Grand Trailer Park Taverna: Where Diets Go To Die

If you’re sitting there thinking ‘as if we needed another burger dive in Melbourne’, the Grand Trailer Park Taverna is definitely going to surprise you. Sitting on the deviously posh corner of Bourke and Exhibition Street, the place bends its hat to the neighbourhood with its quirkiness. It screams inner city Melbourne with the graffiti splashed waterfall staircase (really quite a ridiculous sentence much less an actual thing) and is lit with an icicle adored roof and coloured beams from the steps.

Once you’re around the corner, you’ll be smacked in the face with retro. If you can keep your eye on one detail, you’ve bested the rest; disco balls, chandeliers, colourful backyard lights and mismatched carpet and wooden floorboards send your senses into overload, and it becomes nigh on impossible to nail down a ‘feel’ for the place.

If you had me pinned to the wall with a gun to my head for the answer, I could only give you one word: hipster.

You can either sprawl your limbs out on one of the picnic tables centred under a beaming chandelier, or you can people peep from the confines of your own private Airstream caravan. Yes, your own private Airstream caravan.

It solidifies a position in the gritty Melbourne burger stakes with the pedigree of staff. Josh Lefers (Pawn & Co) and Dani Zeini (Dandenong Pavillion) have joined forces to create an ‘east coast trailer park inspired wonderland’ and boast a pop culture inspired theme to the food selection; play a game with your co-diners and try to nail down the movie references from the menus.

On site, waiters bustle past with tray after tray of sliders, fries and provocative looking cocktails that scream HANGOVER. I practically have to tackle one to the floor to get my hands on something to eat, but once I do, I’m lucky to wrap my grill around a Francis Underwood, and it is undoubtedly one of the most divine combinations of meat, cheese, sauce and bun you’ll find this side of Parliament station. Why? Simply put, potato mac and cheese croquette. Sandwiched between (pun intended) the meat and sauce, this burger is everything a burger is supposed to be.

But the fun doesn’t stop at burgers. You’ll need to consider your choices carefully before you make a commitment to a menu item here. There’s a long list of drinks, ranging from ‘spiked’ milkshakes, slushies, cocktails, lagers and wines. If you’re holding back on the booze, trying to deny yourself at least one dessert is going to be a very difficult task. Between waffles, whipped cream and Whizz Fizz, you’ll be searching for those extra few inches of room in your stomach, and pining for the nearest bed following the impending food coma.

The Melbourne Instagram crowd is already all over this joint, so you can get your tastebuds ready with the abundance of teasing images sprawled across their Facebook and Instagram pages.

Get in and explore the park before its trendy. Arrive hungry, leave happy. Welcome to the burger scene, Taverna!

Grand Trailer Park Taverna
87 Bourke Street, Melbourne