coke, for those who have a hankering.
There was a bit of a wait after we ordered, but not a tediously long one, perhaps 15 minutes or so. They gave us our brown bag of goodness (or health contraband, depending on how orthorexic you are), and we were a little way across the carpark before one of the staff members came sprinting after us to check that they had packed our order right..and it turned out that they had one more burger that should have gone in the bag. Good that they picked it up before we had gotten all the way home and discovered it all too late. Also gives you an indication of how hefty the burgers are that we didn’t initially realise we should have had another one..
(p.s. on testing at a later visit, 2 burgers = 1.3kg.)
The Getta Twice was a special for the week. Two 200g beef patties, two lots of Havarti cheese, two lots of bacon, pickles, onion, BBQ sauce, mayonnaise, and mustard. The burger buns aren’t brioche, but are soft, have an American-style sweetness, and have a generous coating of sesame seeds. The beef patties were tender. They could have been less cooked and juicier though. There was plenty of bacon and melted cheese. There were sweet and sour flavours from the crunchy pickle and from the BBQ sauce. Definitely filling.
We also had the Getta Filthy, which isn’t a regular at the other stores, but is on the menu here. Between the buns, you get a beef patty, double cheese, fries, the filthy mix (beef brisket, pulled pork, maple bacon, and grilled onion), pickles, white onion, ranch sauce, mustard, and BBQ sauce. The beef patty wasn’t overdone in this case. The filthy mix had a good amount of sauce, not sloppy. It actually had nice chunks of identifiable meat in it, rather than being just a heap of mush, which is what you get with pulled pork at other places. The BBQ sauce had a nice sweetness and a slight tartness. Recall days of putting fries or chips into your burger? Well, here they do it for you. The fries didn’t really add a lot to the burger though (as you will also probably recall from having done it yourself), and were soggy (as would be expected) from the sauce. I guess they are there to push the burger over the top, but that meat mix is really good enough to do it.
The fries were the only thing I wouldn’t particularly reorder. Not that they were bad, they were standard shoestring fries..but that was it. They were crispier than fries from McDonald’s, and had a more liberal sprinkle of salt, but I can’t give them more recommendation. It is supposedly smoked salt dust, but there was no smoky taste to it, and they certainly looked like regular sized grains of salt. You can get a lot of frozen fries to cook in the oven for $4.50.. Perhaps the Filthy Fries are the way to go ($11), with cheese, smoked brisket, pulled pork, grilled onion, maple bacon, BBQ sauce, ranch sauce, and mustard, but that seems a meal in itself rather than a side.
On a separate visit (no one short of a serious competitive eater could manage more at one sitting), we tried the Getta BBC. This had two beef patties, double cheese, bacon, fried mozzarella sticks, cream cheese, pickles, white onion, and BBQ sauce. Fried mozzarella sticks are one of the extra-indulgent ingredients some burger joints are adding to their burgers (Ze Pickle being another example), but few actually carry out well. Too often, the mozzarella in the middle isn’t actually melted, and you get just a batter-covered lump of cheese instead of the stretchy strings the shared pictures promise. It was probably somewhere in between in this case. The cheese was soft, but not actually melted. The other ingredients were pretty well done. The beef patties weren’t overcooked, and there were good amounts of bacon and cheese. There didn’t seem to be cream cheese though.
All in all, these are some tasty, hefty burgers. Of them, the Getta Filthy was probably the one we liked best. If you haven’t tried them yet, do it. Getta Burger also has outlets at Carina (the first), West End, and Bridgement Downs.
Scores:
Food: 3.5/4
Setting: 1/2
Service: 1/2
Total: 5.5/8
Price point: Burgers $9.50 to $18 (that’s the Getta BBC).
Value: Pretty good, depending on which one you get. You won’t go hungry.
Details:
Address: 1/139 Junction Rd, Clayfield
Phone: 07 3262 1779
Website: Getta Burger
