Anyone who's had a burger or two knows the thing you get served never looks exactly like delicious tower of meat, bun and wholesome goodness you see in the photo. But Smart Buns took that inevitable sense of disappointment to the next level.
The restaurant opened recently in the city centre building on the corner of East Street and Granby Street that has - since I started working on the Leicester Mercury - been a seafood restaurant, a pizza place and a florist. Now a small London-based burger chain has taken it over.
The one thing that stood out when I looked at the Smart Buns menu online was the Big Smart Plus - an enormous four-patty monster as tall as it is wide. I ordered it through Uber Eats, along with a bunch of extras just to make sure I didn't go hungry, and it arrived in about half an hour.
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The burger did not seem big at all. They seemed to have accidentally cheated me out of half the meat. There was the bottom bit of bread, then two beef patties with sauce, cheese and lettuce and then another bit of bread, and another - absolutely nothing where the second storey of this beef behemoth should have been.
Just some healthy air. So it was a good job I also ordered chips, barbecue chicken, onion rings and tiramisu for pudding, as well as a can of 7up.
As well as being disappointing in terms of quantity, it wasn't up to much as far as quality went. It was okay - it was a burger, it tasted good. But it was like a Big Mac - tasty but not impressive in any way.
The chips were a bit thin and had cooled down by the time I'd got to them and I didn't bother finishing them. The onion rings were okay, if a little bit dry.
There was also a little pot of pinky-orange sauce that didn't taste very nice and seemed a bit too solid. The chunks of chicken were good but they were a bit overwhelmed by the barbecue sauce, which was like the stuff you squeeze out of a plastic bottle and pretty dull.
The tiramisu was nice enough. And I've no complaints about the 7up.
Verdict
At £7.99 the Big Smart Plus burger is just a massive Big Mac. Or just a regular-sized Big Mac if they miss out lots of the beef. I didn't really expect it to be a great meal and it was a bit disappointing. 2/5
