What: Hamburger (with the lot) $9.50

Where: Hoppy’s, Alice Springs

Extras: Being a takeaway store, they do good sized serves of chips, but this was a straight-up-burger kinda day.

Well? Hoppy’s Takeaway - or, as a beautiful vintage sign over the kitchen attested, “Hopkins Cash Store, est. 1959″ is just around the corner from me, and I’ve walked past it daily for nearing on 2 years, but never gone in. It looked like a cheap and nasty takeaway, frequented by tradies in need of their dim sim and Chiko Roll fix. So having dedicated myself to trying all this town’s “With the Lot” burgers, it seemed like a good start.

The inkjet-printed menu items blu tacked to the outside window and filthy PVC-strip door never inspired much confidence, but inside was a surprisingly different story. It smelled good for one thing; the pies were home-made, the sandwiches all looked appetising, and the beautiful 50s/60s hand-painted signage still held dominance amongst the garish Coca Cola panels.

And the burger? Well it took 10 minutes to come out - which suggests to me that some care went into its cooking and assembly. As poorly lit as the photo above may be, you can see that it’s definitely got the lot (bar pineapple, which I could take or leave on any given day). It had been so long since I’d had a takeaway shop WTL burger I was actually surprised by the bang-for-buck ratio. Even though the patty was a frozen prefab with onions scattered through it, the whole thing was juicy and enormously flavourful. The grilled onions in particular did a great job of cutting through; the saltiness of the bacon, the acidity of the beetroot, the fattiness of cheese, the well-toasted yet extremely fresh and squishy bun - it all worked together brilliantly, and held together extremely well.