Saturday, April 08, 2006
Burgers at Eddie Rockets
On Friday night we met up with friends of ours who were over from Britain for the weekend. Actually, this is quite a funny story. Before last weekend I would have probably described them as acquaintances, people we know or, most
accurately, a couple we met playing online poker. But after Friday night I would never consider them as anything short of friends. We were fairly sure that we were going to like each other just from our chats online, but you can never know with complete strangers, can you? We arranged to meet at the Vat House pub in Temple Bar on their first night here. This way, if we hadn't liked each other, one group could have excused themselves and left without the situation being too awkward. But if we did get on, we would still have a whole weekend together. I must admit, this brilliant plan had nothing to do with me, but I was glad it existed. We hit it off straight away, and I had one of the best evenings since moving to Ireland. Thank you guys for making this possible.The evening was incredibly kurzweilig. - This is one of those great German words that lack an English equivalent. Literally translated it would be "taking a short while", but that is not what it means. It is constructed to be the opposite of langweilig, which literally means "taking a long while", but is really just the German word for boring. But it also encompasses the concept of time flying when you're having fun. Things are long when they are boring and short when they are not. And this evening was definitely way too short!
We had a few pints and a good laugh, but th
en Lofty and I realised that we were real woossies when it comes to going out. We just can't take as much as people who go out more often. And I only had orange squash! And not having eaten dinner didn't help. Coming to think of it, by eight o'clock we were really quite hungry. So we went to one of our favourite haunts in the city centre - Eddie Rockets - for some burgers. Lofty and I really like it there. Although they are a chain of restaurants, they have not fallen into the trap of sacrificing quality to increase turnover. They really do have the feel of old-fashioned burger bars and the food to match. We first noticed the branch on Dame Street shortly after we moved to Dublin, but at the time we were far too broke to eat out. A few months later I found a coupon for a free burger in a local paper and as soon as I had a job, we went out for a feast. That time Lofty had a double bacon cheeseburger, which was so huge even he had trouble finishing it, and I tried their chicken cheeseburger, which was absolutely d
elish. We were actually surprised to find that on our of old fashioned burger bars (real or fake) Eddie Rockets scored quite high. It is definitely on par with the US's Johnny Rockets or our favourite in Cape Town's Waterfront. OK, the Real McCoys were generally better, but for a quick meal in Dublin, Eddie Rockets is hard to beat. If you're ever there, also try their fries - we've so far had the cheese, garlic and cheese and bacon, all of which were great. The latter were what we had on Friday night, along with a cheesy chicken burger for Lofty and a veggie burger for me. And again Eddie Rockets lived up to our expectations. The burgers were big and juicy, packed with lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle and served with lots of real grated cheese (as opposed to the reconstituted slices you get in most fast-food places) on the top. This was just what we needed to prepare us for another night on the town and couple more pints of orange squash.Christine at 12:06 am
