6 oz Angus beef and venison patty, 5 bird roast slice (turkey, goose, chicken, pheasant, duck), panko fried stuffing, deep fried sprouts, port and cranberry sauce, KFC style turkey gravy, topped with a candied Pig in Blanket served in a Brioche bun
Last night as I was catching up on the news an article about sprouts caught my eye. Apparently Solita (one of my favourite burger joints of all time) had devised a way to make this horrid little vegetable actually taste nice. You know what, I didn’t believe it for a second. I mean I HATE SPROUTS! I mean I can’t despise the taste of them and the squishy texture is just all wrong. Anyway I sent a few tweets showing my disbelief about how deep frying a sprout could actually make a sprout taste nice.
Solita however believe in their concoction so much that they accepted the challenge and booked me in for lunch today at midday.
With a burger made of so many parts it is hard to dissect it and explain the individual flavours but the overwhelming smell and taste of this burger is quintessentially Christmas. The 6oz Beef and Venison patty with its combination of flavours is lovely and gamey and the slice of 5 bird roast which features Turkey, Chicken, Pheasant, Goose and Duck is full of huge chucks of perfectly cooked meat with a delicious chestnut and turkey gravy. The panko coated fried stuffing was to me the most delicious part of the whole thing and the port and cranberry sauce complimented the flavours without overpowering them. The burger was held together by a candied pig in blanket on a stick. However all of that maybe delicious it was not that which made me walk through the doors. The sprouts. Deep fried, thinly sliced sprouts.
Now if you were following me on twitter or instagram today you would have seen that I was given a bowl of sprouts as an appetiser. The outer leaves were reminiscent of crispy seaweed but the thicker slices when eaten alone were definitely a bit too sprout-like for me. However when combined with all the amazing flavours described above they managed to fit, to compliment it almost, it certainly wouldn’t have been a Christmas burger without it. I mean its not that I love Sprouts, or even like them but the way that Solita cook them make them not only inoffensive but palatable and even dare I say it, tasty?
It seems that the hated brussel sprout is part of what makes a Christmas dinner Christmassy, the smell of the sprout, the after taste and even the splash of green on the plate.
This amazing burger is served with chips, cheesy chips or sweet potato chips but I do feel that they are missing a trick here and maybe some thick cut chips roasted in goose fat splashed with gravy would made the perfect accompaniment to what has been the best Christmas dinner I have eaten so far.
Now I have yet to talk about the candied pig in blanket which was a taste revolution with the crispy sugar shell but I have to say that asthetically, it could do with some work because well this looks too rude for kids.
