Burgers Hong Kong

McHarlan Burger

The McHarlan Burger at Harlan Goldstein’s Comfort is a decent hamburger. Undeserving of the ‘Mc’ title this is a burger that, as Eddie Murphy puts it, resembles a ‘big-house-burger’, which in this particular exemplar by no means is it meant to be taken as a burger complement – the concept of this hamburger has been eminently oversimplified. The burger’s whole induction is encountered with dubiety; beyond the casket’s unfurlment, through a colorful burger facade, as the burger sits in its faux cardboard hamburger throne – a box seat that one guesses should be taken as a joke, the feeling of skepticism enthralls.

Stratyfing the box in order to determine how to best lift the burger a disgraceful construction is made observable; everything shakes as everything moves, and a worrying degree of jiggling and joggling ensues with panic caused at every soft jolt, panic for a burger that seems stacked for a plummet. At the touch of the bun, with one’s gentle fingers, the burger feels hard and appears pretty small. The first bite is frantic and out of control as a terrible thickness of all the burger parts makes for a chaotic challenge to grasp. It is the poorly chosen bun, a cornerstone of the problems and the root of a terrible compression that exerts to much force on the insides – it’s too stubbornly crunchy, it’s much too rigid for this poor burger.

Then, there isn’t a patty… much more of a meatball that has been slightly and carelessly squished; a meat shape that doesn’t feel juicy but a bit over seasoned – with a dark peppery essence that covers a beefy expectation of taste. The bacon is good all out on its own, but struggles to play within the burger taste balance. The vegetables – butter lettuce and onions manage to deliver some sense of chunky greenery in the burger, but with a couple of burger issues at bay it’s hard to pay attention to them; and the truffled mushrooms, shichimi msyo and gouda cheese seem almost non existent – just another mediocre burger taste balance that befalls from a not suitable burger construct. The fries are good.

For 188.00 HKD, one shouldn’t pay too much attention to this burger; it might be trying to hard to be equal or better to something it is not… One thing’s for sure – this ain’t no McDonald’s burger.