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Anyone who lives around Fortitude Valley or New Farm will have recently experienced postal inundation by two Brisbane gourmet burger eateries: Grill’d and Burger Urge.  As someone who works in marketing, it’s a bit thrilling to see these businesses duking it out quite so spectacularly, and as a foodie, the benefits have been splendid too: free burgers, two for one offers, free sweet potato chips, and even video testimonials.

But after months of an epic “we make better burgers than those guys” war, the iatebrisbane girls decided that we would try and settle the argument once and for all. So here it is ladies and gentleman: Brisbane’s Burger War.  

In the red corner, we have Burger Urge – they’ve been established in New Farm for a few years now (and they have another store in West End), and were one of the first to really make a good, solid go of the gourmet burger market.  They’ve been popular amongst locals of New Farm for many years.

In the blue corner, we have Grill’d, who came to Brisbane by way of Melbourne just a couple of years ago.  They quickly established themselves throughout suburban Brisbane as a quirky and youthful addition to the gourmet burger market, managing to avoid a McDonald’s-esque consumer feel, despite being a chain with roughly thirty stores (9 in Brisbane).

I’ve had the pleasure of trying both of these burgers in the past, and so I wanted to do my best to make the battle fair for each party. As such, I enlisted the help of Sarah, her sister Jessie and baby Josie (as a keen observer!).  We did our best to make the challenge as fair as possible: we ordered the burgers at the same time by phone, and went to collect them in person at the same time also, getting home to my Valley apartment at the same time to analyse our burgers.  We were also lucky enough to have discount vouchers for both stores (hooray!).

We ordered roughly the same burger from each – a Queenslander-esque burger.  We tried to ensure that they were as well-matched as possible, and so from Grill’d we ordered a Big Queenslander (beef, cheese, bacon, egg, beetroot, salad with relish and herb mayo) and added pineapple – cost = $13.20; from Urge we ordered the Urge Burger (beef, cheese, egg, beetroot, pineapple, salad & and relish) and added bacon – cost = $15.90.

Our experience with the customer service at both stores was good (although I must note that at Burger Urge, I waited for about 7 minutes simply to pay for and collect my order – perhaps this could be streamlined somehow?). On returning home, we commenced photography of the packages, and our initial thoughts.

First up – Burger Urge hooks you up with an awesome, industrial-strength brown paper bag, which is perfect for carrying hot foods home.  The Grill’d bag is a little thin, and with the weight of the burger, is inclined to get pretty worn on the short trip home.  It’s a minor thing, but if you’re a habitual pedestrian like myself, you notice little details like this when you carry your dinner home from take-aways regularly!

Most notable on first impressions was that the Burger Urge burger was FRICKEN HUUUUGE! I would estimate it was a good third- to a half-size bigger than the Grill’d burger.  I prefer the smaller size of the Grill’d but I certainly feel that anyone with a big appetite would be more than sated by Urge’s offerings! Another thing to note is that Grill’d gives you a choice of which bread you would prefer (seeded bun or panini).  I really like this option, as I prefer my buns soft (insert girlish laughter), whereas I know others prefer a firmer, crustier option. The panini also held up better against the inevitable burger juices (although I have no idea how their seeded bun would go), which helps prevent your burger going sloppy!

We cut each burger in half to get a good cross-section of the contents (which, I think you’ll agree, were pretty formidable!). You can see from this first look that the Urge Burger bun was starting to get a little soft from the juices.

Our first bite of the Urge Burger was very enjoyable, albeit a little hard to get our teeth around for the sheer size of it! This can be challenging, as in an ideal burger bite, you really want to get a bit of everything, which is challenging with such a big burger.  The relish was tasty, and the burger had a very homemade flavour, which we really liked.  There was a nice selection of herbs in the beef patty.  This burger also had a great deal of salad (tomato, onion, cucumber and heaps of salad greens), adding to the charming homemade flavour, and giving it a bit of a “healthier” feel!

The first chomp on the Grill’d Burger was a subtly different experience.  The meat patty was more refined (lacking that nice homemade flavour that the Urge Burger had).  This burger, however, was noticeably easier for us to eat due to its smaller size, and the bun had maintained much of its soft freshness (ie, no sloppy!) which was impressive considering it was the 2nd cab on the burger-tasting rank.  What really set the Big Queenslander apart for us, though, was the delightful herbed mayo and relish combination.  It’s such a subtle addition, but it gives the whole burger a unique flavour that compliments the rest of the ingredients so well.

The Verdict.

We debated back and forth about which burger we preferred.  It was a tough call, because both burgers were amazingly high quality, and each of the burgers had particular elements that we preferred.

Size of burger: Burger Urge won with the biggest burger, but we preferred the smaller size because we could taste all the flavours in one bite

Integrity of bun: Grill’d’s panini withstood the burger juices best

Beef patty: Burger Urge’s patty had a more homemade texture and flavour, which we really enjoyed

Salad: The salad on Urge’s burger was plentiful and fresh!

Sauces: Urge’s relish was good, but Grill’d stole the show with their herbed mayo / relish combo

Overall verdict: Grill’d’s Big Queenslander by a nose!

To all you gourmet burger chains out there: I really can’t stress enough how much of a turn-off a big burger can be for people with smaller appetites (and jaw spans!).  I really recommend that all gourmet burger stores have smaller portions that smaller people can wrap their teeth around, and not be left feeling wasteful with half a burger left over!

Congratulations to both businesses for fighting so passionately for their product – that’s what we love to see around Brisbane: food businesses working harder to show us just how high quality their overall food experience is!

Lastly, though, and most importantly – don’t take our word for it! Get out there and give your local gourmets a go! We’d love to know what you guys think!