Description - the Jim Beam Bourbon Burger. Featuring a charbroiled beef patty topped with crispy bacon, onion straws, cheese, fresh lettuce and tomato — slathered in a rich and tangy sauce flavoured with Jim Beam bourbon.
Location: Carl's Jr (G.I. Auckland)
As is becoming the norm, this review is based on a few key factors that I chose specific to this burger using the Thickburger version for the purposes of review. The opinions are of course my own and therefore subjective.
Jim Beaminess 6/10 – Nice sauce, arguably too sweet but they got the quantity about right so the balance works....a lil' difficult to detect any actual Jim Beam in there so I marked it down but hey I'll take their word for it as there's a lot going on in there.
Onion Strings 9/10 – Nice addition as per the Memphis BBQ Burger, but this time I actually noticed they were there...nice and crispy too nice bit of texture for the texture fans out there??? My mate...I mean err co-reviewer didn't rate them and would have preferred just onions which could have worked just aswell just maybe not as original.
Bacon – 9/10 – Loses a mark because they went for long pieces of streaky Bacon and for me undercooked it so Bacon chin incident is almost certain because this occurred to the reviewer. You wouldn't want it clashing with the Onions in the crispy department but there's lots of middle ground between rubbery un-rendered fatty bacon and crispy.
Burger (meat) – 10/10 – still loving Thickburger, really nice and as it overstepped the shit out of the bun and brought the cheese with it there was a nice meaty approach before you got into the guts of it. Awesome.
Messiness – 8/10 – Didn't collapse but came close as it wasn't as neatly wrapped as usual. In view of the fact it isn't caked in sauce like it's "home of Elvis" predecessor scores pretty high. It's no Guacamole Bacon Burger in terms of messiness which isn't a bad thing. I've written off a few decent T-Shirts on GBB's over time.
Salad 9/10 – Lettuce and a decent slab of tomato in there, not a big thick piece that gets dragged out as you try to eat it, but it's good that it's there...no raw Onion this time either which personally I'm glad about.
Buns 8/10 – Unfortunately not as quality as Heidi's but still pretty good, they kill McD's, KFC and BK (and even Auckland's Big J's) all day long though.
Cheese 8/10 - Enough of it to notice it was there, same as Guacamole Bacon burger, it's a shame the US doesn't know how to make/use decent unprocessed Cheese from what I've seen.
Overall 8.5/10
So in summary a pretty decent burger you won't regret buying if 'Tangy Sauce' is your thing. It's still got it's work cut out to overtake the Guacamole Bacon (or a go on Heidi Klum) for me (actually no Burger is ever going to beat a go on Heidi Klum if I'm honest) but I was pleasantly surprised with it as I wasn't expecting great things and it just sounded like the Memphis Burger with some salad, almost like they read my review of that, scraped out the sauce, added Salad just to shut me up.......which is still a possibility but the result is positive. Actually, It's been an hour or so since I had it and I'm not having the usual "Guacamole Rumbles" that usually occur post Carl's sesh, not sure why...but that's cool with me.
Anyway, I hope these are useful to the Burger Connoisseurs among us GetSome'ers...I quite enjoy "eating one for the team" ...hmm that sounds dodgy, but you know what I mean...I hope...
On a side note I recently went to the Queen's St. Carl's and unlike McDonald's in that they are almost identically average there's a noticeable downgrade in quality at Queen's St. In a nutshell it's a filthy smelly fucking shithole of a disgrace compared to G.I and Lincoln Road. So, go to G.I. or L.R. if that's remotely realistic.....or Queen's St, bail and sit in Aotea Sq or even the Cinema.
