Restaurant review: Grand Trailer Park Taverna is cheap and crave-sating

Theme: Outdoor Dining

★★★

Fun: Grand Trailer Park Taverna sports a "Why not?" style.Credit: Wayne Taylor

GRAND TRAILER PARK TAVERNA

Upstairs, 87 Bourke Street, Melbourne, 9972 3699

Classic: The Atomic Burger with Chips served at Grand Trailer Park Taverna.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Licensed MC V eftpos

Tuesday-Saturday 11.30am-late

Burgers: $7-$16.50; Desserts: $8-$38

For every clean-eater enjoying a chia smoothie or paleo popsicle there will be five people chomping on a greasy, grainy, cheesy burger with extra stodge on the side. That doesn't mean burgers win, it's just to say that food is in a polarising place right now with the health kick and "fully sick" brigades both tending to the extreme.

Lolling: Customers can watch the world go by from the comfort of the restaurant balcony.Credit: Wayne Taylor

New burger joint Grand Trailer Park Taverna doesn't need to carry all this baggage. It's just having fun with beef, brioche and booze (spiked milkshakes!) and fair enough, especially when happy customers can loll about on the covered balcony, keeping a benign eye on the Christmas crush while special sauce runs down their arms. (But please, let's ban smoking in outdoor dining areas today.) Inside, the room is decked with picnic tables and open-sided caravans and you're supposed to feel like you're sitting in a US trailer park. It's a cute, nonsensical concept from the "why not?" school of design.

The menu plays with pop culture references (I spotted House of Cards and Coming to America before my Long Island Iced Tea slushie kicked in). The burgers themselves are tasty, messy and purposely overwhelming – the Francis Underwood, for example, includes a mac and cheese croquette which is silly carb-on-carb overload – but suddenly it's gone. The buns (brioche or fluffy white) and beef patties are fine, the chips are okay, the cheese is purposely plasticky and the service (order at the counter, take a number) is upbeat.

It is what it is: cheap, crave-sating food that makes people eat like Cookie Monsters and say (or Facebook) ridiculous things like "Noms! Buuurrrrger!" right before they enter a food coma. Desserts continue the overloadin' upsizin' theme: icecream is sprinkled with lumpy sherbet; waffles are stodgy and served with Nutella. I found Grand Trailer Park disposable but not unlikeable: it's surely in for a hot summer.