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Pub lunch participant Leoni Sprigg (43) ended up being part of a scientific study against her will during Friday lunch at French Quarter pub, The Timberlands Hotel (no relation).
Like many heritage venues in the trendy Betoota French Quarter, The Timberlands Hotel aims to be a unique take on the traditional pub experience by putting a few darts in the mouths of taxidermied animals and taking lunch bookings for the same group of smokies loving office workers every Friday.
It was at this venue Sprigg states she was tricked into ordering a plant-based vege burger, something she now realises is a good idea in theory only.
“They said it’s a special patty they fly in from Colorado, it’s meant to bleed when you eat it, made by a team of vegan scientists just for me,” stated Sprigg as she drank a sasparilla and smoked a cinnamon cigarette to get the taste of the burger out of her mouth.
“Let me tell you, if I’d have chewed glass it would have been an improvement compared to what I was eating.”
According to Sprigg, the regret of ordering a vege burger began before she even took her first bite.
“We got back to the table with our buzzers and Liam told me he had ordered a steak with Diane sauce. I love Diane sauce, why didn’t I get that?”
“I just started crying right there in front of everyone. Why had I made such a stupid choice?”
“I’ve got kids at home, what am I meant to tell them? That mummy is stupid? That she says you can’t put 20 cents into the spiral spinning cone thing out the front of IGA but it’s OK for her to drop $24 on a burger that doesn’t even have any meat in it?”
“I could have done anything else with that money. I could have shared it with my kids, I could have given it to charity. Fucking hell, I could have donated it to those Christian Democrat pricks and it still would have been a better use of the money.”
When Sprigg returned to her table with her meat-free burger and an offensive amount of Hickory BBQ sauce, her colleagues did their best to support her in what was definitely a good idea on paper but perhaps not in practice.
“Aw that looks good!” lied one of Sprigg’s co-workers who had done the sensible thing and ordered a burger an animal had to die for.
Sprigg then suggested her and her co-worker exchange a bite of each other’s meal which was met with a respectful but firm ‘no.’
