Overcooked, well-formed seaside fayre

Burger source

Seagrass sits right on South Sands beach – one of two eateries in the small harbour. Formerly the South Sands Hotel restaurant, it’s rebranded but the pitch is the same: seafood-heavy menu, West Country sourcing, and a terrace view that almost certainly makes everything taste better. We were staying nearby on holiday, it was the local, and – full disclosure – I may not have gone planning to review a burger. But there it was on the menu, the South Sands Burger, and it called to me.

The order

The South Sands Burger: an 8oz steak burger, emmental, beef tomato, onion, cos lettuce, spicy tomato relish, pickled gherkin, brioche bun, served with skinny fries. £19.50 on the menu. We went early doors – 6pm, as a family, one of only a couple of tables in – so no queue, no rush, nothing. Though we had booked – if you’re going, do, especially in holiday season, as walk-ins were told there was nothing available, not even for ready money.

The meat of it

First impression: this has heft; the bun was glossy and domed, a token, sad, dry-looking gherkin speared on top like a flag planted on a small brown hill. Red onion rings thick enough to have their own gravitational field peek out from under the top bun, and you can see a glorious melt on the cheese.

Cut it in half and the cross-section tells the rest of the story: a thick disc of patty, cooked through with no pink remaining. The meat is coarse ground, I think, but tightly packed – making it dense – but not quite maintaining structural integrity the whole way through (as you can see from the random, large gaps). A landslide of melted emmental goops over it, the onion and tomato atop, and a token single leaf of cos lettuce layered beneath. Build looks the part – properly stacked, nothing sliding out sideways.

First bite, and the bun’s the first thing you register – good flavour, properly brioche-y, but overtoasted to the point of dryness. The patty follows, and it’s the real story: 8oz of well-seasoned beef, cooked just past where it wanted to be, leading to a crumbly texture. That said, the burger as a whole wasn’t dry; a decent lean-to-fat ratio held things together somewhat.

Vegetables did their job – the onion and tomato both crisp and properly fresh, no sad limp slices here. The cos lettuce, though, was doing token duty at best: one leaf, presumably there to stop the bottom bun going soggy, contributing little more. The gherkin suffered similarly – dry, more garnish than ingredient. Next time: a proper thin-sliced pickle worked into the build will do for this burger than a token spear balanced on top ever will.

The emmental was surprising. Normally I’m sceptical of emmental on a burger – too mild, too polite for the job – but heaped on and properly melted like this, it brought unctuousness to the texture and a genuine umami lift that you’d expect to need a sharper cheese for. And the relish is worth calling out on its own: closer to an Indian-style chutney than a standard tomato relish, mustard seeds coming through, a hint of sweet vinegar, real tang. It’s doing the sweet-savoury balancing act the burger needed, and doing it well.

The fries deserve their own paragraph, frankly. Skin-on, home-style, skinny – cooked and seasoned to the point where there’s nothing to fault. Good on their own. Better dunked – I ran mine through Zoe’s unwanted tartare sauce (fish and chips casualty), then through the last of the relish, and they were great in both. Zoe clocked how good they were before anyone else at the table said a word, which either speaks to some early culinary discernment developing, or to the fact that good fries are just obviously, unmissably good.

Pudding. The South Sands Summer Fruit Pavlova (Chantilly cream, meringue, fresh raspberries and strawberries, £12.50 as billed) was a genuinely good plate of food – cream piled and shaped into a dense ball, clearly the good stuff from the famous local Salcombe Dairy, whipped properly thick enough to use as a building material. Meringue underneath light and crisp, fruit fresh and sweet, a citrusy coulis drizzle – mango or passionfruit, hard to call – adding brightness on top. Lovely pudding. At that price, though, you’re paying the tourist tax as much as the dessert bill.

Verdict: for the burger; the components were mostly good, in places genuinely excellent, but let down by the two things that could have been better – the bun (overtoasted, dry) and the patty (overcooked, crumbly rather than juicy). The kids had opinions, too – Emily had one to herself, the rest all had a bite each – it played to their tastebuds, and their training is not complete yet. In time, they’ll understand what it was missing: a softer bun, toasted on the inside only, and a patty allowed to keep some pink in the middle. With that… this would genuinely competes with the best of them. As it stands, it’s a burger doing well in a restaurant that’s clearly built around something else.

Monkey finger rating

• Bun – 3.5/5. Great flavour, let down by overtoasting and the resulting dryness.
• Build – 4/5. Good stacking, but one sad lettuce leaf and a token dry gherkin drag it down.
• Burger – 3.5/5. Well-seasoned 8oz of good beef, but overcooked into crumbliness.
• Taste – 4/5. The relish and the melted emmental do a lot of lifting here and rebalance things.
• Sides – 5/5. Skin-on skinny fries, cooked and seasoned to perfection – held up in mayo, tartare and relish alike. No notes.
• Value – 3/5. £19.50 for the burger and fries is about the going rate these days. The pavlova? Daylight robbery.
• Burger rating – 4/5. Good bones, good flavours, slightly hit by overcooking on both bun and patty – a genuinely good effort, inches from being a proper contender.

The ambience of it all

Worth saying: the setting is genuinely lovely, right on South Sands beach with the estuary view doing exactly what it’s meant to. It was calm and peaceful, a sunny day easing into a gentle breeze – the kind of view that makes you forgive quite a lot before the food’s even landed. Arriving at 6pm meant near-empty tables, quick service, and food that landed hot and fresh. Highly recommend the experience.

The deets

Seagrass Salcombe – South Sands Hotel, Bolt Head, Salcombe, TQ8 8LL
Tel: 01548 845900 · seagrass@southsands.com