When the 12 chefs face off for the final cook-off in the 2023 SA Pub Burger Challenge, some may have an unfair – but perfectly within the rules – advantage.

Sussex Hotel sous chef Mel Fazzini played it cool when asked by InDaily about the pub’s preparation for the hotly contested title.

“The burger is on our day-to day-menu. We’ve just been perfecting things again, going over the recipes,” Fazzini replied.

Grilled by this masthead as to whether the pub was planning to win, she served up an ungarnished “No”.

She said there have been no stakeouts of competitors’ dining rooms either, which seems reasonable given the long hours put in by chefs and the geographical dispersal of the 12 finalist pubs.

Among those regional competitors are Port Broughton Hotel, Port Pirie’s Risdon Hotel, Port Lincoln Hotel (more on them later) and Woodside Hotel (okay, they’re kind of close, but we’ll include them here).

Further probing as to what it will take to win revealed that “everyone in the finalist group tends to do everything on a highly professional level”.

“It will depend on the flavour profile, I think,” she said innocently.

And then Fazzini cracked under the heat of intense questioning.

“I think the advantage I have over the other people I’m up against is that I’ve been trained by old school, high level hatted chefs,” she said.

“I can bring that type of knowledge of resting meat [and] the way I prepare things is obviously at a different level.”

Let it be noted that Fazzini was trained by and worked under Chris Jarvis for five years and MasterChef’s Jock Zonfrillo for two years “many moons ago”.

Fazzini then let it slip that the Sussex Hotel head chef Chris Wilson, under whom she now works, is a veteran of Michelin Star restaurants in England.

Gotcha! No pub chef is ever just a chef.

Pub burgers are the joy-inducing equivalent of Beluga caviar without the price tag. Their creators are revered gods who hold our hearts in their heatproof hands.

Which brings us to another of the competitors, Port Lincoln Hotel.

Like Sussex Hotel, it is a first-time finalist in the annual SA Pub Burger Challenge.

The team there is also keeping schtum on their chances and, more interestingly, is sending an apprentice chef into the flames of competition.

What are their gods thinking?!

Port Lincoln Hotel executive chef Blair Dunn emphatically believes apprentice Trinity Spalding is ready for a heated battle.

“I’ve been getting Trinity doing a lot of stretches and making plenty of burgers,” Dunn said.

“He’s young and fit and pretty quick on his feet.”

This youthful energy and unorthodox strategy (unless one were to view it as a lamb to the slaughter) may just secure them the title.

Port Lincoln Hotel will be serving up their ever popular Bayside Burger

When the burgers are judged, half of the possible points are for taste, which can be very personal – but Dunn is confident his pub’s burger will overcome any subjectivity.

“Our burger is delicious – you just gotta pick something that everyone likes,” he said.

“You can’t go wrong with bacon, cheese, ranch sauce and a sneaky pickle thrown in! So good!”

Let’s see what the other competitors – from the Aldinga, Arkaba, Earl of Leicester, Griffins, Maylands, Park, Port Broughton, Risdon, Sussex and Woodside hotels – have to say!

The 2023 SA Pub Burger Challenge is an event of the Australian Hotels Association SA and is sponsored by Thomas Foods.

It fires up on Tuesday, 18 July at 4pm at the Griffins Hotel on Hindmarsh Square, with 4 rounds of 3 competitors.

The public are warmly invited to attend.