Terry Durack: We have reached peak burger

COMMENT

We are in the middle of a burger epidemic: a plague of sesame seed buns, a pandemic of beef patties, a pestilence of pickles.

Let me first say there is nothing wrong with a burger. The right mix of meats, well-seasoned, licked with fire and smoke, and slapped between toasty grilled buns with melting cheese, pickles, onion, tomato and sauce, is a messy, squishy, crunchy, hot/cold, saucy, drippy thing of beauty. But please, not every day.

Once upon a time, a burger was a treat. My mates and I used to drive through five suburbs late on a Friday night, just to get a burger. In Sydney, you went to Paul's Famous in Sylvania. South Melbourne had the mighty Andrew's Hamburgers, opened in 1939.

Then came the burger chains from America, and everything changed. Burgers became cheap, easy to eat, homogenised and bland; baby food for grown-ups. They also became ubiquitous. Our chefs fought back.

Neil Perry rebuilt the burger into a premium product at the first Rockpool Bar & Grill in Melbourne in 2006. Then Dan Hong slipped his cheeseburger on the Lotus Potts Point menu in 2009. Three years later, Daniel Wilson opened Huxtaburger in Collingwood. Jake Smyth and Kenny Graham did their straight-up soft bun American burgers at Mary's Newtown in 2013, while Warren Turnbull opened Chur Burger – now with eight outlets across Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne – in 2013.

The burger scene ramped up again in 2014 when Neil Perry took his premium burgers back to the streets with The Burger Project (12 outlets so far down the eastern seaboard). Luke Mangan of Glass Brasserie has recently opened Chicken Confidential in Chifley Plaza with a "Straya" burger of grain-fed beef, cheese, lettuce, beetroot, bacon, pineapple and tomato. Shannon Bennett of Vue de Monde has just launched Benny Burger, and Chase Kojima at The Star in Sydney does Japanese crisp-fried rice burgers at Gojima.

Enough! We have reached peak burger. Our dining options may appear to be growing but, in truth, everything is a burger. There are breakfast burgers, truffle burgers, miniature burgers (sliders), vegan burgers, jackfruit burgers.

My solution to this monocultural culinary landscape is: Just. Say. No. Give yourself a burger quota. Reduce your burger dependency to, say, one a week. Or one a month. Or one a year. Such a manifesto needs a name. I'm calling it: Burger Off.