Fire crews were called to a hotel on a South Yarra side street at approximately 12:27am on Friday after a guest's attempt to cook a pack of Woolworths beef burgers in his room set off the building's smoke alarm, triggering a full evacuation of the floor.
The guest, a Perth man in Melbourne for the AFL finals, said he had been "genuinely just trying to have a feed" when the alarm went off partway through the second patty.
"It's cold, the window was shut, and there's not exactly a lot of ventilation in those rooms," he said, gesturing at the room in question. "In hindsight, probably should've cracked it. But you don't think about that until it's already going off."
The Case For The Burgers
Asked why he hadn't simply bought food from any of the several fast-food outlets within easy walking distance of the hotel — a point raised, at volume, by more than one evacuated neighbour — the man conceded it was a fair question.
"I would've had to walk straight past the grill to go and buy a burger somewhere else, yeah," he said. "Didn't love the logic of that. Also I'd already bought the mince, so."
He was keen to clarify, unprompted, that the burgers themselves had not burnt. "They were actually cooking fine. It was smoke, not flame. There's a difference, and I feel like that difference has been lost a bit tonight."
Pressed on whether he had considered the butcher instead of the supermarket, he paused. "Do Woolies burgers smoke more? Genuinely don't know. Something to look into."
An Alternative He Had Also Considered
The man volunteered that pies had briefly been on the table as a safer option, before being ruled out on logistical grounds. "The accommodation didn't have an oven tray. I probably could've bought one, in hindsight. Didn't. That's on me."
Fire crews confirmed there was no fire, that the alarm had done exactly what it was supposed to do, and that the floor was cleared as a standard precaution. Guests were permitted back to their rooms a short time later, several still holding room-service menus they had picked up out of spite while waiting in the lobby.
At time of publication, the man said he intended to eat the burgers cold, in the corridor, "so it's not a whole thing again."