David Adamson is fed by the GOAT at Printworks’ Hard Rock Café
Footballers have never been shy about attaching their image to all sorts of products.
From John Barnes’ Orphean journey back from “sheer hell” thanks to our friends at Lucozade to Ronaldo’s snake-oil abs belt via Michael Owen’s Partridgean Heli-tour around Dubai, they’ll flog any tat.
I could be wrong, but something about Leo Messi tells me the man doesn’t eat a lot of burgers.
Even Lionel Messi, football’s near-mute tiny genius, is not above cashing in on his ever-springing oil well of image rights.
You may have seen the impish Argentine on billboards posing next to ‘The Messi Burger’, courtesy of restaurant chain and global guitar hoarders Hard Rock Café.
It’s described thus: “a double stack of the finest beef, seasoned & seared medium-well, topped with Provolone cheese, sliced chorizo, caramelized red onions and our signature smoky sauce. Served on a toasted brioche bun with shredded lettuce and vine-ripened tomato!”
Yes, of course, there's an excited exclamation mark.
So in the interests of seeing in the new Premier League season via a suitably corporate tie-in, I paid a visit to the Printworks to try The Messi Burger (£17.95, inc. chips).
First things first - in a world where even your average high street sandwich shop tries to scale the heights of pretension, I like Hard Rock Café’s power chord approach to being a restaurant. It does burgers, there’s some of Eric Clapton’s gear on the walls and the staff are very friendly. All this was present at the Printworks.
Now I could be wrong, but something about Leo Messi tells me the man doesn’t eat a lot of burgers.
Look back at that video of him putting Jerome Boateng on his arse and it’ll give you some idea of what it’s like to be sold something by the great man only to be disappointed.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a perfectly serviceable burger. The brioche is bouncy, the beef patties, though a little overdone, are of a good quality, and the ‘spicy, smoky sauce’ is both those things to a minor degree. But there’s nothing world-beating here on par with what Messi’s image so easily projects. In-keeping with the theme of ‘things Messi doesn’t put in his body’, I also ordered a pint of Camden Hells (£6.70).
Is chorizo on burgers a well-established addition? Or is this just the echoes from a far-flung board meeting? I can see the execs, more wagyu than Whopper, free-associating around a plate of untouched croissants.
“Who did he play for?”
“Barcelona.”
“Hmm, okay. What do they eat in Spain?”
“Chorizo.”
“Right, whack some of that on top. And that’s lunch.”
Some tie-ins just, well, tie in. Clooney sipping Nespresso on Lake Cuomo? I can see it. I’m just not sure Messi even knows this thing exists except for when he scribbled his signature on the paper with the Hard Rock letterhead.
Look up the stairs of the restaurant and you’ll see the gold lamé jacket worn several times by Elvis Presley. Now that man knew his burgers.
If the menu included something called ‘Love me tender 28-day-aged grass-fed sirloin stack’ I’d know I was in for something The King would have gobbled with relish (and also with relish).
The same just can’t be said for The Messi Burger. Maybe in Miami he’ll come to understand the world of burgers, but as things stand he’s missed the mark.
