Inkwenkwezi is well known for making the biggest burgers in the greater East Londoon area, and was a must visit on our burger-bucket list.
Theme for the night was as always, apt. Inkwenkwezi is a game reserve and decorated with that in mind, we went with an African theme - which was interpreted in a variety of accurate and less-accurate ways.
When you book at a restaurant for anything more than 20 people, we've found that the lead time on your food can become exhaustingly long, and the resturant risks the furniture being left with teeth marks on it. I arrived, conditioned, ready for a long wait because of our massive group. But we didn't wait. Relatively speaking. It gave everyone a good chance to chat, mingle, schmooze and then the many, many burgers started arriving. (Since writing this I've reviewed the scoresheets and comments and it seems quite a few people did wait, reflected in the scoreboard.)
The burger?
You ain't seen a big burger till you've seen one of these. I feel deceitful even comparing it to any of the others we've sampled these last months. It's a loaf of bread, round bread... the sort of bread a roll wants to be when it grows up... with a large patty, a small vegetable garden worth of garnish, wearing a hat made of chips.
The pattie is tasty, but the sheer quantity of bread pretty much eclipses everything else. It's not elegant, but then that was never the point. When they drew up a list of burger-objectives, elegance wasn't mentioned. I doubt whether anyone in the room could even spell it.
The chips?
The chips, the "hat", were covered in a tasty sauce. Alledgedly mushroom, but I can neither confirm nor deny that. It was tasty though.
It's hard to present something this big with any degree of style. It would be like trying to dress an elephant for the ballet. If your ballet involves an elephant, it's not there because you needed something pretty. You needed an elephant. While the restuarant is large yet very tastefully decorated, the burger calls it a day at large.
The Inkwenkwezi burger is an event. This was the only meal which made people gasp, and much of the conversation that night revolved around a friend of a cousin's dad twice removed who'd actually finished one. Don't go expecting a boutique experience, but go and have a jol. Totally worth it.
Final bill for the evening, Half a burger, chips + Amstel and tip, somewhere around R55.
Contact details:
GPS co-ordinates S32 50' 18.4" E28 4' 43.1"
Tel: +27 (043) 734 3234
Email: pgr@inkwenkwezi.co.za
