cheddar – Burger Source

Street Burger Bistro, Prague, Czech Republic

July 25, 2025Posted in Bacon, Gourmety, International, Restaurant, ReviewsTagged Bacon, burger, cheddar, cheese, Czech Republic, fries, hot dog, Mayo, onion rings, Prague, red onion, seeded bun, street burger bistro, tomatoLeave a comment

Hefty, tasty, soggy Czech burger

Burger source

When in London, I struggle to find a burger place I haven’t reviewed. On this, my first visit to the Czech Republic, needless to say I didn’t have the same issue. In fact, by crazy random happenstance, our hotel was next to a burger restaurant called simply ‘Fat f**k smashburger’ – where we had intended to have supper. Unfortunately – and perhaps unsurprisingly given both its reputation and its name – it was completely booked out. So we went in search of another highly reviewed burger, not too far from our hotel – and found it, on the edge of the Old Town, in the Street Burger Bistro.

The order

My kids, predictably, proceeded to order the well constructed burgers and remove stuff from them. I did not; ordering the cheeseburger (burger, bacon, cheddar, red onion, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise) as it was designed to be. We had fries and some onion rings on the side (ok; we had fries, I had the onion rings) and an alcohol free Czech beer to drink.

The meat of it

Let’s take a look.

Ok, it’s not evenly stacked but it is pretty – a good melt on the cheese, a hefty piece of well cooked back bacon, bright fresh lettuce, a golden seeded bun, and a decent amount of mayo. Let’s look in cross section…

The lower bun is already collapsing under the heft of the burger, and the (two) tomato slices are causing the patty to slide. There’s perhaps a smidge too much mayo. The burger… delighted as I was to have it pink, there’s something about the severe stripes of brown and pink that concerns me.

And it reveals itself in bite one; the sear is so heavy that there’s quite a rubbery first mouthfeel before you get to the soft, medium centre. The burger is otherwise juicy and delightfully seasoned; the companion cheese and bacon adds further umami… which is not quite balanced with the salad; the tomato isn’t ripe or seasoned, I think, causing it to be a bland rather than a sweet counterpoint. The mayo adds more moisture and depth and the bottom bun all but collapses as you eat it, though the bun otherwise lends a pleasing starchy blandness as a counterpoint to the taste fest that is the rest of the burger. The whole is good – it’s a tasty patty, and the design that’s gone into shaping this is excellent. But the execution wasn’t quite there tonight, and what could have been a 5/5 is shooting just a smidge under tonight.

On the sides and the drink:

The fries were lovely. Perfectly, albeit lightly seasoned (too many places in the UK overdo the salt), they have a crisp exterior, a fluffy interior and are consistent the whole way through. As good on their own as they are dunked in a very aesthetic little tub of ketchup they brought us for them on request.

The onion rings… are surprising. They are the minced onion kind; not whole slices of fresh onion, and breaded rather than battered. To me this normally spells ‘frozen’ and therefore immediately consigns them to the mediocre pile. However these were hot, crisp and well seasoned, and the onion retained flavour and sweetness. A joyous surprise; as I’m sure is the experience of learning I put this much thought into the experience of eating onion rings.

Izzy had a hot dog, removing all the toppings that were designed for it but ketchup, and I had a taste at the end when she reached her limit… and it was excellent. Well spiced, rich with paprika, salt, pepper and other flavourings I couldn’t identify – and with actual texture – none of that soggy synthetic flavour you get with frankfurters.

The beer was a slightly dark lager, crisp and clear with a bitter edge. I prefer a bit more of a pilsener, so it wasn’t quite what I imagined when I ordered but it was good for what it was.

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 4/5 – good texture and flavour but didn’t hold up to the burger
Build – 3/5 – uneven stack, unripe tomatoes
Burger – 4/5 – over hard sear makes an otherwise excellent burger slightly rubbery
Taste – 4/5 – really good but clearly not as good as it could have been
Sides – 4.5/5 – small knock for minced onion rings
Value – 4/5 – a meal for five with two beers came to about £80 including service – which seemed quite a lot by our limited experience of Prague, and we were hit by the tax of a restaurant that doesn’t have a children’s menu. Still inexpensive relative to London, but our priciest meal in the Czech Republic to date

Burger rating – 4/5 – good, bordering on excellent.

The deets

It’s a short skip from the Charles Bridge, opposite the river from the bulk of the old town. There’s a lovely walk in to it from Malostranske tram stop, going past some lovely riverside view and the most delightful gingerbread shop you’ve ever seen. Highly recommend all of it.

Jones the Grocer, Terminal 2, Heathrow

April 5, 2025Posted in Bacon, Chain, london, Restaurant, ReviewsTagged bois boudran sauce, brisket, burger, burgers, cheddar, food, heathrow, jones the grocer, london, recipe, recipes, review, seeded bun, skin-on fries, streaky bacon, terminal 2, travel, wagyuLeave a comment

Dry, overpriced cardboard with undercooked fries

Burger source

Not gonna lie – we were disappointed that T2 didn’t offer the delights of Wagamama. Dubious as it is as a source of authentic East Asian cuisine, my kids love it and I will basically be delighted with almost any variation on a katsu curry. But options at T2 for a proper hot meal are relatively limited and it was this, a pub, or an airport grade “smokehouse”. So we went to Jones the Grocer.

The order

The burgers people were eating looked great. And I was drawn in by the marketing materials around the venue. So the ultimate mr. jones it was – a brisket and wagyu beef burger, topped with streaky bacon, mixed leaves, cheddar, a seeded bun, skin-on fries, and served with something called a bois boudran sauce (apparently ketchup, worcester sauce and shallots – though I’ve read of variants including tabasco, vinegar and other eccentricities).

The meat of it

Let’s take a look.

So far, so decent. Salad in the right place, good melt on the cheese, intriguing looking bun, skin on fries… I’m not regretting my life choices, yet. Did it last?

It did not. The bun wasn’t particularly airy and flattened on contact with a knife. The meat is dryer than the sun and practically breaks in half, despite its coarse grind. It’s a double patty in there but there’s no cheese between the smash burgers (rookie error), and way too much on top. The (streaky?) bacon looks flaccid and pale; the leaves token and sad.

Let’s not judge a book by its cover though; first taste.

Oh no, this book was exactly as bad as it looked. The meat doesn’t melt in your mouth, it sort of crumbles in dry, mealy mouthfuls with each bite. The cheese has an acrid taste; like it was a sharp cheddar that had grown an unhealthy amount of pinmould on its surface before it was melted over the burger, the process entirely failing to mask the sharp sourness of the decay at all. The bun is inoffensive; the bacon adds unwanted salty flavour over the cheese and the fancy ketchup is nowhere to be found. If not for the fact that I wanted to be full up before the flight, and I’m incapable of wasting food and at this point too British to send it back, I would have left it fully uneaten.

Redeemed by those tasty looking fries in any way?

No. Not even a little bit. The majority had the harsh bite of raw potato; they were underseasoned and undercooked, and most went uneaten.

I think I got unlucky though; the kids burgers (similar in every way but less fancy) were apparently good, and their fries were well cooked. But goddamn it, Jones, for £19 you’d expect better, even at the airport.

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 3/5
Build – 4/5
Burger – 0/5
Taste – 1/5 – there are tastier hockey pucks, I suspect
Sides – 1/5 – undercooked and unseasoned
Value – 1/5 – you won’t want to eat after this. And possibly not during it.

Burger rating – 0.5/5 – the presentation was nice?

The deets

If you’re at terminal 2, I very much recommend you don’t have this. Some of the other dishes looked better but looks are clearly deceiving.

The Armoury, Shrewsbury, Shropshire

November 26, 2019November 26, 2019Posted in Outside London, Pub, ReviewsTagged Bacon, burger, burgers, cheddar, chips, Pub, shrewsbury, shropshire, steak, the armouryLeave a comment

A very respectable pub burger

Burger source

This wasn’t a burger of any great conceit. Simply billed as a ‘steak burger,’ it sat in the middle of a menu replete with every Roast dinner you can imagine, and some you probably wouldn’t (mixed beef and pork roast is a thing, apparently, and weird as it sounds… it actually looked kind of tempting. Turf and hoof?).

I was in the area for a close friend’s birthday and couldn’t resist ordering the burger, as it’d been a while since I tried a new one.

The order

I ordered the sole burger – a steak burger topped with grilled bacon and Cheddar, served with coleslaw and chips.

I tried to order it cooked to medium, but was told it came as it came – the beef wasn’t minced on site.

The meat of it

This looked decent on the plate. Let’s look again.

Glistening bun, solid melt on the cheese, bright, crisp-looking veg and a pot of home made relish? Very tempting. You can see and sense the crunch on those chips, and whilst the coleslaw is a little unremarkable, you reserve judgement. The overall impression is good.

In the vital cross-section:

A few things to note.

First, the meat is pink. They’ve cooked this burger perfectly. And the meat is coarse ground and loosely packed, just as I like it.

Second, it’s not a brioche. A standard bread, it is surprisingly dry. Which means in turn that the meat isn’t desperately juicy. Which is perhaps slightly unsurprising, if this is a burger made of a single cut of beef, steak mince no less, with a relatively low fat ratio.

Third, the salad is hefty. I’ve already removed the sweet, fresh tomato – I prefer that on the side than in the burger. Also out of shot is a thick slice of pickle – too much for the burger, really, a thinner option would have been welcome.

On to the taste.

The meat is light on seasoning and the crust is soft – perhaps their griddle wasn’t hot enough to get a really good sear on it. The cheese is a bit on the mild side – a bit more sharpness would have been welcome, or the savoury goo of American cheese – but the bite is firm and the bacon adds good flavour, making up for the low-salt elsewhere. The relish adds a sweetness – unremarkable but necessary given the relative dryness of both bun and burger. It doesn’t quite make up for the low fat ratio – mayonnaise would have been a welcome friend. But the overall impression is more than serviceable; the flavours come together well, the crisp, fresh crunch of the vegetables, the salt from the bacon, the heft of the meat.

As to the sides; the coleslaw added some of the necessary fat to complement the burger, which was great. The chips were as they seemed – crunchy on the outside and squidgy in the middle. Absolutely perfect once salted. The pickle was excessively sour; not to my taste. I prefer a sweet gherkin, this one was more than a little sharp.

Overall, a good combination. If the chefs at the Armoury want to stick with a single cut of meat, they could spark it up by offering an aged cut, and adding a bit more fat to the sandwich via mayo or some other mechanism. A touch more seasoning and a touch more heat on the grill, and a good burger would become a great burger.

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 3.5/5
Build – 3.5/5
Burger – 3.5/5
Taste – 3.5/5
Sides – 4/5 – great chips
Value – 4/5 – £13.75 for a large portion seemed reasonable, though I don’t know how to gauge value in this part of the country!

Burger rating – 3.5/5 – in the upper echelons of pub burgers.

The deets

The Armoury is on Victoria Quay, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. If you’re in the neighbourhood, it’s a lovely place to eat and drink. Be tempted by the mixed roast; I was.

The Laughing Gravy, 154 Blackfriars Road, London

November 11, 2018Posted in Bacon, london, RestaurantTagged aberdeen angus, Bacon, blackfriars, cheddar, chips, dry-aged, dry-aged beef, fries, gammon, london, restaraunt, smoked bacon, southwarkLeave a comment

Extraordinarily tasty burger with somewhat ordinary chips and even more exceptional pud

Burger source

This is a restaraunt with really a very high calibre of food across the board. So the burger doesn’t feature centrally, and gets just modest billing on the menu. Nonetheless; I expected from the reputation the restaraunt had acquired that this would be no “pub” burger.

The order

I had the Aberdeen Angus cheese burger with hand cut chips, with added smoked bacon for an additional £2. Portobello mushrooms and fried onions were also available as an alternative topping.

No starters, though I did share a pudding with an old friend. More on the 3-way salted caramel to follow.

The meat of it

This burger tastes extraordinary. Let’s look at it a little more closely.

You can instantly see a good crust on the meat. The bun looks sturdy – perhaps excessively so? That rather depends on the meat, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The gammon-like bacon is thick, and covered with a good amount of very melty cheddar. A small drizzle of grease has escaped the otherwise perfect plating and speaks to a juicy feast to follow.

The grease is explained. The coarse ground meat is cooked to a perfect medium, and whilst it looks and seems dry in the first pic, you can see here that the bun only just holds up to the meat juice. The bacon portion is ludicrously generous, and there’s a little red of relish in there of some description. You can see the cheese melting off to the side, a forgotten spider web of dairy deliciousness.

On first bite, you’re overwhelmed with umani. Whislt I ordinarily don’t love non-crispy bacon in a burger, this thick cut smoked meat adds a delicious taste on top of the already well-seasoned beef. The beef itself is high grade, aged Aberdeen Angus, with a little of the delightful funk you get with dry-aging. It’s not overpowering though; this is not a complex burger, simply a very well constructed one. The melty cheddar binds without overwhelming the burger but the overall impact is very salty; the little relish is overpowered and the burger would have benefited from a sweet contrast. Perhaps my own fault for adding bacon but not ketchup.

I ate this burger slowly; it’s very rich and deserved savouring. They’ve made something wonderful here.

To the sides; the small side salad had a sweetish dressing and was a nice, if token, gesture in the direction of health. The chips were thick-cut, chip-shop style chips and were inconsistent – some soggy, others crisp to the point of shattering. A happy medium would have delivred a better experience throughout.

The pudding, of which I have no picture I’m afraid, was extraordinary. Brownie in multiple forms, a lush salted caramel gelato, cruchy bits in a sweet caramel goo, plus gooey salt caramel and chocolate embedded in a crisp brownie. There were peanut pieces surrounding the salted caramel gelato adding both salt and crunch. Wonderful. We shared it – at £9.70 and with three different grades of indulgence scattered across a large plate, it’s best shared between two!

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 4/5
Build – 5/5
Burger – 5/5
Taste – 4.5/5 – – more relish, or some sweet pickle and this would be up there
Sides – 3/5
Value – 3.5/5 – £16 for burger and sides, ish, with added bacon, and best part of £5 for the pudding (SHARED!) – this place is definitely more £££ than ££. But it is that kind of place.

Burger rating – 4/5 – despite the price and middling chips, this is a very special burger indeed.

The deets

Just up from Southwark Tube, it was quiet on a Friday lunchtime. It’s a well kept secret indeed, but definitely deserving of wider recognition!

The Grove, 83 Hammersmith Grove, Hammersmith

February 8, 2018February 9, 2018Posted in london, Pub, Restaurant, ReviewsTagged burger, cheddar, gastropub, hammersmith, london, pickle, Pub, the groveLeave a comment

Very high quality pub burger; slightly uninspired wedges

Burger source

I was meeting a client in the area, and she had the pub recommended by colleagues. They specifically advised her it had a good burger, but it doesn’t have any particular billing on its otherwise conventionally unconventional gastropub menu.

The order

The burger has no fanfare in its send-up: “Grilled Aberdeen Angus Beef Burger (8oz), Cheddar, Pickle, Salsa, Onion Ring, Salad & Chips.” We shared a sticky toffee pudding for pudding, because Celine had never had one despite living in the UK for years and I felt she had to be educated.

The meat of it

The burger arrived fairly promptly and was well assembled and well laid out; the thick slab of cheddar looked like an over-heavy coating and it worried me that this burger was going to be more hefty than tasty, but those fears proved unfounded. The stack is otherwise perfect; pickle, tomato and cheddar atop the beef, which was laid directly on a toasted brioche.

The “chips” were extremely thick seasoned wedges and a light pleasant salad with a garlicky white dressing centred the plate.

The cross section revealed a perfect pink medium finish; a coarse ground patty, the bun just holding up to the juiciness, that perfect melt and a thick, crisp, sweet slice of tomato (I’m getting used to these!) and chunky pickle slice adding a vinegary tang. The relish was on the side, and it added a necessary, mildly spicy sweetness to the melty mouthfuls of really very well-seasoned and tasty meat, which had an impressive crust and the even pink finish – very good cooking indeed. It was topped with a solitary onion ring, which I ate separately. The onion ring was fine, but nothing special!

The chunky chips – are not my favourite. I’m sure they were good exemplars of their kind, but it’s like having a burger with a side of jacket potato, really. Doesn’t go, in my opinion.

The salad – was not bad at all. But it’s a salad. So that’s all I got.

The sticky toffee pudding – was OK, but a bit light on the caramel, and a bit dry in the sponge. It either needed a lot more caramel or a nice scoop (or, y’know, quenelle) of vanilla ice cream to moisten things up. Still hard for me to turn down but I kind of regretted not going for the banoffee pie. I love a banoffee pie.

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 4.5/5
Build – 4.5/5
Burger – 4.5/5 – a different meat blend might have added a tad more flavour but very little to complain about
Taste – 4.5/5
Sides – 3/5 – bump down for the chips and pud
Value – 4.5/5 – £12.50 for burger and side, ish. £50 for two with coffee and dessert – not bad.

Burger rating – 4.5/5 – one of the best pub burgers I’ve had. Just sub out the fries.

The deets

About five minutes’ walk from Hammersmith Tube; very quiet on a Tuesday lunchtime, this feels like more of a neighbourhood pub than a lunchtime place, but recommended wholeheartedly nonetheless. Find it here, online.