The Mexican Burger - The Green Ginger, Torquay (Wetherspoons)

Where?: The Green Ginger, Torquay (Wetherspoons)

What?: The Mexican Burger

How much?: £6.99 with alcoholic drink

The Verdict:

Torquay is not known for its a la carte Cuisine.  There are a lot of places that sell fish, there are a lot of cheesy looking bars and a few nice gastro-pubs and some really nice restaurants.  According the Trip Advisor the nicest restaurant to go to in Torquay is The Orange Tree.  It has five green circles and 400 odd reviews and to be frank it looks fantastic.  Closely followed are a whole bunch of other places that really do look nice, but were no where near where we were geographically and monetarily.

So we had to settle for the nearest option which was The Green Ginger.  It is architecturally monosyllabic, grafted on to the side of a shopping centre like some modernist warty appendage.  Which is a great shame because it is really quite a nice place to sit and drink, eat and watch the world go by.

Like most Wetherspoons they have a good selection of Ale, and they had the Gourmet Burgers on offer too. So being the burger-eating type of person that I am, I took the oppurtunity to have another burger from their menu.  Last week it was the Brunch Burger with their rather wonky portion control. and this week it was going to be The Mexican Burger also with dubious portion control.  All four of us had a burger of some sort, and all four of us had varying quantities of chips.  I know I am being anal about this, but how hard can it be?

So what makes this burger a Mexican burger, opposed to anything else.  The answer my friend, is in the large dollop of Guacamole that adorns the whole thing, intermingled rather sparsely with some chillis and a couple of onion rings.  The whole thing held was together with stick and the vast splat of salty green stuff, and a 6oz rather tasteless burger which although cooked well was really like eating polystyrene.

By the end of the meal, the whole thing had collapsed.  I was left with green avacado fingers, the bottom of the burger had disintergrated and the two slices of tomato and 'salad' had ended up on the otherside of the plate.  I hate to say it Wetherspoons, but your Brunch Burger was so much nicer.
Although I found fault in most aspects of the meal, the saving grace was the pint of Fox from Exmoor Brewery which brought back some memories of sitting on Aberystwyth Seafront in a pub called the Glen Gower Hotel, not sure why, just did.

I don't think The Mexican Burger really works, it is tenuously Mexican. It needs more to it, more mince and spices and tomatos and onions.  Just more.  Nearly Wetherspoons, but no cigar.