Grease Monkey

It's all hustle inside Grease Monkey, the new burger joint on Lonsdale Street, which draws crowds of post-work Canberrans to perch on cast iron bar stools and catch up over a burger and beer.

Restaurateur Socrates Kochinos' latest slick venture is in a converted former garage with plenty of faux American sensibility - it's bright, brash and pumping all through the weeknight. The big bar down where you order your food and drinks is 12m of pewter that had to be shipped from Brooklyn. The drinks list is above it and the menu is helpfully painted in black, white and red on the other wall.

Grab a seat at the wooden booths or there's plenty of space in the huge courtyard outside, where long tables and benches are framed with little hanging pot plants and a bright red wrought iron gate swings merrily onto the street. (There are no bookings except for groups of 12 or more.)

The menu is wonderfully brief: half a dozen burgers, fried chicken, and two desserts. That's it. You can have wine, cocktails, beer or milkshakes with your burgers. 

On weekends, there are two extra breakfast burger options served until 3pm - a sausage patty with egg, bacon and hash brown, or a BELT.

Tonight the dirty bird ($16) and the full service ($19) are popped down quickly on the table in blue-rimmed enamel platters and Grease Monkey-patterned paper.

The fried chicken, which you can also get sans bun in 3-piece and 6-piece serves, is crisply battered, not a hint of sogginess, and brilliantly juicy inside. Easy to eat and wash down with a rather standard malted chocolate milkshake ($6).

The full service is a nod to the Aussie with bacon, beetroot and pineapple inside a slightly sweet, crisp bun. Extra points must be given for the beef patty which is pleasingly medium rare. All that beetroot and pineapple does make it a slippery creature to wrangle so don't wear your favourite white shirt. Both burgers come with a good helping of chips that are perhaps over-generously salted and peppered.

Desserts are just as quick. The house-made jam doughnut is a little doughy for my liking but the ice-cream sandwich is Maxibon realness - that long, crimp-edged soft chocolate bikkie with strictly unfancy vanilla ice-cream. It's accompanied by an unadorned lump of salted caramel the size of a baby's head which no one can finish. But we don't need to - it's been quick, easy, and happily casual tonight.