chunky chips – Burger Source

Old House at Home, Newnham, North Hampshire

June 11, 2023Posted in Bacon, Country, Gourmety, Outside London, PubTagged basingstoke, brioche, burger, chunky chips, gastropub, lettuce, lime and soda, north hampshire, old house at home newnham, pancetta, pickles, Pub, review, smoked cheese, sticky toffee pudding, tomatoLeave a comment

Very well executed pub burger

Burger source

Living in rural North Hampshire, there’s with three kids, a garden to maintain, family commitments and busy jobs… we don’t have a lot of energy left over for date night. So the brief Amanda and I agreed on for a rare night with BIL babysitting was ‘somewhere not too far away’.

Having lived in the area for 12 years, there’s not that many places we haven’t been, but… a forensic search of Google Maps and Tripadvisor well-reviewed local pubs led me to book us a table at the Old House at Home in Newnham, an independent pub that had 4.5* reviews and was sufficiently nearby to meet the brief.

The order

You’re always rolling the dice with a pub burger. They have such a variety of items on the menu, you know they’re not grinding the meat on site – therefore everything is cooked well done and there’s a chance you’re going to end up with a charred hockey puck rather than a burger. But… this place really reviews well so I thought I’d chance it. Here’s how it’s billed:

Homemade Beef Burger with tomato, lettuce, smoked cheddar, pickle, crispy pancetta served in a toasted brioche bun & chips

I was designated driver, so just lime & soda to drink… and I eventually, as you’ll see, fell victim to the sticky toffee pudding they had as an option for pudding.

Amanda had a fishcake and a crumble, which I’ll mention in passing as they’ll probably appear in soft focus in the background of my burger photos.

The meat of it

Well, lookee here.

I’m not really sure what to make of it at first. Few burgers that feel the need to come ‘open face’ do so for any purpose other than misdirection (e.g. look at this brilliantly melty cheese… hiding a terrible burger)… but once assembled, you’ll see the proportions of the stack are all pretty sweet:

You can see the crisp pancetta sticking out the bottom left. The burger has heft but isn’t ridiculous. The salad looks crisp. The pickles – I started there – are sweet, sour and bright – a good start.

Let’s go cross section betfore we get into the tasting.

This is strong. There’s a crust on the meat, but it’s not dry at all despite being cooked well done. You can see the coarse grind of the meat in the patty. There’s a good amount of salad protecting the bottom bun, which is holding up admirably to the mass of meat above it. The bun is substantial without being overwhelming. The only real warning sign is the absence of any relish or burger sauce… but let’s get into the first taste.

Crisp, well seasoned outer, gives way to juicy, meaty centre – no aged funk, just simple flavours, but no worse for it. The bun holds up, adding a light sweetness and softness and crunch all in one. The cheese adds a light smokeyness and a melty pull, even as a savoury crunch comes away with the pancetta. A little fat oozes out of the burger as the sweet, crisp lettuce and tomato contrasts the umami bomb of the meat and cheese. It doesn’t need burger sauce – the moisture of salad and meat, the natural sweet and savoury – complement beautifully.

It’s really well done. If I was nitpicking, I would maybe have buttered the brioche (more?) pre-toasting, and used a blowtorch to add some char to the cheese melt, and maybe crisp the pancetta a bit more gently – it was a little on the blackened side of crisp. But really – none of these things diminish the burger experience. It is solid, and re-orderable, which is not something I’d often say of a pub burger.

The chips were almost perfect – really high quality potatoes, crisp on the outside and fluffy in the middle, and hit the goldilocks zone of well-seasoned. I had ketchup and mayo on the side which maxed these out – really solid.

(Amanda’s fishcake was apparently good too, on a bed of green beans and generously topped (and bottomed, it seemed) with hollandaise. She declined the poached egg topper it was meant to have, and I learned something about my wife).

A quick word on pudding (after all, this website is not dessertsource) – sticky toffee pudding is my kryptonite. It’s really hard for me not to order it when it appears on a menu of somewhere nice. And, gloriously, they had a ‘small’ portion option (£4.90 instead of £7.50 and not of Kaiju proportions). It was perfect – soft, steamy sponge, a lake of caramel, chewy bits where the dates hadn’t completely dissolved into the sponge, hot and steamy – contrasting beautifully with the cold, smooth ice-cream. <Chef’s kiss>.

(Amanda had an apple and rhubarb crumble with ice cream. Also nice.)

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 4.5/5
Build – 4.5/5
Burger – 4.5/5
Taste – 4.5/5
Sides – 4.5/5

Value – 4/5 – £19 for burger and side, ish, £5 for pudding, plus drinks and service – it’s a minimum £30 a head place. Good, but toppy for this particular menu choice

Burger rating – 4.5/5 – one of the top non-burger specialist burgers you can get, I suspect

The deets

Newnham is about 10 minutes drive from Basingstoke, a few minutes from Hook. If you know, you know. Recommended. Find the pub here.

Roast, Borough Market, London

December 11, 2021Posted in Gourmety, london, Restaurant, ReviewsTagged blue cheese, borough market, brioche, burger, chunky chips, home made ketchup, london, restaraunt, review, roast, stilton, venisonLeave a comment

Gamey, well-put-together venison burger

Burger source

There was beef wellington on the menu, but such is my commitment to burgers that – in realising that Roast – one of the defining meat-centric restaurants in London – had a burger on its Christmas menu – I changed my mind. Note this is a far cry from the Roast-To-Go burger I reviewed back in 2017, even if it was prepared in the same kitchen.

The order

So there it was – the Wild British Fallow Deer Venison burger. Featuring a brioche bun, stilton, beef tomato, lettuce and Roast’s burger sauce. Had to be done. We also had a healthy diversity of sides – pigs in blankets, garlic mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower cheese and chunky truffle chips.

The meat of it

Let’s look at it again.

It’s well presented and constructed. Lettuce protecting the bun from a juicy (?) burger, good slice of pickle, bright, fresh veg, ‘Roast burger sauce’ on the side, and promising-looking chunky fries in the obligatory fancy tin pot.

Let’s come into the cross section:

Look at that colour! A perfect pink, absolutely amazing! And the light hasn’t helped but he brioche is quite pale beneath a warm and attractively grilled bun. You’ll also note that the bun has slipped off the giant lettuce leaves and doesn’t want to stay settled at all – I’m pro shredding the lettuce on the underside of a burger. This hasn’t stayed together as you’d hope, although I fully accept that most people don’t cross-section their burger in this way.

As to the taste – perfect seasoning, there’s a wonderful umani between the burger and the stilton – which is unobtrusive and subtle. The bun holds together well and doesn’t have the sweetness many brioche do; but has fantastic substance and bite, contrasting with its soft, fluffy blandness against the flavourbomb of the burger itself. The texture and mouthfeel is good, though the burger is a little dry overall – I suspect that wild fallow deer doesn’t have the fat content your average 20-30% beef burger patty might – and the light gamey taste adds a pleasant depth of flavour.

The Roast Sauce? Is basically just a fancy, smooth home made ketchup. It’s pleasant, but this burger wanted a mayo or aioli style burger sauce on the buns to add fat and moisture back into each bite. Pickle in there would have added good contrast to the dry, salty, gamey meat. Not bad, but a few refinements would have elevated it.

As to the chips – they were perfect. Double if not triple fried, crunchy on the outside and fluffy in the middle, they were perfectly seasoned and very flavourful. Again the ketchup/burger sauce was a good accompaniment, but would have preferred a mayo or aioli dip.

On the other sides (sorry for lack of pictures) – the pigs and blankets were just fine – good sausages but not desperately easily to distinguish from a pack you’d from Sainsbury’s. The mushrooms were extraordinary – the right answer to how much butter can you use when grilling mushrooms is ALL OF IT. I heard good reports for the truffle chips, the cauliflower cheese, the stuffing and more. Good all around.

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 4.5/5
Build – 4/5
Burger – 3.5/5
Taste – 3.5/5
Sides – 4.5/5
Value – 3.5/5 – £22 is a lot, although possibly reasonable given the venue and cost of the venison

Burger rating – 3.5/5 – Enjoyable and interesting novelty, though I probably wouldn’t have this again unless I could change up the recipe. The meat was just too lean for a burger patty, and there are a lot of other good things on the menu.

The deets

Wander around Borough market until you find the lift/steps that lead up to Roast. You can’t – no wait, you can easily miss it. Good luck and enjoy – let me know how you found it.

Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Festival Place, Basingstoke

February 18, 2018Posted in Outside London, RestaurantTagged Bacon, basingstoke, Chain, cheese, chunky chips, chunky fries, festival place, flag, gbk, gourmet burger kitchen, medium, pickles, relishLeave a comment

A contender once again; GBK got good

Burger source

GBK was the original gourmet burger in London, more than half a decade ahead of Byron in landing in the UK, it introduced us to a burger that wasn’t chargrilled to death in a pub or a freeze-dried hockey-puck, like Maccy D’s. But I wasn’t a huge fan at the time; in the early 2000s, the burgers seemed oversized, mealy, over complex and, well, nothing special. Even without a frame of reference, it wasn’t a favoured destination.

But the chain has changed ownership three times, from the original Kiwi founders through two separate restaurant holding groups. It’s look, feel and theme hasn’t changed significantly but the menu – less eccentric than it once was – and the food quality, have both improved significantly, it seems.

What they tell you about the beef? “100% British prime beef patties using selected cuts from grass reared cattle on independent farms. We cook to medium but tell us how you like it.” –> reviewing the menu, you can see they experiment with different beef blends. I need to go back to try more, now I know they do a good burger…

The order

I had a GBK cheese & bacon (standard), whilst Amanda had a Avocado Bacon – a throwback to the early days of GBK, when a pineapple ring ALSO featured as a burger topping. Side of chunky fries, and that was it.

The meat of it

The presentation was solid, for both burger and fries; a relatively clean plate, a good stack with nicely melted cheese, a soft-appearing seeded bun, and well-proportioned; not at all what I remembered from my early 2000s experience of it at all. Hope blossomed.

The cross section provided additional cause for celebration; this burger was juicy, there was a reasonable melt to the cheese, the bacon, whilst perhaps not overly generous, was crispy, and the promise of a medium cook was upheld. More than this; a coarse grind, and, on tasting… a hefty crust surrounded a juicy interior. The toppings compliment it well and the pickles provide the sweet counterpoint necessary for all the savoury goodness as well. The bun is a simple soft roll, the sesame seeds provide a nice accent and it holds up to the burger juices well enough. No sweetness in the bread, though, that was provided by the pickles and some completely non-memorable BBQ sauce. I would have preferred a chunky relish with this one, I think.

The fries, however… despite positive initial appearance, there’s something very suspect about these. Whilst they look like thick-cut, skin on chips, the interior tastes of processed mash. The crisp skin basically surrenders to it when you take a bite and you’re left feeling bewildered and slightly cheated. This still felt a better option than the skinny fries many of the other patrons were eating, which looked less like shoestrings and more like carbon nanotubes impersonating a French fry.

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 4/5
Build – 4/5 – bit more melt on the cheese would have been good
Burger – 4.5/5 – really very good
Taste – 4/5
Sides – 2/5 – weird chips
Value – 3.5/5 – £13+ for burger and side, ish. And given the fries weren’t good…

Burger rating – 4/5 – pleasantly surprised.

The deets

There are over 60 of these around the country; mine was in Festival Place, Basingstoke. Amanda and I then went to see the Greatest Showman, and if this was a film blog, I’d be raving about it here. SO GOOD. Although I guess if this was a history blog, I’d be ranting about its inaccuracy… You can’t please everyone all the time!