On It Burgers, Melbourne 01-2016

At the Victoria Street Lunar New Year festival last weekend, one of the foods on offer that caught my eye were burgers. This was for 3 reasons - almost all the rest of the food places are Asian, they had black bun sliders on offer, and they gave out samples of their quite tasty housemade onion rings. On the day I had one onion ring, but didn't have the stomach space to try the burgers.

It seemed that on one of my last Victoria Street trips for a while that I'd try this burger place to see how it stood in the world/Melbourne. I also wanted to know what was added to create a black bun (I thought I read charcoal but that can't be right...)

Pistachio icecream/gelato is my favourite and my benchmark for taste in all gelato places in the world. I was really excited to see a pistachio shake available and expected it to be essentially pistachio gelato blended with milk and hopefully some crushed or whole roasted pistachios in there. Unfortunately the shake tasted like vanilla with minimal nut flavour (and that's me trying to convince myself it was there). I wonder if they forgot what flavour I ordered (my receipt says pistachio) or if it really is that subtle...

- Housemade Onion Rings with On It Sauce $6.90 - seemingly grilled then fried in thick crisp batter and really quite nice. Sauce was a tangy, mildly spicy sriracha mayo to me. It was probably a bit too much batter for 1;
- Blackbeard (soft shell crab, sriracha, slaw, coriander, tangy hero sauce, black bun) $13.90 - quite a small crab with a reasonably creamy body but legs that were very hard, crunchy and seemingly well overfried. The black bun itself didn't really seem to taste of anything much, certainly nothing special.

I think I made a mistake of ordering the Blackbeard considering there aren't many soft shell crabs that impress me these days (especially when they are in burgers or buns/baos), and I limited my selection just wanting to try the black bun (ordering something just because it looks cool is also not the best idea). The onion rings were fine but too much for me. The lack of pistachio flavour in the shake means I wouldn't order it again, as disappointing as that is.

I'd still go back once more to try what I think would suit my tastes better: the Classic (to check their baseline) or Popping Jalapeno Patty burgers with fries and a different shake (green tea, chai tea or even macadamia).

02-2016

Armed with the knowledge of my previous post, I found myself back at On It. The noisy roadworks along Victoria Street made the entire area devoid of customers but noisier than ever.  Luckily it was partially drowned out by the ambient music, which reminded me of early 2000s Next Blue with Jay-Z, Beyonce and Shaggy amongst others.

- Popping Jalapeno burger (popping jalapeno beef patty, American cheese, red onion, lettuce, coriander, hero sauce, hit me hot sauce) $13.90 - this burger was infinitely more enjoyable than Blackbeard. The bun was soft and lightly grilled for additional texture and the other flavours came together well including the nice tang of jalapenos. The sauce wasn't particularly hot, but that's ok by me. I'm not sure what a "popping jalapeno" patty is - it was essentially a thin beef patty with sliced jalapenos and held together by a blanket of melted cheese. The patty isn't particularly thick which goes against the modern trend of fatter medium-rare patties;
- Garlic & Basil Fries $3.90 - really good fries with crunchy outsides and hot centres seasoned with what I assume is salt, garlic oil and crispy flakes of fresh basil;
- Small Green Tea Shake $4.90 - definite green tea flavour made a big difference over the pistachio disappointment. It was reasonably thick and sweet enough.

Looking at the remaining menu items, today's meal would probably be my choice for next time. I'm curious about the smashed patty and fried chicken burger though. I think I'm happy to forego testing other milkshake flavours.

On It Burgers Menu Reviews Photos Location and Info - Zomato