This coming weekend is the Australia Day long weekend, with a public holiday on Monday. The Coat of Arms Burger, Grill’d Burgers. The least exciting items are placed right at the bottom – lettuce and tomato, also locally grown. Outback Pride supplies native foods to some of Australia’s top restaurants including Marque and Quay, and Rockpool Bar & Grill in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The quandong is a tart native wild peach that’s high in vitamin C, supplied by Outback Pride, a South Australian company that works with traditional Aboriginal communities to grow bush foods around Australia. It’s drier than your average beef burger pattie, but the bush tomato relish, native thyme mayo, pickled beetroot and the soft, creamy Meredith Dairy goat cheese add moisture. The kangemu pattie, made from farmed meat, is very lean, with just 1% fat. There’s a lot, possibly too much going on within that burger bun. The caramelised onions have a very strong flavour on their own and it took me a few bites to get past their sweetness.

The burger is made from home-grown produce and native ingredients. So what does the Coat of Arms burger taste like? But it succeeded in getting people talking about Grill’d, and the social media storm didn’t last long.

It was a risky campaign that amused as well as offended some bloggers were outraged, and Grill’d responded by suggesting critics of the campaign “didn’t get our sense of humour”. Last year, a marketing campaign saw posters in Grill’d stores proclaiming “No blogging, no tweeting, no instagramming, no facebooking, no cravats”. I believe Grill’d’s marketing strategies seek to generate buzz with provocative campaigns designed to get people talking, presumably driven by the belief that ultimately, their burgers will have the last triumphant word. Grill’d’s version of the Coat of Arms has also sparked criticism. It’s a patriotic but cheeky call to action and not surprisingly, not everyone approves – although many would admit such irreverence is typically Australian. The problem isn’t in eating roo or emu – many Australians already do it’s in Grill’d’s brazen invitation to hungry Australians to “eat their national emblem” in the form of a burger named after and promoted via an altered version of that emblem. The strongest criticism is aimed at Grill’d’s use of the national emblem, suggesting that the marketing campaign “demeans the coat of arms and ridicules it“. How do you feel about eating your national symbols? I wouldn’t feel comfortable if they were endangered animals. We’re far from the only nation that eats its national animal symbols – around the world, national symbols eaten include cows, marlin, zebras, camels, polar bears, armadillos, antelope and llamas. Available until 31 January, the burger is called the Coat of Arms and features all-Australian ingredients, including a meat pattie made from the two animals represented on the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, the kangaroo and emu. Grill’d Burgers has released a limited edition burger in honour of Australia Day.

Marque foods dcoat