As you pry your eyes open to the light of the morning, you decide the best way to do this is, is to do it quickly – to rip off the band-aid. The cold hits you as soon as the blanket comes off, and after a warming shower that goes on longer than it should, you throw on the all-to-familiar red t-shirt, tie the matching red bandana and jump in the car.

After a slow walk down the dark, dingy, cold corridor to the kitchen, you slice what seems like 1000 tomatoes, open 100 cans of beetroot and pineapple, grate 300 carrots and cry a river cutting 50 onions. A life-time later, the ‘fresh prep’ is done and you’re ready to see the light of day and join the team at the front. Okay, so that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but fresh prep wasn’t exactly the most riveting job.

Next job is to slice the bread buns and as the knife cuts through the 60th bun, you feel a twang in your finger; you’ve sliced it, and your boss jokingly tells you that you’ve passed the ‘initiation’.

Through it all, you try and remember why you decided to get a job here; all this, just for a burger? While you’re deep in thought, asking the same monotonous question, ‘would you like panini or wholemeal’, the clock ticks over to 2pm. It’s break time. You order a ‘Bird and Brie’ and a side of chips, and as you take your first bite into the burger, you are reminded why you work at Grill’d.

Before this place opened, burgers were mostly consumed between the hours of 1 and 3am on the way home from a big night. They were a piece meat, a squirt of tomato sauce and mustard, one excuse for a pickle and a slice of cheese between two tiny pieces of bread. Not to mention that guilty feeling every time after you ate one.

Grill’d isn’t your average burger place, it isn’t a burger dripping with oil that still left you feeling hungry. Flocks of sportspeople and businessmen would swarm during lunchtime and devour a ‘Mighty Melbourne’ or a ‘Baa Baa’ burger. The meat is cooked on the grills, the buns are toasted, the lettuce fresh and the sauces AMAZING. With a side of thick-cut chips and famous herb salt, a burger at Grill’d is a healthy, filling main meal.

The idea of a burger joint being ‘healthy’ and a cool place to hang out soon caught on, after Grill’d opened its doors. Strolling through the streets of Melbourne, more and more of these places have popped up. There’s a Grill’d on nearly every main street, a Burger Edge, a Huxtaburger or the recently opened B.East Burger, each offering their own take on burgers. But what is fascinating is the way the burger has evolved since its early days being served in that yellow paper at McDonald’s.

The traditional burger was a piece of meat, some lettuce and tomato and sauce between two buns. Today, burgers are served open or ordered with no bun. At these new-age places, burgers are not served to you in a cardboard box displaying how many calories they contain, they are served with a knife and fork, on a dinner plate with fresh salad, steak, chicken, a veggie patty and even gluten-free bread; the burger has become a marriage of ingredients to satisfy any taste-buds.

The newly opened B.East Burger reflects the importance of where you eat your burger. If the place has a ‘cool’ vibe the burger actually tastes better. Like most of the hip burger places that have opened around town, a beer or cocktail with your burger is common-place. Sharing this view is The Age‘s Nina Rousseau who wrote in a recent review  that the ‘100-seater B.East – with its buns, beer and live music – cranks things up a notch’.

Having sampled the offerings just the other night, I have to admit, the organic, grass-fed Gippsland beef patties are a treat on the taste-buds. The combination of the B.East ice-cream sundae, live music and street art covering the space, makes this newest joint one of the hippest around.

With more and more burger bars hitting the streets of Melbourne each month, there is no denying that the average run-of-the-mill cheeseburger has grown-up into a dish best served trendy; a pattie with all the trimmings of a sophisticated restaurant, with or without a bun, sandwiched with a cold beer, live music and art. The burger really has become a thing that satisfies all the senses.

Christina Lovrecz is a Graduate Diploma in Journalism student at La Trobe University and is one of upstart’s staff writers. You can follow her on Twitter: @clovrecz