World Tour: El Gordonita Burger – Berlin Burger International, Berlin

Berlin Burger International is a hole-in-the-wall eatery that you’d more than likely walk by and end up getting lost looking for it, if it weren’t for the long lines of hungry customers queueing out the door almost every evening.

Inside, it holds no more than 7 or 8 people – less if there are a lot of people waiting. There’s no tables inside, just a few stools and a couple of narrow counters for your plates. Outside, there are a few tables and chairs which seemed to fill up quickly during our visit.

The Berlin Burger International (BBI) process is a fairly simple one. Turn up, queue, order, pay, hope to the burger gods that you can find somewhere to lean or sit and wait for your name to be called. After queueing for around ten minutes, we decided to order the special, highlighted in the photo below. The ‘El Gordonita’ burger consisted of a beef patty topped with salad, sweet potato shavings, guacamole, cheese and sour cream.

After our order, we luckily managed to grab a couple of stools against a wall and cleared a space for our plates to be sat on. As we waited for our order, we gazed around the place and noticed a few things, namely all of the cool graffiti on the walls (see below), a traffic light from the UK which turns to red when the kitchen is closed (pictured) and a small TV with a Nintendo NES console and Super Mario hooked up to it for people to play. The staff blasted out loud techno and house music on the speakers as they made up the burgers and generally seemed to be having quite a bit of fun chatting with customers. It’s got a cool, underground type of vibe and the bric-a-brac, eclectic style decoration added to the quirky feel of the place. We even noticed a rather odd couple who were wandering around, eating the leftovers from other diners plates as they waited for their own food to be made.

Before I could find time for a quick game of Super Mario, our food was ready.

My first thought on the burger was…..where was the patty, exactly? At first glance, all I was able to see was a sliced bun, lots of salad and some sauce. After digging through the contents a little, I found the patty hidden away near the bottom. When doing a burger review, we’d normally cut the burger in half to get a better look at how well the meat was cooked; however, as there was a completely ridiculous amount of salad on this burger, we decided not to bother. The amount of salad really let the presentation down and overall, it didn’t look appealing. The bun also looked cheap and was fairly solid to touch.

Taste-wise, it wasn’t much better. The patty was flavourless and overcooked and any flavour there might have been was completely overshadowed by the cartoon-sized amount of salad and the lashings of guacamole and sour cream present. I couldn’t taste any sweet potato shavings either. The flavours that were coming through didn’t really work all that well together and after a few bites and salad spilling all over the place, it was time to give up before we’d even eaten half. A Stupidly big, bland and overcooked burger on a rock solid, cheap bun.

The chilli cheese fries weren’t much better. This was more like having a full chilli bowl with some fries on the side. Even between two, we struggled to make a dent in what was supposed to be a side portion. The chilli itself was average and paled in comparison to the excellent chilli fries that we’d enjoyed at Burgermeister the day before.

After all of the hype and witnessing the massive lines of people waiting for food, Berlin Burger International was sorely disappointing. A very cool atmosphere and unique location aside, the food was awful and we struggled to pick out anything from the burger that we actually enjoyed. The best part of the whole experience was being able to play the original Super Mario Brothers game while we waited for our food, but that’s certainly not enough to make me want to go back anytime soon.

Price: 4 – 8 Euro per burger

SUMMARY
+ Cool atmosphere, quirky setting and Super Mario available to play.
– Way too much salad. Beyond ridiculous.
– Bun was stale and hard.
– Overcooked, flavourless patty
– Chilli cheese fries lacked any real flavour and were too much for even two people to eat.

Have you tried this burger? Did you love it? If so, let us know!

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Berlin Burger International
Pannierstraße 5
12047 Berlin
Website: http://www.berlinburgerinternational.com
Telephone: +49 178 5407409