Marc Anthony – Beef patty with twice cooked spiced bean mix, house pickled jalapenos, corn chips, guacamole, iceberg lettuce and spicy nacho cheese sauce. $16 (with chips and a pint $25.50)
The Taxpayer did something different for the month of July – they threw the virtual kitchen doors open, invited their Facebook fans in and enticed them to throw some ideas together.
From this ensuing mess they would derive their next monthly burger special for all and sundry to enjoy. Apart from the bragging rights, there was the small matter of $100 of food and beverages to be enjoyed by the successful suggestees (a desert burger was a separate competition).
Of course, being the burger experts that we are, we threw our hat into the ring and came up with a couple of amazing savoury options. Sadly, there can only be one winner and in this instance, they made the mistake of choosing somebody else.
However, to show that we can be gracious in defeat, that we are not a bitter loser, that we can man up and face these things head on, we promptly made immediate tracks to The Taxpayer to see what could possibly have possessed them to go with a Mexican themed burger when there were clearly better options to be taken. We were quite prepared to eat this creation and then pick it to pieces, offer our condolences to them in the face of their poor judgement, and suggest perhaps they should simply ask us next time.
Sadly, this didn’t quite work out as we hoped.
Begrudgingly, we have to admit that it was……pretty good. Perhaps a little better than that.
The beef patty with the beans made for an interesting textural experience, coming across as being a little dry, but at the same time being not exactly that either. That might sound a bit odd, but until you try it, its hard to explain any better. Dry but not. Just trust me. The flavour was really on point though, with the refried beans adding a distinctive twist on the usual minced cow flavours.
The guacamole deserves particular mention as it was really very very good. Personally I am not such a fan of avocado – I just don’t get it – but in guacamole form it can be really sensational. This had great balance of flavours, with the hit of citrus coming across as well as a nice comforting embrace of heat. The pickled jalapenos mixed through this obviously added to things, and it was all just a moorish, green mush that you just couldn’t get enough of.
The corn chips and iceberg lettuce did exactly what they said on the box. The chips gave this a nice textural element, as well as the obvious corn flavour, although it did bring to mind the strong suggestion of nachos. That’s not a criticism I assure you! The lettuce was crisp and fresh, so brought that element along for the ride too.
The nacho cheese sauce was good, brining a little bit of dry heat along for the ride, but perhaps was ever so slightly thinner than would be absolutely ideal. Slightly more oozy, slightly less runny would be better in our opinion. Not a sentence that you get to see very often I know.
If we were going to offer a very small, quiet suggestion – it might have benefited from another fresh element, such as some diced tomato or wafer thing sliced onion (or maybe mixed) so as to incorporate a vague salsa element. Not a huge amount, but just something to offer a fresh zing to things. Definitely some fresh coriander – a herb on there will lift things considerably too.
As for other items – the roll was brilliant. If we are not mistaken, this is back to Breadtop territory, and it was nicely toasted and just everything a burger roll should be. Likewise the fries were perfect today – golden, crispy, perfectly seasoned and also plentiful. Win-win.
So throwing this all up in the air, where does this leave things? Well there was no doubt there was plenty of flavour. There was a wonderful hum of heat, a great mix of textures and it had clearly been very well thought through (as they always are). The guacamole was the standout component, but all in all it was just very enjoyable. Balance wise, it was almost bang on, perhaps a small tweak as we said, however this could be a personal preference as much as anything.
The Marc Anthony is simply a very tasty Mexican burger, and I would happily saddle up for another one in due course. Nice to see something a little different, love the thought and effort that goes into creating these, and we look forward once more to seeing what comes next.
Score – 8.9
Date of review – 15/07/15
Taxpayer Facebook
Taxpayer Website
PS – One other thing to mention – it was absolutely packed in The Taxpayer today and they had one staff member working the floor, one behind the bar and we don’t know how many cooking behind the scenes. While the wait was a little more than would be the case on a less busy day, it was an absolute credit to them that the quality of both the burgers was so high. The turnaround time was acceptable, the attention was still there, so they deserve genuine credit for that. Quite why everyone picked today to go and visit we are not sure, (maybe they caught wind we were going…) but they just took it in their stride and delivered. Thank you again, and well done indeed.
PPS – This was perilously close to breaking into the 9’s, but we are trying to be a little more discerning with our scoring and keep this threshold for really amazing stuff. We will have to go back, rethink and potentially revisit some to scale them back against this new benchmark, so the 8.9 is possibly a little better than it appears. It is still a mighty fine burger, and only missed out as it just wasn’t quite ticking every box as we might like.
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