The Meat Co
Shop 14
Souk Al Bahar, Old Town
Burj Dubai, UAE
+971 4 420 0737
Your Critique Geek loves meat. About once a month, I have a burger craving that comes on so strong, it makes me a bit wild. In my crazed, carnivorous state, I usually run to my nearest Shake Shack and git-r-done. Luckily, I have been back to New York a few times since moving out to the Gulf, so I haven’t suffered terribly. But it’s been two months already since my last Shackburger, so these past few weeks have been difficult. I reached out to everyone I know for burger recommendations for Dubai, and a few people directed me to the Meat Co., a South African chain known for its quality meats. I put it off as long as long as I could, but last weekend, I woke up in a frenzied state, looked in the mirror and saw that the burger deficiency had really done a number on me. Every cell in my body called out for a burger.
I made a beeline to the Meat Co. in Souk al-Bahar. After ordering my cheeseburger from a kindly man in spectacles, wearing a name tag that read “the professor,” I waited. The professor then asked me what I wanted to drink, and I asked him “what do you have to drink,” to which he replied “what do you want to drink?” I don’t appreciate your pedagogy, professor! Forget the drink! Put in for the burger and good day to you! I made sure to specify that I did not want any sauce on the burger (I don’t enjoy soggy bread), but the professor explained to me that bbq sauce comes standard for the burger. I begged to differ. I tried to get him to pass on my request for no sauce, but he promised that I would hardly notice it. ”That’s how they grill the meat.” Whatever! Just bring a burger to me. That’s all I want. Please, professor, I’m begging you.
As he left the scene, a band of singers entered stage right with a couple of hand drums (two too many) and started singing a happy birthday that dragged so long it made Led Zepplin seem like a jingle composer. Suddenly I felt an immense gratitude for the brevity of the standard birthday song. Whoever composed it must have imagined how annoying it would be if it dragged on for 20 minutes. Quite. I tried to be happy for the birthday boy, and explain to myself calmly that this is what happens when you walk out of the safety and comfort of your own home to enter the public sphere. You risk being annoyed and inconvenienced. Grow up already. But it is incredible how a certain kind of hunger can suck all of the goodness and compassion out of you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
The burger finally arrived, with a side of fries, and I dug in. I made it through about three bites and then I had to quit. You see, I wasn’t merely hungry, I had a craving. For a burger. But this was not a burger. It was a patty of ground beef drowned in barbeque sauce so sweet it could have been a dessert. I might as well have joined the birthday party and had a piece of cake. If the bun wasn’t freakishly thick and dense as a black hole, surely the sauce would have bled right through in less than a minute. Let me ask you this Meat Co.: if your meat is so good, why do you need to disguise its taste in such a dramatic fashion?
I had to walk. And now I have opened a new case file – “In search of a respectable burger in Dubai.”
