Wannaburger

I can't remember the last time I was in a fast food restaurant, but it's definitely been a looooooooong time.  A particularly bad bout of food poisoning for my other half, reading fast food nation, blah blah, all the usual reasons.  I continued to crave the quick service, the informal dining, the hand to mouth eating, and that dirty but oh so satisfying guilt of wolfing down burgers and fistfuls of fries.  But we resolutely turned our noses up and resisted its greasy grasp.  

So we've come quite late to Wannaburger, having at first written it off as one of your more usual fast food joints.  But then we took a closer look; Fresh? Homemade? Locally sourced? Fully traceable? Free range chicken?  This is no ordinary fast food.

And it was pretty damn good.  The Aberdeen Angus beef patty was cooked perfectly - juicy and flavourful.   The buns are supposedly baked by a local artisan baker (and are definitely a cut above many buns served by other places that pride themselves on their burgers, but are let down by a dry pappy bun).  

A special mention goes to the chilli served in a little pot to diy your chilli burger – smoky and with a ridiculous depth of flavour; just delicious.  A chargrilled breast of free range chicken was again well cooked and moist (and happy chicken is an absolute must so I just LOVE that they do it here).  

Fries and onion rings are good and crispy, just as they should be.  Giant pickles!  Heaven.  

While it will of course be pricier than your run of the mill chain, it’s by no means expensive and completely worth it.  Oh, and you can buy booze - bonus points.  We’ll definitely be back, in fact we signed up for their loyalty card so we can indulge our fast food guilt whenever we like, but in the knowledge that this is fast food with a halo on.

The Bonham

The Bonham has been a family favourite of ours for quite a while.  It provides consistently good food and a relaxed atmosphere that can be relied upon time and time again to keep the in-laws happy.

So when they were visiting once again at short notice and looking for some dinner, it was a no brainer to saunter over to Drumsheugh Gardens and grab a table.
 
Located in the Bonham Hotel, the dining room does well not to feel at all like many soul-less hotel dining rooms.  The menu changes regularly, is seasonal, and I'd challenge you not to find something you'll like. 

Glistening wobbling cubes of confit salmon to start were delicious and with a fantastic texture, but were a bit let down by the distraction of a tasteless cracker-like parcel that felt quite pointless.

Sea Bream with a nicoise salad was hard to find fault with; a well cooked piece of fish on a nicely dressed nicoise where each ingredient stood out individually and was well defined.

For dessert, I pretty much inhaled this white chocolate & raspberry creme brulee, with excellent melt in the mouth shortbread on the side.

So, solid good cooking and lovely service once again from the Bonham.  A wee tip if you've not discovered it yet is the Boozy Snoozy weekend lunch deal - £80.00 for a table of four for three courses and two bottles of wine (they'll do the same deal for multiples/more people too).  There's been many a Boozy Snoozy Sunday that has had me swearing at the alarm clock on a Monday morning. 

**Stop Press** They are now doing a Boozy Snoozy dinner on a Thursday night too.  Fridays were made for hangovers.  Go.