One of my favourite books about food, An Economist Gets Lunch, argued that in places where there is lots of labour, and long supply lines for ingredients (like London), you should choose food items that are dependent on lots of labour, rather than high quality, fresh ingredients – hence, the huge popularity of relatively labour-heavy foods with sauces that travel well, like gaeng phed ped yang pon lamai and burgers which are dependent on chefs carefully balancing a whole lot of vibrant flavours.
Conversely, in places where there is less labour, and short supply lines for ingredients (like the Isle of Man), you should typically choose food items that are dependent on high quality ingredients: simpler dishes like roasts, steaks, and other dishes that showcase high quality, fresh ingredients.
Thus, it is a special day when a new restaurant on the Isle of Man uses high quality, fresh local ingredients to build a great burger. Dream Bird have made a genuinely outstanding burger.
The buns (baked in Castletown) are well toasted, have durability, and are the perfect base for the burger. They’re not too “bready”, and somehow manage to be soft enough to bite into, but strong enough to not collapse under the burger.
The meat is slightly on the rare side of medium, and they’ve infused the meat patties with bone marrow, which give it a juicy texture that hits the spot.
Dream Bird have then gone to the remarkable effort of making their own American-style burger cheese, but have used local Manx cheddar as the base – which I imagine is the first and only place in the world to even attempt this.
On top of all that, the basic burger at Dream Bird is £8 – cheaper than the £11 burger at Jaks!* The double-burger, pictured above, is £13 at Dream Bird, compared to £15 at Jaks.
The Jaks Burgers do come with a free side, though – but the sides at Dream Bird are almost as good as the burgers, with fried chicken my favourite so far.
*Prices correct as of 15 February, 2020.