I'M NEVER EVER going to write about burgers again.
It's over.
It's done with.
Indeed here's a YouTube of me burying a burger forever.
I'll be sending Gordo and other writers in should another burger bar open.
It's all got too much.
To close the sequence, to square the circle, I thought I'd go 'back to basics' - as John Major famously declared back in the nineties when burgers in Britain meant McDonald's and sod all else.
There is a certain pier-end attraction to HRC with all its Arndale Christmas pop-up shop stock of signed memorabilia from people such as Eric Clapton, the Gallagher brothers, Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen and the like
So I thought, where better to finish off than at the Hard Rock Cafe (HRC)?
If authenticity is your bag then it is very, very American. Like the hamburger.
HRC on the inside
It was founded by two Statesiders in 1871 in London then spread round the world. It is presently owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, real native Americans, who bought the company in 1907. By the way to bolster that authentic feel I've gone back a century with both those dates.
HRC looks like one of those American bars you dream up in your head as a kid because you've seen them on a thousand US TV shows. The sort of bar you dream up and then find actually exists around malls and in the main streets of big cities in America. There's lots of neon and lots of Budweiser beer. The staff are always happy. And there's memorabilia. It even has fanclubs that collect all that memorabilia - here is the Hard Rock Cafe fanclub in Switzerland.
Anyway the burgers.
The Legendary Burger (£13.95) was the size of Oregon. It was expensive but very good. The two burgers laid one on the other were lightly pink in the middle and crowned with bacon, cheese, caramelised mushrooms and onion (the latter two a rip-off extra £2.30) plus a fried onion ring.
The bun was a little dry but the sum total bunched up in a pair of hands was uncultured, unrefined, clumsy, messy, and just exactly as I'd imagined and wanted. Top nosh.
Nice but no flag
There was a degree of tokenism about the tomato, lettuce and cucumber placed to one side on the plate but the seasoned fries cut the mustard and were all that could be asked from such moisture sucking food.
Much of the burger and its ingredients were processed and had no doubt arrived in little polythene packages but so what, the burger in essense is fast food, disposable. It's the nature of the beast.
Flags on the pictureThe presentation was dramatic with a knife thrust to the hilt through the burger. Although the failure to provide a little flag on a cocktail stick as shown on the menu was a disappointment. I sat down in grand Victoria Station and wept.
I really can't see why, say, Bryon burgers are much better than HRC's self-declared Legendary burger 'famous the world over'. Of course Byron's are 'simple' and probably the meat is better but er...is simple a virtue in something as crude as a burger? Byron review here.
Nor can I see much that is better in the renowned Northern Quarter burger offerings. There is more care with ingredients, but the mess and the onion rings aren't exactly a million miles away.
True the atmosphere is better, although there is a certain pier-end attraction to HRC with all its Arndale Christmas pop-up shop stock of signed memorabilia from people such as Eric Clapton, the Gallagher brothers, Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen and the like.
The staff can be characters too.
Ric, our New Zealand waiter, is one of the best in the city. Ok, he's been doing the job for eleven and a half years and should be good but he was light-hearted when required, offered advice and made us feel comfortable and welcome. He had so many badges and awards strung round his neck he was in danger of keeling over up. One of the badges described Ric as 'The Man, The Legend'.
There are more 'legends' in HRC than in Jason and the Argonauts, The Siege of Troy, Beowulf and King Arthur combined.
Ric, the Man, the Legend
Away from the burgers, the rest of the food was below average; overwrought with too many add-ons and extras. The 'famous' (of course) beef fajitas, again overpriced at £14.75, were chewy rather than charming and came with such a huge dish of lettuce, guacamole, salsa and wall of cheese you couldn't see the exits. The peppers with the beef were overwhelming as well. The meat in a chicken fajita was lighter and worked better.
The 'boneless bodacious chicken tenders' were gooily fine but came with the most ludicrously crude lumps of raw carrot called 'carrot chips'. Weird.
Chewy beef
There was also a startling horrible grilled Norwegian salmon (£13.95). This came with stodgy broccoli and stodgy cauli from last Sunday's roast and stodgy rice. The fish was coated in 'brown'. This was slightly spicy as though it were attempting to be a barbeque sauce. The 'brown' didn't agree with the lemon. This was an extraordinarily bad dish, the worst of the year.
Salmon hell
The puddings are pure old-fashioned sweet feasts, accumulations of cream and chocolate and ice cream and anything else that makes a sweet-toothed punter giggle and swoon. 'Nothing says rock 'n' roll heaven like a sweet lick of homemade dessert' says the publicity on the website.
The 'sinful hot fudge sundae' was good in a nostalgic 'dad's treat' way. The sort of thing you'd receive in a Little Chef on the way home as reward for sitting in a hot car on an excursion to a distant stately home.
As I ate it, on the HRC screens Rod Stewart gyrated on a grainy video to the song, Do you think I'm sexy? The first words on the song are, 'Sugar, sugar, oooh.' How apt I thought.
Childhood sweetheart
HRC is a mid-market, mass-appeal venue, that does what it says it does well. Aside from the salmon which I shudder to think about, it was fine if ridiculously expensive. Then again all those badges for staff must have cost a pretty penny.
At least it was refreshing to be in a place not going on and on and on and on and on and on about being 'honest' and 'no-nonsense', but instead with tongue firmly in cheek (I really hope so) was all about being 'legendary' and 'world famous'.
Anyway that's me done with burgers, until I decide to be a hypocrite of course.
It feels cleansing.
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter here @JonathSchofield or connect via Google+
ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE.
Hard Rock Cafe, Exchange Square, Printworks, City, M4 2BS. 0161 831 6700.
Rating: 12.5/20
Food: 5.5/10 (Burger 7.5, beef fajita 6, chicken fajita 6.5, tenders 6.5, salmon 1, dessert 6.5)
Service: 4
Ambience: 3
A wall of add-ons for the fajitas
Chicken better than beef for the fajitas
Bodacious goo
Frighteningly crude 'carrot chip'
