Anger Burger

My friend Marika can’t chew chewing gum, and not for dental reasons.  It gives her an anxiety attack.  She is preoccupied with a feeling of having no where to put it after she’s begun chewing, despite having access to small pieces of paper and the ever-present option of hucking it into a ditch.  It’s quite the post-modern dilemma.

I have no such compulsions, and enjoy chewing gum.  I regularly¹ chewed Altoid’s cinnamon gum when I worked at a bookstore because of the metronomic quality and because my breath often reeked from eating peanut butter and onion sandwiches for lunch².  I also find that the somewhat frenetic act of chewing increases my energy, which is bizarre and welcomed.  My all-time preferred chewing gum is easily Black Black, the painfully minted caffeinated gum favorite of nerds everywhere (no one seems to know how much caffeine is actually in a piece of Black Black — sometimes I think I can feel it, other times I can’t), but any minty gum will do in a pinch.  Intrigued by the ambiguous nature of this “P.K” gum from Wrigley’s, I bought a pack without even noticing that it claims to contain “10 pellets”.  Pellets? Is that the best word for a food product?  Turns out that “P.K” stands for Phillip K. Wrigley himself, founder of Wrigley’s gum, and the eponymous flavor is simply peppermint.

Luckily I bought the stuff, though, because this delightful thing you see before you was full of raw chopped garlic, onion marmalade and god knows what other scrumptious pungencies.  Billed as a “lamb burger” and in the face of real hesitation from Mike and I, Marika strongly recommended our ordering it, and she was right to do so.  Despite the fact that calling it a “burger” makes for a lot of unfulfilled expectations, the resulting meal was as near perfect as one can be.  A “naan” (more like a tortilla) was slathered in butter, chopped raw garlic and fresh parsley and then wrapped around wild greens (including a fair amount of cilantro and arugula), a large patty of ground lamb, two grilled slabs of eggplant, tomatoes, and lots of sweet onion relish.  It was a bear to eat – or rather, to get into the mouth — but was so well-balanced and fresh-tasting that we happily crammed it in anyway.

I suspect the lamb was seasoned heavily, because though my initial appraisal of the dish was “Well, that looks bland,” it was deceptively powerful.  An all around kudos to the Long Orange cafe of Whitby (30 km north of Wellington).  Just, maybe call it a “lamb wrap” or something, okay?  Or not, you seem to know what you’re doing.

¹ Until my boss saw me and demanded that I spit it out, which made me more infuriated than any other service-industry injustice so far.  I don’t know why, but I find it utterly offensive that my discretely chewing a small piece of  minty gum is considered crass, meanwhile the breakroom fridge smelled so bad that people literally gagged when they opened it.

² Don’t knock it till you try it.