Tag: american cheese

Steam Engine, Waterloo, London

Posted in Bacon, Chain, Gourmety, london, Pub, ReviewsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Vigorously indulgent burger; great, edging on brilliant

Burger source

I was looking for somewhere near Waterloo to meet an old family friend; the Steam Engine showed as having a permanent residency from Burger Craft; apparently a partnership with the Publove pubs. It’s not entirely clear from how the relationship with Publove works, but Burger Craft’s mission is clear:

Our craft is burgers: The finest ingredients, wonderful flavours, slow cooked meats, hand cut chips and homemade sauces brought together to create unforgettable burgers. Smashed, grilled and steamed to perfection by our team of chefs to create the tastiest, juiciest burgers around. That’s Burger Craft! Come see us in PubLove  all over London.

Simple enough. The website, whilst somewhat circumspect about who these people are, does go on in beautiful detail about what they’re trying to achieve, how and with who:

Our wonderful dry aged beef (and the rest of our delicious meats) comes from the multiple awards winning Walter Rose & Son’s fantastic farm in Wiltshire. Used by non-other than Tom Kerridge we’ve since discovered.

Our “Springy” & sensational demi-brioche buns come from the master craftsmen & women at The Bread Factory. London’s leading artisan bakery.

We source every ingredient from equally outstanding and dedicated suppliers and continuously work with them to maintain our quality. “Taste, taste and taste again”

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Welcome to the Steam Engine.

The order

Let’s put it to the test, then. A ‘Bacon Dude’ duly ordered – American cheese, streaky bacon – atop the six-ish oz smashburger patty, served in a fresh, soft demi-brioche with hand-cut fries. All for about a tenner; even with my half of Meantime and Andreas’ coke the bill was only £12.25 a head. Reasonable for this part of town.

The meat of it

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I’m not going to lie, the plating isn’t great; the burger itself looks fantastic, but that sad sprawl of fries doesn’t inspire confidence. However, the second you touch the bun you can feel that this burger is something beyond the ordinary; it’s unbelievably soft, the stack is perfect with the burger sat atop a thin spread of what seems to be BBQ sauce, a slim slice of tomato and then coated with a lush, bright yellow melt of proper American processed cheese and a healthy wodge of nicely browned, lightly smoked bacon. Touch is the right word; this burger is an unashamed multi-sensory experience. You taste, touch, sell, feel all in one go.

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The cross section doesn’t look as pink as many other high-end burgers in London but it is a patty smash-and-steam job – the meat is pressed down on the grill to get extra crispness on the patty and steamed under cover to get a good cheese melt, so this finish is expected. The meat is coarsely ground and even with the smash retains a loose-packed finish. It looks good.

A first bite shows the impact this cooking method delivers; the super-soft bun is wrapped around completely melty cheese, a thick smokey bite of bacon, soft – and if I’m brutally honest, slightly over-soft and slightly undersasoned – melty meat, and somewhat indistinct salad. That said, the cheese and bacon compensated for the slight underseasoning of the burger, and the meat itself is clearly top-notch, with that a light touch of that gamey flavour you get when meat has been dry-aged; fat oozes out of it and drips out of the soft, slightly sweet bun. The bacon was slightly flaccid, like it had been under a heat lamp and lost some of its crispness; and so the only real problem with the burger as a whole is textural. The limitations compound, but are minor. The overall experience is gluttunous, voluminous, glossy and pliant. The burger is tender, juicy and plump.

The fries – were underwhelming IMHO. Some of them were fine; crisp and well-seasoned, happily married with a dollop of ketchup. Others – were limp, sorry excuses for a french fry – not quite underdone but somehow structurally incapable of holding the crisp finish their most impressive peers did. They are well seasoned, though, and tasty enough – it was just a bit of a mixed, visually underwhelming bag; an unfair pairing for an otherwise superlative burger.

Monkey finger rating

Bun –  4.5/5 – really high quality
Build – 4.5/5 – the veg was slightly over-done and there could have been a smidge more sauce
Burger – 4/5
Taste –  4/5
Sides – 2.5/5
Value – 4/5 – £11 for burger and side, ish. Pretty good for something in view of Waterloo station.

Burger rating – 4/5 – really rather good., in spite of the fries

The deets

There are a few Publoves scattered around London; this one is pretty much down the road from Waterloo, right by Lambeth North tube. Check the website for other locations.

Guest pic: Andreas, my Norwegian brother from another mother.

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Byron Waterloo, 41-45 The Cut, Southwark

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Byron started the gourmet burger revolution for me. Does it live up to my memory of it?

Burger source

Byron was founded by Tom Byng, who, according to its website, spent many a night in the US eating burgers he couldn’t find in the London of 2007… and so he set up. In my mind, this man, and this chain (now owned by a private equity firm with upwards of 60 locations Nationwide) kick-started the burger renaissance London is currently undergoing and showed GBK – then the only ones with a claim to the gourmet burger – that it had no idea what it was doing.*  In my memory, their ‘pure cuts of British beef’ were always cooked to a perfect medium, delivered with super-melty cheese in a soft brioche, and were just plain delicious. They even have their own cheese for extra meltiness – Freddar, a cheddar hybrid named after one of their chefs!

 

*mind you, I haven’t been to a GBK in years!

The order

We were there for a work related do, so shared a variety of starters (buffalo wings, nuggets served with BBQ sauce and nachos topped with sour cream, salsa, guac and melted cheese) and sides (fries, courgette fries). For my burger, I went for the B-Rex, medium rare (more common now than I thought it was in London!) – which is a bacon cheese burger with jalapenos, pickles, onion rings, BBQ sauce and mayonnaise. What’s there not to love?

The meat of it

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The burger looked perfect. I mean, look at it! A perfect stack, layered up as you’d expect it. The patty looked a bit tooperfect, holding together in a slightly suspicious way and I feared it might have been overcooked…

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…but look at that cross section! A perfect medium rare! Strong melt to the cheese, brioche holding up admirably against the sauces and one would assume burger juice.

Then a bite. The meat’s slightly underseasoned, or at least struggling to cope with the sweetness of BBQ sauce, onion and brioche. It’s also slightly low on the fat ratio (I’d guess an 80/20 lean/fat at best), which means it’s not as juicy as you’d hope. The grind is good, though, the texture melt-in-your-mouth perfect, the cheese glorious, the japalenos and pickles a sweet, crisp counterpoint to the crunchy onion ring. The bacon gets somewhat lost in all of this, but it’s adding salt to the hot sweet mess of this burger, so isn’t without purpose. The jalapenos are reasonably non-descript, adding the faintest hint of heat. Unfortunately… whilst all these elements are coming together well, the overall balance of this burger is a bit off – too much sweetness, not enough umami. Add to this the fact that the beef is just fine – unexceptional if good quality ground beef – and there’s no longer any specialness about this Byron burger. A serviceable output of a decent chain… but little to write home about.

As to the sides…

  • The wings are good. On the mild side of standard buffalo, suspect either they weren’t using Frank’s hot sauce but some poor imitator, or overdid the butter. Crisp and tender, though, and not bad for London.
  • The fries were fine – a small portion for the money (£3 for a portion about the same size as a small fries at McD’s), crisp french-fry style, well-seasoned.
  • The courgette fries are great – sweet, crispy and salty all in one go. Don’t even pretend they’re healthy, but they are delicious!
  • The chicken nuggets and nachos – meh. Chain fayre, nothing exceptional, except for the BBQ sauce which seems eccentric and different to standard, mostly in a good way.

Drinks-wise I was having Woodford reserve off its decent bourbon list. Burgers and bourbon – a killer combination. Or you can have craft beer if you prefer…

Monkey finger rating

Bun –  4/5
Build – 4.5/5
Burger – 3.5/5
Taste –  3.5/5
Sides – 4/5 – courgette fries bump it up half a point
Value – 3.5/5 – £9, £3 sides, expensive drinks… a little overpriced for standard fayre.

Burger rating – 3.5/5 – it’s either gone downhill to ‘average’ or I’ve been spoiled by everything else that’s cropped up since 2007!

The deets

Everywhere in London (and some beyond), but this particular one was on the Cut, which runs from Southwark to Waterloo. Nearer the Southwark end. Find your own here.

Bleecker Street Burgers, Pop-Up until Sept 30th 2016, South Bank

Posted in Bacon, Pop up, Restaurant, ReviewsTagged , , , , 2 Comments

The best burger in London? Very possibly.

Burger Source

Zan Kaufman, American founder of Bleecker Street burgers, came to London in 2011 and launched Bleecker Street with a van and a mission to serve the best American style burgers on the streets of London. Having learnt everything she could from an East Village burger joint called Zaitzeff, she wanted to bring the same experience to London. As to the beef itself, and the burgers? She puts it better than I could: “There is zero compromise with our ingredients. Burgers are about the beef. We use rare-breed, pasture-fed beef from small farms in the UK. It comes to us from the geniuses at The Butchery in Bermondsey, where it is dry-aged for about forty to fifty days, giving it an intense, beefy flavour. The finishing touches: a sesame seed bun, scratch burger sauce and good old American cheese. We like to keep things simple.” Does the Bleecker Street reality live up to the promise?

The order

The menu is simplicity itself, especially at the South Bank pop-up where the Blue-Cheese special is not available – single, double, bacon and the Bleecker Black – a black pudding slice sandwiched between two substantial burger patties. Having seen people being served singles, which looked like 4.5oz patties at most, my hunger conquered me and I went for a double – and, because I’m greedy – added bacon, alongside the skin-on fries. The South Bank pop up does a good trade in  American beer, too, if you’re into that sort of thing.

The meat of it:

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Now for my close-up

The burger doesn’t look that extraordinary there’s little to the presentation, the sesame seeded bun is toasted and looks very standard fayre… and the patties look surprisingly small. The camera adds a few ounces of flattery in the picture above. Even a double doesn’t have the heft of a P&B burger, for example. And mine, surprisingly, was cooked medium well rather than the medium rare a friends’ Bleecker Black came with. I suspect the guys struggle with consistency in the small confines of the pop-up kitchen as other friends’ doubles were also rarer than mine. The fries come in a generous sized cardboard cup and are crisp, well-seasoned and delicious dipped in the plentiful ketchup, mayo or mustard that adorns the few small tables outside the Bleecker Street Shack.

Medium well double cheeseburger
Very pink Bleecker black

As to the burger… OMG. The aged beef delivers a gamey taste and, despite being cooked medium well, the coarse ground meat is unbelievably juicy – literally spilling onto the cardboard plate as I took my first bite. It’s really well-seasoned too; though simply – no unusual flavours, spices or herbs. The American cheese singles are completely melted in to create wonderful mouthfeel, and whilst I had initially feared that the sesame seeded bun was dry and overtoasted, in this world of soft brioche, in the end it proved necessary for it to stand up to the juicy intensity of the burger. There was some onion in there, but it didn’t really factor in the taste behind the beef. The bacon – thinly sliced, not-entirely-crispy streaky bacon – was somewhat lost in the beef-fest, which is probably why they don’t do a double bacon cheeseburger as standard. Occasionally the burger got dipped in mustard or ketchup (wow), but it was fine on its own too. I suspect a fat/lean ratio of 75/25, and the result on the taste and the texture… well, wow. I want to go back. This, Honest Burgers, and Lucky Chip are currently in top contention for my personal best burgers in London, but there’s still far to go on this burger gastronomic adventure.

Monkey finger rating

Bun –  4.5/5
Build – 5/5
Burger – 5/5
Taste –  5/5
Sides – 5/5
Value – 4.5/5 – I missed out on the ‘deal’ by ordering a custom burger. You save a quid or two otherwise.

Burger rating – 5/5 – very possibly the best burger in London. I want to go back for lunch.

The deets

The pop up supposedly runs until 30th September. You can find it under the Hungerford bridge, by the Royal Festival Hall on the Queen’s Walk, right by the river. A straight walk over the bridge from Embankment tube. From 11.30am to 11pm daily.