On a Friday night, Carlton and the Lygon St area was pumping. It was late, I was tired + hungry. My friend and I needed a quick and cheap food fix so Grill'd was a great option. Mostly, I was drawn in by a large sign promoting 'low-carb buns' available on their burgers. Seriously? Low carb bread? Bread. What kind of voodoo magic is this? I needed to know.
I am normally a carb avoider. As someone that eats out A LOT it's one of the only ways I can keep my pant size the same, but it's a massive pain to be 'that person' when your friends want cheap and easy like sandwiches, pizza, or burgers. So I trialled a chicken burger on the low carb bun ($1.50 surcharge).
In my head, when it arrived the music stopped and at the sound of the record scratch everyone dropped their food to stare at me. Ok, so that didn't really happen...but it was quite a conversation starter as people with their fat bready buns curiously peered over to see what on earth I was eating, or just outright came and asked me about it. Lucky I like talking about food for a living, eh?
The burger came out looking like it was sandwiched between two small pancakes. I could easily say it had 90% less carbs than my friend's burger, because she had 90% more bread on her bun. Basically, it's a sliver of toasted bread that is juuuust enough to stop the whole thing from being a salad. And you know what, I'm totally down with that. No it wasn't amazing, but I didn't want tons of bread and don't dig the size of their standard bread rolls. So for me, it worked and I was happy that I could actually eat my burger in reasonable bites.
Oh, and much to the delight of my onlookers, I totally made up that carb deficit with a healthy portion of chips. Because potato.
Overall, as far as fast food chain burgers go, Grill'd aint bad. I was pretty addicted to their mushroom and chicken burgers back in my early 20's, but my tastes have matured a fair bit since then so I haven't really been to Grill'd in years. I am not going to hurry back or send people there, but if you're a fast food junkie or just need simplicity one night, Grill'd is A-OK. read more