Mushroom Cheeseburger at Loving Hut Express

Loving Hut Express reopened in the latter half of last week after time out for renos and looking at new menu items. When I dropped by early last Friday evening for dinner with Posh Pudding, they were already sold out of various items, such as yam fries and onion rings (meaning no BBQ Onion Ring Cheeseburger!).

Some goodies that were being considered for the new menu were sushi and spring rolls. Sushi fans should tweet them first as they mentioned sushi would probably not make it into the new menu because there was a concern about freshness. Gluten-free Summer Rolls look to have made the cut, however.

I had previously tried the Crispy Chick'n Burger and the BBQ Onion Ring Cheeseburger (which apparently converted die-hard omnivore Food Persuasion to vegan goodness), and those may very well be the top burgers in their line-up. This time around I went for the new Grilled Mushroom Cheeseburger (beefless patty, grilled mushrooms, cheese sauce, mayo, mustard, tomato, red onion, lettuce). Strangely, I both like and don't like this burger.

• There's a layer of mushrooms on the patty. Definitely enough mushrooms to give this burger a clear mushroom flavour. It's a mushroom burger, after all. Like mushrooms? You'll get it here.
• It's a big burger for your buck. Chances are, you'll have to do a lot of jaw-yawning and burger-squishing to fit it into your mouth.
• There's a good amount of veggies in there (about a third of the thickness), so you're getting fresh greens to balance your burger.
• There's a thin-ish patty in there, but it does add to the overall filling feeling. The sauce and other flavours smothered whatever fake beef flavour is here, however.
• Mixed with the sauce of the mushroom is the cheese sauce. I think here is where the problem lay. Vegans don't use dairy (because dairy = veal = BAD!), so it's not "real" cheese in this burger, but some sort of cheese substitute sauce. And if there's one thing converts-to-veganism miss, it's usually cheese. There are all sorts of substitutes, but it's just really hard to fake a good cheese. And I don't think fake cheese is good enough here. It's a tasty enough burger because of the mushrooms and the sauce, but for me I was missing real cheese. And being an omnivore, I'm allowed to miss it.

Posh Pudding went for the BBQ Onion Ring Cheeseburger, sans the Onion Rings. I thought she was crazy -- weren't the onion rings an integral component of this burger? But she was fine with it, and said the tasty sauce made all the difference in that burger.

Also tried were the yam fries. Normally not something I'd order -- fries are fries, right?
At the time, the staff thought they had enough, but later on it turned out there were two orders (ours and that of a nice vegan lady who was before us), and only half an order of yam fries available. The nice lady generously yielded to us (thanks!) and got some huge cookies from Loving Hut Express in exchange. We shared our yam fries with her, but she was too shy to take more than a few.

The yam fries look like yam fries anywhere, except they were thin cut, which I don't often see -- definitely less than 5mm, maybe 3mm thick. Crispy on the outside, and strangely almost creamy-soft on the inside. It's a really good version of yam fries to begin with, but wait -- there's more! It comes with a sweet chipotle sauce that's really tasty. Go easy on it so you don't smother the flavour of the yam fries themselves.

For drinks, I went with a Star Ruby Grapefruit juice from GuS ("Grown-up Soda"). I like trying brands I don't normally see (even though they started in 2003!), and I was specifically looking for something not too sweet. The GuS soda even has "not too sweet" written on it, and sure enough, it wasn't as sweet as your typical soda. For grapefruit, it wasn't bitter, either, which means you're getting grapefruit taste without the usual drawback.