I was asked the other day to start keeping a journal of the foods I eat while I'm in Russia. I hadn't though about it until then, that some of the stuff I eat every day is kind of cool...especially the context I eat it in. Well on Friday I had the perfect meal to describe.
This Friday at Language Link happened to be internet burger Friday. In Moscow there is a company that has a website (but no actual restaurant), and you go onto the website and order the burgers...you know so they can get delivered to where ever you are. I know no one can read this, but here's the link. BIG BURGER! So two of the teacher trainers ordered internet burgers and eight interns. I'm not sure why our trainers ordered them, knowing full well how they tasted. Us interns though, we had no idea what we were getting into. We all placed our order an hour before our lunch break, so our burgers would arrive on time. That hour seemed to take forever, all I wanted was my internet burger.
Well the burgers came in almost exactly an hour, and this is what it looked like:
This Friday at Language Link happened to be internet burger Friday. In Moscow there is a company that has a website (but no actual restaurant), and you go onto the website and order the burgers...you know so they can get delivered to where ever you are. I know no one can read this, but here's the link. BIG BURGER! So two of the teacher trainers ordered internet burgers and eight interns. I'm not sure why our trainers ordered them, knowing full well how they tasted. Us interns though, we had no idea what we were getting into. We all placed our order an hour before our lunch break, so our burgers would arrive on time. That hour seemed to take forever, all I wanted was my internet burger.
Well the burgers came in almost exactly an hour, and this is what it looked like:
It sort of looks like a BK wrapper...well Big Burger could learn a lot from BK.
There's only so much I should've expected from a burger I ordered off the internet...but it did cost 200 rubles, so all of us had high hopes.
Well by the time the burgers had come, all of us were starving and I forgot to take a picture after I unwrapped it, so here's what it looked like half devoured. I got a Stolichny burger, and on it came lettuce, tomato, salami, bacon, cheese, and thousand island dressing.
The Bun: One word can describe this...Stale
The Salami/Bacon: It tasted okay probably better than the meat patty
The Cheese: I couldn't taste it, it there was too much sauce
The Meat...this deserves its own paragraph...Remember in elementary school, the hamburger patties that tasted like rubber? Well this was a step below that. Except in the US you assume the patty is made of beef, here well not so much. Who knows what it was made of, except some sort of protein that is very elastic.
The verdict: For 200 rubles I could've had an entire large value meal from McDonalds that would have been delicious, the only catch is I would've had to take a 10 minute round trip walk...Internet burgers are a cool concept, but let's keep them that way...a concept
I read somewhere that actually mixing salt in with beef (vs what one should do to make a good burger - sprinkle loads of salt and pepper on top of the patties themselves vs into them) will destroy the protein structure and make for a gluey chewey springy sausagey burger patty. Perhaps, through no fault of their own, these Russians just don't understand the art of a good burger. (Although for chrissakes if you are opening a burger restaurant you should do some research)
ReplyDeleteOr maybe it's just the meat of an aging street dog.