Our nearest one is the Steers in Main Road, Somerset West. I popped in and placed our order: 1 double ribs, 2 veggie burgers and a medium chips. For the price of R154.80, I had high hopes that we'd get good-sized portions that tasted great, enough to feed three hungry people who had put in some hard slog. After all, this isn't an every-day occurance.
(For comparison purposes, we pay R172 for 6 pizzas at Roman's Pizza up the road - enough for a gigantic meal and midnight-snack leftovers)
Usual 15 minute wait later, I grabbed our packaged-up order, headed home and we opened our "lucky packets" to dig in to lunch.
The ribs portions have been shrinking and shrinking. You now pay nearly R100 for around half of what you got 3 months ago for the same price.
Instead of the food being packaged in a large box, you now have a handful-box containing one of the previous two portions, cut in half - with chips. They don't say "cheap as chips" for nothing, which is why the same amount of potato is still thrown in. See those two bits above? Yup, used to get double that.
This we know - and although we're not happy, at least they cook them decently and it's a once-in-a-while treat for my favourite carnivore. Unfortunately the halved portions at the same price mean he's not quite as full after eating his way through them as he used to be, and has to go prowling around the kitchen to fill the void.
On to the veggie burgers my son and I ordered. Here's what is advertised on the menu:
Although not cheap, there's at least a couple of veggies, a patty and some nice Steers sauce. Steers have developed a great in-house veg patty worth paying for, the one in the pic above.
Here's what we got:
No lettuce, no steers sauce, one piece of limp tomato, some dressing, a dab of tomato sauce hidden on the base, and a patty I could have bought a 4-piece box of at Checkers for the price they charged for the entire burger.
Because I was hungry, I had no choice but to eat it. But it turned out to be the worst burger I've ever had. Besides the thousand-island dressing, the veg patty was cooked/grilled in such a way that it picked up burnt food of some variety from the grill (see the back bit of the bun in the lower pic), was only half-heated and tasted absolutely awful. It left a terrible after-taste that I'm trying to drown in chocolate at the moment.
I'm quite prepared to pay for good food, and to treat my family to a decent take-away once in a while. But Steers will not be getting my business again any time soon. Not for that price, and not for the crap we received. I work way too hard for my food money to throw it away on rubbish.
If you want a decent take-away burger with chips, and are a carnivore, I recommend you take your business to the non-franchised Big Mamma's across the road from Checkers instead.
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