Jaz (00:11):
Hey there. Welcome to this episode of My Mate In. Today I am catching up with my mate Thane in Canberra. Thane is my mate, but he is also my brother, which is kind of cool. This is also the first episode of My Mate In, where I have been to the location we're gonna discuss prior to recording, which is kind of fun. So Thane, welcome.

Thane (00:35):
Howdy. Thanks for having me.

Jaz (00:36):
What is the place that we're gonna talk about today?

Thane (00:39):
Today we'll be talking about the Burns Club.

Jaz (00:41):
Okay. The Burns Club. The name might suggest being a club that it, it has a specific kind of vibe. Could you tell people what's the go with the Burns Club?

Thane (00:51):
Well, all over Canberra there's different clubs for different groups. Like there's an Austrian club, a Greek club, and uh, the Burns Club is a Scottish club and it's pretty cool. It hosts events every once in a while and it also has the Five Star Buffet.

Jaz (01:12):
Very nice. And that's what we're gonna focus on today, right?

Thane (01:15):
Yes.

New Speaker (01:16):
And so the interest for this one, um, for you is like on your dad's side you've got Scottish heritage, right?

Thane (01:23):
Yeah, from my dad's side,

Jaz (01:25):
One of the things that I liked when you took me there was the map on the wall and kind of talking me through Highlands and Lowlands and stuff. That was pretty cool.

Thane (01:33):
Yeah. So to paint a picture when you walk in, there's a line where you line up and you like actually go into the buffet area, but across from that is a wall, it's a map of Scotland. And it pretty much just shows like the main whiskey places. But then I was pretty much showing the differences between like Highland Scotland and Lowland Scotland. So it was pretty cool.

Jaz (01:56):
Yeah, agreed. I liked that a lot. It's cool to talk about like, you know, where your specific clan history comes from and um, the geographical differences. I thought that was pretty fun. The Star Buffet. Paint a picture of that for us.

Thane (02:09):
Okay, so you walk in, you walk up to the dining area and then pretty much get seated, get everyone ready and then you run over to the buffet area. It's pretty magical. You got Indian food, Italian food, sushi, Chinese, so you've got pizza, seafood, pretty much anything for everyone. You've got soft serves and...

Jaz (02:33):
Yeah. So it is all you can eat, is that what you said?

Thane (02:35):
Yeah, all you can eat. I think it's $30 and then maybe like an age thing and they add an extra amount depending on how old you are or something.

Jaz (02:44):
Yeah. Okay.

Thane (02:45):
Not that much.

Jaz (02:46):
It was pretty impressive. I think in the past I've been to buffets where the idea is cool, like they seem like they offer a lot of stuff, but in actuality you'll go up to get a certain kind of pizza and there won't be any of that left or it or it like clears out really quickly. But this place, the staff were really impressive and the like the turnover of food of like the number of people they're eating but then also them replenishing all the different bays was Yeah, it was super impressive.

Thane (03:15):
Yeah, that's the thing, they got multiple people in the one bay working on the one specific food.

Jaz (03:21):
Mm-Hmm .

Thane (03:22):
And they're just constantly pumping it out. I went over to the pizza and there was no like cheese and then boom it was just there.

Jaz (03:30):
Magic.

Thane (03:32):
And then sometimes you'll pick up plates and then they're still warm because they just came out of the uh dishwasher,

Jaz (03:38):
, the turnover. So impressive. So what is your kind of go-to, because when we talk about an all-you-can-eat buffet, you fill up pretty quickly, right? Like what's the, what are the things you make space for when you go to Burns?

Thane (03:53):
Well I feel like when I go to The Burn Club, sort of like a challenge to see how many plates, but at the same time I don't really know.

Jaz (04:06):
I liked the, the little oven of the Portuguese tarts. That was a bit special.

Thane (04:11):
Yeah. But the annoying thing was I reached in to grab one and I ended up crushing it with the tongs.

Jaz (04:17):
Rather delicate .

Thane (04:19):
They were, they were really fragile. To be honest, I thought you were gonna talk about the chocolate fountain.

Jaz (04:25):
Yeah, the chocolate fountain was pretty cool. I liked that it had churros with it, like there were marshmallows and stuff, but uh, yeah, the churros were pretty special.

Thane (04:36):
Yeah. They have cheesecake, which was really good. They had pudding, which was pretty nice.

Jaz (04:41):
Yeah.

Thane (04:41):
I like the fried rice, it's really good.

Jaz (04:45):
I like too that you can go with a group of people to a place like this or you know, even for yourself, just the variety of things. Like when I looked around the table, we were all eating, you know, these different kinds of cuisines from around the world. Um, and you know, there's like veggie options and, and meat options and stuff and you can have dinner together but eat completely different things. That's pretty cool.

Thane (05:08):
Yeah. So I eat meat. I don't really know how vegan and vegetarian friendly. Sis, how friendly, like vegan friendly, do you think it's?

Jaz (05:19):
I would say it's, it's vegetarian friendly. I wouldn't think it's particularly vegan friendly. I don't remember seeing anything that's specifically said vegan as like with anything kind of um, carb based or uh, you know, like different sauces and stuff. I think it would be pretty hard to tell if you were vegan what would be Okay and what wouldn't like, I'm sure if you asked the staff they'd give you a sense but um, it didn't pop out as particularly clear to me.

Thane (05:46):
Yeah, I don't really look at that to be honest. I'm just focused more on the meat. Oh and that's the thing they got like that, like the Chinese section, they got like a bunch of chicken and pork and stuff, which is really good.

Jaz (05:58):
Mm-Hmm.

Thane (05:59):
I got that by itself and that was really good.

Jaz (06:02):
Yeah. Nice.

Thane (06:03):
So I reckon that meat may be one of my go-tos. But yeah, I also really like the dumplings and the pork buns and stuff. They're really good.

Jaz (06:12):
Yeah, it was all really fresh. The roast section stood out to me as well because cooking like roast vegetables or roast meat at home is pretty time consuming. So I, I liked all the different kinds of gravy and roast veggies. Thought that was really nice.

Thane (06:26):
To be honest, I haven't really gone over there. Didn't really go over there anytime I've been, I've been like three times now and I've never been over there.

Jaz (06:35):
I think a good recommendation for people is when you get there, get your plate, find your table, sit down, get up and do a lap and you know, suss everything out because you don't wanna fill up on one thing and then have missed like you know, this whole other section of delicious food.

Thane (06:51):
Yes. Soak it all in.

Jaz (06:53):
Mm, agreed. I mean it could also be that it's getting close to lunch but this is making me hungry. .

Thane (06:59):
Yeah. It's got pizza, it's got everything.

Jaz (07:02):
Mm-Hmm. Totally. Any other kind of observations or tips that you have for people before we wrap up?

Thane (07:10):
I mean probably you won't think about it, if you get pudding or anything like that, walk over to the ice cream machine and put ice cream on top of it. Makes it 10 times better.

Jaz (07:20):
Oh yeah, that's a pretty good tip. I like that. Good combination.

Thane (07:24):
Or use it with your soft drinks and make uh, spiders

Jaz (07:32):
Also a good tip. , we really enjoyed it. You know, I was really pleased that you took his, um, took Tim and I there. It was a lot of fun. Uh, one place that we had been waiting to go to when we visited you in Canberra was a place you've been talking about that has these elusive Canberra frog cakes or frog tarts.

Thane (07:53):
Frog tarts.

Jaz (07:54):
Yeah. And then we couldn't have them and I feel like for a year and a half you've just lied and that these things don't exist. .

Thane (08:03):
Well there's pictures of 'em on Google. There's a Google search

Jaz (08:08):
And this is a Canberra thing, right?

Thane (08:10):
Uh, I've only seen them in Canberra but I think it actually originated somewhere else in Australia I think.

Jaz (08:18):
Okay.

Thane (08:18):
But yeah, I haven't seen them in Wagga or Sydney. I haven't really seen them anywhere else.

Jaz (08:23):
And so for anyone who hasn't heard of these frog tarts, what are they?

Thane (08:28):
So it's pretty much a biscuit at the bottom, jam, marshmallow and then like green colored chocolate put on top and then you know, other chocolate to make it look like a frog. And then they pretty much cut a bit out to make it look like the mouth because the marshmallow is pink.

Jaz (08:45):
They're so cute. I'll put a link to a picture in the show notes. They're pretty adorable but we couldn't try them.

Thane (08:52):
We could not because the place doesn't exist anymore. We found out after you left it's under new management.

Jaz (08:59):
We don't know if they're gonna have them when they open up. Right?

Thane (09:01):
I hope they do.

Jaz (09:02):
What was it called before the management changed.

Thane (09:05):
The People's Place [Note: this was actually called The Public Place]

Jaz (09:06):
Might be worth checking out. It was like what? Like a good coffee and cake shop?

Thane (09:10):
Yeah. Yeah. It had a really good steak sandwich that I had as well.

Jaz (09:14):
Oh

Thane (09:15):
Yeah. It was really good. Like creamy mushrooms and steak, it was pretty good.

Jaz (09:19):
Okay. So it was pretty good for lunch as well.

Thane (09:21):
Well that was on the break... You could have that for breakfast.

Jaz (09:24):
Oh look at me trying to limit when you can eat a steak sandwich.

Thane (09:31):
Tisk, tisk, tisk.

Jaz (09:32):
Amazing. Yeah, no, I'm definitely hungry now. Very cool. I appreciate you coming on for a chat and sharing about uh, the People's Place, frog tarts in Canberra and also the Burns Club and their Star Buffet. Thanks heaps for coming and having a chat.

Thane (09:50):
Of course. Thanks for having me.