This regional post office may be home to the best burger in Australia
Anyway, all this adds up to a tower of fresh flavour where each bite is underlined by a different ingredient. The bacon is generous. The onions, translucent but not browned. It may take a few bites until you hit pineapple. The 130-gram patty is lean on fat, which some burger purists will hate, but I don't mind finishing the thing and still feeling human. The perfect trinity of salty, sweet and lightly pickled.
I brought a second burger back to Moss Vale for my partner, who was less keen to leave the throw-rug of our Airbnb for the half-hour trip to Wingello. By this time, all the components have had more time to mingle and develop in their white paper bag. Brilliant with half a glass of last night's gamay at 11:30am.
Thanks go to two-time Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championship finalist, and taco chef, Toby Wilson for alerting me to the burger three weeks ago. Wilson only discovered it after seeing an ad for the cafe before The Penguin Lessons at Bowral's Empire Cinema. (NB: The Bruggeman family has a YouTube channel where you can watch all their house-made cinema ads, dating back to 2020. It is absolutely worth your time.)
Like our regional Chinese restaurants, agricultural shows and vanilla slice-famous bakeries, Wingello Village Store is one of those great 'only in Australia' spots that tourism boards could spend more time promoting – especially to city-dwellers who would increasingly rather jump on a Disney Wonder cruise than explore their own backyard. The burger doesn't taste like cheap thrills and corporate grease. It tastes like Paul Kelly singalongs and sunsets and Sunday drives. It tastes like a kitchen that gives a damn.
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