Tag: fries

The Laughing Gravy, 154 Blackfriars Road, London

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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.

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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.

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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!

Super Duper Burgers, 721 Market Street, San Francisco

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An excellent smashburger; crisp and greasy in all the right ways

Burger source

“Fresh, quality produce, meat, dairy and buns, sourced from partners located just miles from our restaurants, are the ingredients to making the perfect burger,” is the ethos of Super Duper Burgers. In practice, this means: “All our beef is Brandt Farms, humanely-raised, 100% vegetarian-fed, ground fresh daily, and sourced from a family-owned ranch.”

Fast food burgers with slow-food values, apparently. Founder Adrian Paganini feels passionately that ‘a burger shouldn’t cost $3’ and has structured the chain to offer the best combination of quality and value. This means a simple menu – few sides, few variants on the burgers – and prices in the mid-range for quality burgers. There was a queue when I popped in on a Sunday evening…

The order

I had a ‘super duper’ burger with cheese and bacon – two 4oz patties smashed and scraped off a hot griddle with a ‘sharp’ spatula. Cooked medium, you’re warned to expect grease, and the burger has the restaraunt’s proprietary ‘super sauce’ (think; lighter burger sauce) and a portion of fries. Together with a ‘fountain’ drink – unlimited refills from a soda machine – the meal came to about $16 as part of a combo order.

The meat of it

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This is a good burger; a fresh, soft bun (standard bun, non-brioche), fresh salad (red onion, lettuce, tomato), super-melty cheese and super crispy bacon, held together in paper that also holds back the grease and spillover super sauce. So far, so super.

On first bite… you get all the crisp, charred, salty wonder that you’d hope for in a smash burger – so called because patties are pressed down onto a hot griddle and crisp up as the fat melts out, and they’re then scraped off the griddle to capture all the crispy elements. The (American) cheese binds the whole thing together wonderfully and the faint hint of the super sauce in the background, alongside the tomato and lettuce, adds a slight sweetness to this glorious, greasy umami-fest.

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In cross section, you can see the glory of the smash; the melt on the cheese and the vivid freshness of the salad. The bacon is quality, thick, crispy streaky bacon. The bun has a good stability to it; it holds up to othe grease well but doesn’t interrupt the burger experience with unnecessary flavour. If anything’s wrong with this burger at all, for me, it’s on two minor counts. 1) I’d have liked more/thicker/richer/sweeter burger sauce to temper all the saltiness a tiny bit more and 2) I’d expected pinker meat in a 4oz patty smash. If they’d done the burger as a 2oz patty smash then there’s no room for pinkness in the middle; as it was I felt it was a smidge overdone. But just a smidge.

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The fries were good; well-seasoned, crisp on the outside and squidgy in the middle, and clearly made from a high grade of potato. But they need sauce, and I didn’t plump to spend the additional $1.50-2 for a variety of sauces and/or toppings. Next time I will make the investment!

Monkey finger rating

Bun –  4.5/5
Build – 4.5/5
Burger – 4.5/5
Taste –  4.5/5
Sides – 4/5 -might have scored better with sauce
Value – 4/5 – $16 for a combo meal of a high grade burger in a fast food environment. Very good value for SFO but SFO is an expensive city!
Burger rating – 4.5/5 – a very, very good burger I’d be happy to have again.

The deets

Super Duper Burgers sells $30m of burgers a year around San Francisco and its environs. Find your nearest branch here.

Haché Burgers, High Holborn, London

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A near perfect burger, marred only by a dense brioche and average sides

Burger source

There’s little about the burger itself origins, other than the fact that the original owners set out to create ‘gourmet bugers, with nothing but the best ingredients.’ Bought out by Hush in 2016, the restaraunt has expanded from its original site in Camden and now has locations all London; this one was on High Holborn, a short walk from the tube. The new owners wanted to ‘reclaim burgers for grown-ups’ (so far, so clichéd), so Haché Burger Social expanded.

I must admit, the name put me off slightly – have never been a fan of Steak Haché, but Debs at work has been evangelising it to me for some time so I thought to give it a try!

The order

I ordered the ‘Steak le Fumé’ – £12.95 of caramelised onions, smoked bacon, Gruyère & house coleslaw, rather joyfully presented in a smoke-filled dome. It was close enough to my standard ‘cheese and bacon’ standard to be indicative for the review, I felt, but had added panache and drama, which was, y’know, ridiculous but fun. Damian and I shared standard fries (frites, natch) and onion rings (disappointingly not rondelles d’oignon panées). And I broke and ordered the banofé pie for pudding. Drank a raspberry mojito thanks to happy hour.

Let’s get into it.

The meat of it

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The drama was as entertaining as needless as you’d expect. The smokiness was gentle, though, this isn’t a charcoal-grilled burger, a light woody, smokey aroma just infuses everything.

The stack was good, which is clearer still in the cross section. Whilst all burgers default to medium well, they recommend them medium rare and that’s what I went for. The meed has a good crust and a thick band of pinky-red running through the centre.

First bite, moment of truth.

The brioche (we had a choice of ciabatta, but that, for me, would not have been a proper burger) was dense. It lacked the pliancy you’d expect and indeed want froma burger bun; it’s too chewy and it’s extremely sweet. Unnecessarily so in a burger which had its own sweet caramelised onions, sweet coleslaw and sweet, sweet meat already.

Everything else, however: pitch perfect. Cheese was melty and bound the burger well; the bacon was exquisite; whilst not as crisp as American style streaky, it had a rich, salty, pancetta-y quality that was in perfect contrast to the sweet, pink ground beef. The beef is a star attraction, coarse ground and juicy, lightly smoked, a thick, crunchy, well-seasoned crust holding it all together; it’s melt-in-your-mouth luscious, and thankfully lacks the gaminess some dry-aged bef has. The onions and coleslaw provide a sweet finish (no ketchup needed at all), the meat melts in your mouth, and the overall experience was just… great. Even with the bready bun.

The sides… the fries are partially skin on, thin cut frites, crisp on the outside and well seasoned. Solid but standard. There were variants on offer and perhaps we should have tried those, but they were very pricey and seemed unnecessary to me.

The onion rings, whilst making use good thick chunks of fresh, sweet onion, were coated in an ordinary batter and slightly underseasoned. So they were just OK.

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Pudding… let me start by saying that banoffee pie is one my kryptonite dishes; no matter how determined I am not to pudding, if a banoffee pie or a sticky toffee pudding is on the menu, I will struggle. And I’ve never had a bad banoffee pie – after all – it is simplicity itself; biscuit base, caramel, banana, cream, chocolate. Nothing else to it.

Unless, of course, you get carried away and put on 3 inches of cream. Which is what Haché has done, sadly making an extraordinary pudding… ordinary. Every ingredient is high quality and tasty on its own, but this enormous slab of pud just has too much bland cream atop it.

The Raspberry mojito wasn’t bad, if you’re into sweet cocktails. Minty, fresh with a good soda fizz on top, appropriately limey as well.

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 2.5/5
Build – 5/5
Burger – 5/5
Taste – 4.5/5
Sides – 3/5 -bump for the onion fries
Value – 3.5/5 – £13 for the burger, £3-£6 for sides, £6 for puddings. Not cheap; even with 2-4-£10 happy hour cocktails.

Burger rating – 4.5/5 – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Desite the bready bread, the ordinary sides and the disappointing pudding, I would put this in my top five burgers in London easily (alongside Dip & Flip, Cut & Grind, Bleecker Street, and Lucky Chip).

The deets

There are branches all over; online booking is easy. Check the website here.

Harvest, Brattle Street, Harvard, Boston

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A beautiful burger that doesn’t quite live up to appearances

Burger source

I was in Boston for work and my brother happened to be in town to launch the phenomenal Jagged Little Pill musical at the American Repertory Theater. So, we met beforehand and shared a burger and a lobster roll at this popular eatery in the centre of the Harvard campus.

The order

Arvind had the lobster roll; I took on the menu’s sole burger, served with skin on hand cut fries; gratifyingly I was given the option of having it cooked medium, which I took. We shared a cold-cuts and cheese platter to begin with, and a deconstructed Boston cream pie for pudding. Seeing as it was my first trip to Boston, and I was being a tourist, I also had a Sam Adams.

The meat of it

As you can see from the photo, the presentation of this burger is glorious; it’s a perfect stack, a glorious melt on the cheese, fresh, bright salad in call caught between a perfect, lightly seeded roll – I think a non-enriched potato roll rather than a brioche.

The cross section promises even more; the meat’s a perfect pink the whole way through, no graying at the edges and what looks like a decent char on the meat. The grind is coarse and its juicy without soaking the bun. So far, so brilliant. Pickle on the side, tomato, onion and lettuce leaves piled on top of the cheese.

And then the taste; this is where it lets itself down a bit. It’s every bit as juicy as it looks, but the char isn’t quite there so the whole impact is a little soft; in essence, not the best mouthfeel. This could have been addressed with some crispy bacon, or a slightly hotter griddle and a little more seasoning. The meat was good but with this finish they should probably mix up their meat blend – it tasted a little bland; wonder if they overdid the chuck and could have done with some rump in there. But I’m a meat blend amateur here, so could easily be wrong. The salad was as fresh and crisp as it looked; the cheese was a little gungey and bland, and the roll, whilst sturdy, did little to balance out the burger. A brioche might actually have helped with sweet/savoury contrast, as might some burger relish (ketchup is a necessary condiment here). Net impact: it’s tasty but not interesting, sadly. Which is a real shame as so many elements were done really well.

The fries – were slightly limp. They would have benefited from a second, or third, fry. That said, these are high grade potatoes, the seasoning was great, and they tasted good. The portion was the size of my head so they remained largely unfinished.

The cold cuts and cheese were delicious – sorry I didn’t grab a pic. We had a triple-cream soft cheese, like a soft extra salty brie, served with small whole meal toast triangles, prosciutto di parma, cornichons and a sort of beetroot puree. $12 well spent between us.

The Boston Cream pie was really nice, but I have no frame of reference. I understand it’s normally a traditional sponge with cream and chocolate sauce; this deconstructed variant makes me really want to have the original; soft, airy sponge, thick sweet butter frosting/icing, crunchy chocolate pieces and sweet chocolate sauce – what’s not to like?

Sam Adams – is a solid American lager, and tastes exactly the same as it does when you get it on import in the UK. I, worryingly, seem to be acquiring a taste for interesting lagers these days.

I traded a bit of burger with Arvind for a bit of his lobster roll – I’m not a huge lobster roll fan, as find the flavour of the lobster to be too rich for my liking. But you could tell this was special; the bread is a heavily buttered and crisp brioche, kind of like a luxury grilled cheese texture; the lobster was fresh and utterly free of the fishy flakiness you get when you’re not in the lobster roll capital of the world. There was, if anything, too much lobster for the roll!

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 4/5

Build – 5/5

Burger – 3.5/5

Taste – 3.5/5

Sides – 4.5/5

Value – ??/5 – A friend picked up the tab but the pricing looked reasonable, even allowing for the ludicrous 20% service that’s more or less standard in the US. $16 for the burger and fries.

Burger rating – 3.5/5 – It’s good, but not great. I think if I asked for it medium well and with bacon, it’d probably jump up quite a bit – and perhaps even more if I switched the cheese. So try that if you go!

The deets

It’s just off Brattle, a five minute walk from the Harvard metro station, near the American Repertory theater. If you’re in the area, I would definitely recommend it — good food, a lovely buzz (though it was graduation week so everything was busy!) and all the food looked great. Portions are big – bring your appetite. Website here for more info.

Pool-Pub, Rentemestervej, Copenhagen

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Surprisingly tasty fayre at this sports bar; amazing curly fries

Burger source

So we’re on a stag do. We go to a pool bar where we play a veritable Olympiad (technically a pentathlon) of indoor sporting events. I have zero expectations for the food… but then the chef engages me in a conversation about it. “We grind them on site, of course. We cook them to medium, naturally! We have a high fat ratio, yes, 7-15%!” Only in Denmark is a ‘high’ fat ratio less than half what a modest fat ratio would be elsewhere in the world. But nonetheless, they earned my attention.

The order

There were three burgers on offer; we went for the Mr Cheesey (their house burger featured boiled egg, which, y’know, weird). This featured, as Google Translate would put it: “Chopped beef, cheddar, iceberg, tomato, cucumber, red onion and ketchup! Bun lubricated with mayonnaise.”

Mmm. Tasty, tasty lubricant.

All the burgers are served with curly fries.

The meat of it

The stack looked good. A thick bed of chopped iceberg lettuce, cucumber (!) and tomato, followed by a healthy looking patty with an excellent melt of cheese on top fo it. The potato roll gleamed with a light toasting and probable enrichment of some kind.

The cross section disappointed somewhat. This was not a medium cooked burger. But it was a good coarse grind and there were pink hints to it so on we went…

And it was pretty good – good charred exterior, nicely seasoned, and despite the overcooking the burger was relatively juicy – a little more fat would not have been a bad thing – but the mayo and the cheese held it all together very well indeed. The texture was good – I think bacon would have helped a little, but then I always do – as would a relish for contrast. I was dipping the whole burger in ketchup!

The curly fries were amazing – highly seasoned, crisp on the outside and squidgy in the middle, super moreish. I sometimes wonder why they bother with straight cut fries.

A reasonable burger experience overall; an extraordinary one for a sports pub. Highly recommended.

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 4/5

Build – 4/5

Burger – 3.5/5

Taste – 3.5/5

Sides – 5/5 – curly fries ftw

Value – 4/5 – I’ve no idea what we paid for anything, probably about a million kroner, because that’s how much everything costs in Copenhagen. But it was definitively better value than anything else we did/paid for in that city, wonderful as it is!

Burger rating – 3.5/5 – go for the pool. Stay for the burger. It’s too out of the way to be a burger destination and as I say – in relative terms it was a good burger. In absolute ones? Above average, but unexceptional.

The deets

I have no idea. Not that central in Copenhagen; we got cabs. It was a stag do. I’m not even sure I was there. Check the website.

The Table Café, 83 Southwark Street, London

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An extremely well put together burger let down by the meat

Burger source

The Table Café is characteristic of the Southwark neighbourhood; independent, owner-managed, distinctive, generally innovative and relatively unconventional. It’s not a burger house but does feature an interesting one on the lunch menu which I thought I’d sample, given the reputed quality of the rest of the cooking. More of the backstory of the restaurant here; worth a read.

The order

I went for the Cheeseburger, red onion relish & triple cooked chips, resisting the urge to add bacon for £2.50!

The meat of it

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The burger is well if simply presented. The bun has some gloss but is not a brioche; there’s a light dripping of unidentifiable burger sauce spilling out the side, the stack looks well assembled. The triple cooked chips on the side are golden with crunch evident before you even pick one up, much less bite into it. So far, so promising.

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The cross section improves and detracts in equal measure. It’s a perfect stack; a thick layer of the red onion relish, a good melt on the cheese, a good amount of pickle, a sturdy but pliant bun, and a good ratio of everything involved. BUT you can see the meat is overdone – it’s grey in the middle and soft the whole way through, no real juiciness at all.

On tasting it – the red onion relish brings a wonderful sourness to every bite, contrasted by the crisp sweetness of the pickle and the savoury nature of the rest of it. The burger meat is well seasoned but the lack of a distinctive crust and the dryness of the overcooked meat detracts from the overall experience, despite the best efforts of the mildly spicy mustard-filled burger sauce elsewhere in the stack. The meat isn’t terrible, but it is far less special than the rest of the burger, which really pulls together very well.

The fries -whilst underseasoned – live up to the first impression. Crisp crunch, but cut thick enough for a fluffy interior despite the triple cooking. The ketchup that was on the table – a brand I didn’t recognise – was somewhat eccentric. I suspect the consequence of buying posh, locally sourced, organic stuff. I’d have preferred Heinz, tbh!

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 4/5
Build – 4/5
Burger – 2.5/5
Taste – 3/5 – let down by meat despite how good everything else is
Sides – 4/5 – good chips
Value – 3.5/5 – £12.75 for burger and fries, which is pretty reasonable for the restaraunt. The bacon was too much extra though!

Burger rating – 3.5/5 – could have been better had it been better cooked.

The deets

This is one of our locals on Southwark Street, near the Tate Modern and five minutes’ walk from Blackfriars. If I go back I’ll ask them to cook it medium explicitly and see what happens.

Cut & Grind Burgers, York Way, London Kings Cross

Posted in london, Restaurant, ReviewsTagged , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Fine crust, amazing meat, disciplined construction – one of the best burgers in London

Disclaimer: I was invited to a meat grinding ‘masterclass’ as a blogger. My food and drink for the evening was comped.

Burger source

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Pas Loucaides strikes you as an obsessive. In a good way; the passion with which the man has pursued excellence in his burgers is clear in everything he has to say about them. From the choice of cuts that make up the burger blend, to the 4mm  drilled plate he uses in the meat grinder proudly displayed in a cabinet at the centre of his open, airy restaurant in the rapidly redeveloping Kings X neighbourhood, to the passion with which he speaks of C&G’s ‘home made’ ketchup.

Other details are evident in conversation; he’s friends with James George of the butchers Turner and George, who supply C&G’s meat (and Hawksmoor’s, Richard Turner’s restaurant); he makes his pickles in house, once a week; he’s bought in a ludicrously expensive, very hot griddle pan to ensure a good sear on the meat; he’s got a special method of treating the meat so that he can cook his burgers medium rare if customers so desire; he double grinds meat if it’s too lean and needs a finer texture. He even hangs the meat used in the daily grind up on display in the centre of the restaurant. For such a burger fan as me, it was truly an enjoyable experience to meet a like-minded soul (as well as some of the other bloggers and ‘influencers’ in attendance).

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The meat cuts and blend varies each day; today it was a mix of dry-aged rib cap (fatty), chuck (substance) and rump (prime flavour). I even got to grind the chuck myself – surprisingly satisfying! We tried mini patties of each individual cut before we got to the burger, from the unctuousness of the rib cap (my fave) to the prime flavour of the rump to the beautiful textured filler of the chuck. He mixes them using an expert eye for the proportions, aiming for a 70% lean/ 30% fat ratio, prior to simple seasoning (salt and pepper) and a sear on the griddle pan. A lid over the burgers on the griddle helps melt any cheese toppings on and a temperature probe checks they hit the magic medium mark.

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The order

My friend Matt was my plus one for the influencer event, and we each ordered differently and agreed to share. Matt had the rotating special – today, a dry-aged rump burger topped with truffle mayonnaise, crispy fried shallots and that’s about it. Mine was the ‘House’ – a bacon burger with ‘bearnaise’ with added capers and pickle – basically a posh burger sauce, by Pas’ own admission – to which I somewhat unnecessarily added cheddar cheese. The burgers come on a demi-brioche bun, with a side of truffle fries, and were served medium.

The meat of it

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I tried the special first. The dry aged rib is rich, but without the funk you sometimes get with aged meat. It’s incredibly soft and juicy – slightly too soft, texturally, for my liking, perhaps due to the coarse ground/loose pack, perhaps due to losing structural integrity under a weight of truffle mayo. The richness of the truffle mayo is somewhat overwhelming, but if you like truffles, you’ll love it. The crispy shallots provide a delightful crunch in the messyness of this burger, a lovely bit of balance in savouriness too, against the sweet notes of the beef and the demi-brioche bun, which holds up well to the burger. A very good combination, if not to entirely to my personal tastes.

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The house, though, was something else. The bearnaise-burger sauce is used more sparingly than the truffle mayo, and is under the burger so is a more subtle influence. The cheese is beautifully melted on and a blackened (but not burned), crisp, thick slice of dry-aged bacon sits atop a heavily charred patty. Fresh, sweet, crisp salad is there in the right proportions and the burger oozes flavour, whilst holding a better texture than the rump special did. The sweet tomato slice – normally something I dispose of – provided a nice sweet contrast to the extreme seasoned crust of the juicy patty, the bacon added crisp chew and the cheese a further umami glue. The burger sauce was somewhat lost – I debated moving it to the top of the burger with Pas – but the sweet, home-made pickles were in evidence. They’re an interesting contrast to normal pickles; sweeter and less crunchy, with less of the trademark vinegar tang – but interesting for that. On balance, I probably prefer a more conventional gherkin, but I’m nitpicking here…

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Special on the left, House on the right

This is a very, very special burger indeed. Pas will tell you that he prefers it ‘bare’ – no bearnaise-burger-sauce, no mayo, no cheese, – burger, pickle and salad alone. And having had it, it’s easy to see why: the beef really is the star of this show.

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The fries? Pas tells me he drew some inspiration from the Honest Burger rosemary fries – his are thicker cut, crispier, but still cut from chosen potatoes in-store and fried to a remarkable finish. If I’m honest, I was a little wiped out by all the meat so I had just a few fries on the side. The crunch is good but they could be fluffier on the inside; the ‘truffle oil’ is indistinct next to the  truffle mayo in the special burger but that’s just as well for me. They are well seasoned and tasty.

The home-made ketchup, I hear you ask? Whilst it’s texturally perfect – less chemically oozing than a bottle of Heinz, fresh and pungent – it is a little sickly to my taste. Between the pickles and the ketchup, Pas clearly has a sweet tooth!

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Pas kindly brought a couple of paired beers for us to try – I’m not a huge beer fan and the bitterness of the Belgian blonde followed by the tartness of the sour-cherry beer were not to my taste, but they did complement the burger surprisingly well – you can’t fault the man’s palate at all.

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Nothing remained

Monkey finger rating

Bun –  4.5/5
Build – 5/5
Burger – 5/5
Taste –  4.5/5
Sides – 4/5
Value – 5/5 – £10 for burger and side, ish. Affordable wine, beer and beyond adorns the menu too.

Burger rating – 5/5 – whilst there were imperfections, they are in the upper realms of subjective. Every burger lover knows that the perfect burger is unattainable; the journey is where the joy is. Well, a journey to Cut & Grind will bring you much joy. And it is easily one of the best journeys you can make in London.

The deets

About 10 minutes’ walk from King’s Cross, this place is a destination filled with delight. Go, eat, drink and be merry. And Tell Pas I said hi.

BFI Bar & Kitchen (Benugo), South Bank, Waterloo

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Gorgonzola-y goodness at the British Film Institute

Burger source

The BFI’s Bar & Kitchen has an eclectic modern European menu, and the burger sounded an interesting take on the convention. It was also the only burger on the menu, and of course they make little of its provenance, so I was fully prepared that this would be a mediocre attempt at best. I was pleasantly surprised… but… spoilers.

The restaurant itself is a delight – light and airy, completely calm at lunchtime on a Friday. I’m sure it’s busy at the weekends… but the service and ambiance today was perfect. I know from past experience that they have an excellent cocktail menu too.

The order

Bread, oil and balsamico to start followed by the burger – the BFI 6 oz beef burger, served with Gorgonzola, radicchio and red onion, on a butter milk bun. Accompanied by ‘fries’ (again, little send-up, though truffle fries were also on the menu).

The meat of it

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The presentation was good, and the burger delivered medium well (I was promised medium). That aside, the meat was juicy – a coarsely ground, loosely packed patty. Any seasoning of the meat itself vanished in the face of the punchy gorgonzola – an absolute umame-packed salt-fest coupling beautifully with the juicy meat.

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The enriched bun holds up well, but further interest comes from the red onion/radicchio (leafy Italian salady thing) combo, which provides a slightly sour, slightly sweet, slightly crisp topping to the burger. As the only substantive flavour contrast to the savoury, the buttermilk bun doesn’t quite provide the necessary counterpoint – I think some sweet relish or gourmet Italian ketchup would have slightly tempered the saltiness of the dish and perhaps have rounded it out without tainting its Italian stylings – but it’s not bad. Good crumb, airy but sturdy, with a soft bite to it. Really quite enjoyable on the whole.

The fries – there’s something special about these. They’re more chips than fries in the American sense – thicker cut, skin-on. They have a delightful exterior, light and almost flakey, crisp with a delightful crunch. The inside – soft and floury, a perfect contrast. I didn’t even ask for ketchup – that’s how good they were. Perfectly seasoned.

The bread starter –  which is really neither here nor there as it’s a burger review, but what the hey – lovely hefty brown slices, lightly grilled and served with a pot of rich olive oil and thick balsamic glaze. Very tasty!

Monkey finger rating

Bun –  4/5
Build – 4/5
Burger – 4/5
Taste –  4/5
Sides – 5/5 – very special fries
Value – 4/5 –  expensive but reasonable for the area – £14 for burger and fries, £4 for bread, central London drinks prices etc., plus service – £55 for two

Burger rating – 4/5 – you’re unlikely to be disappointed. An interesting twist on the convention.

The deets

The BFI’s next to the National Threatre on the South Bank. The Bar & Kitchen bit is round the back, on Belvedere Road. But you can cut through the main BFI from the South Bank itself! More here.

 

Foxlow, 69-73 St John Street, Clerkenwell

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Simple, great value, delicious burger from the founders of Hawksmoor.

Burger source

The founders of Hawksmoor were clearly up for another challenge, and the Foxlow chain of independent restaurants is the result. As with many modern British eateries, the focus is on high quality local produce, cooked simply but well, to serve a range of tastes – from the healthy to the indulgent. We went there after an evening of pool, so guess where we ended up on that scale?

The order

Tuesday night is ‘BYO’ night, so I ordered the menu’s sole burger (cheese and bacon, nice) (CHECK). It came with a side of french fries, and my colleague Tim furnished us with a bottle of red from a nearby Tesco (the local Sainsbury’s stops serving alcohol at 8pm due to its proximity to Fabric, which was interesting, if weird).

The meat of it

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Like Beef & Brew, the burgers here are bought in and not ground on site, so again they would serve it medium at best… fortunately, its best was pretty good – a good, broad band of pink ran through the cross section of the ~6oz burger on arrival.  Again like Beef & Brew, it is a slightly dry burger, with perhaps slightly too heavy a bread ratio… however…

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It is brilliantly seasoned, with a wonderfully crisp exterior and a soft, rich centre. The meat’s excellent quality (dry-aged rib) and melded perfectly with toppings (melty Ogleshield cheese plus salad) to give a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. The fresh vegetables add some moisture – unusually for me, I left the tomato in – and the fresh, sour tang of the pickles added another fresh, crisp component to the bite. The salt/sweet contrast is just right, with the brioche and veg taking the edge off the salty burger, even without relish or sauce.

The fries were extraordinary – crisp on the outside, with a soft (not a hollow) centre, richly seasoned with salt and pepper. Utterly delicious.

For £12, this is extraordinary value.

Monkey finger rating

Bun –  4/5
Build – 5/5
Burger – 4.5/5
Taste –  4.5/5
Sides – 5/5 – pepper ftw

Value – 5/5 – £12 for burger and fries! A steak frites option was also on the menu at the same price!? How are these the Hawksmoor guys, who charge £17 for a not very good burger…

Burger rating – 4.5/5 – if they’d ground this on site and perhaps had a slightly higher fat ratio, this would have been princely.

The deets

There are four Foxlow’s across London, this one is a few minutes from Farringdon tube station on St John Street; it’s an excellent location for meateries, given its proximity to Smithfields Market. Find a local one and try it out, especially if you’re having an unusually large Tuesday night out.

25 degrees, 7000 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles

Posted in International, Outside London, Restaurant, ReviewsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

 

Damp. Sloppy. Messy. But more good than bad in his Hollywood burger…

Burger source

Here’s the name, explaining the point of difference for the burger chefs at 25 degrees:

“Named after the precise temperature difference between a raw and well-done hamburger, 25 Degrees introduces a sophisticated twist on the traditional American burger bar. At 25 Degrees, we not only emphasize the importance of quality hamburgers, but we also serve up an unrivaled experience- complete with chic décor, playful servers and a stream of funky tunes.”

The beef burger meat is apparently ground sirloin, though turkey, tuna and veggie burgers were also on offer alongside a variety of other bits of SoCal Americana, including Grilled Cheese and Kale salads.

The order

There are only four ‘pre-assembled’ beef burgers on the menu – names one through four – though you can have any combination of toppings you want custom assembled.

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That is one big burger

I went for number 1 – gorgonzola cheese, thousand island sauce, grilled onions and crispy bacon, as it was the closest to my more or less reviewer’s standard of a bacon cheeseburger, and I figured it’d give an authentic experience of how the chefs here like to see their burgers assembled. I was asked how I wanted it done, and opted for medium rare as that seems to be the going standard in this part of the world.

The meat of it

The 8oz behemoth makes an impression. This is a BIG BURGER. It has to be coaxed out of the wrapping, and then it flopped onto the plate, trailing juice and thousand island sauce that had come away with moisture from the resting meat. The bottom half of the brioche bun was completely sodden and the burger was practically unhandlable. The thousand island sauce also made the burgery slippery, and it fought for freedom as I sliced it in half.

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Juicy

The cross section cut showed the problem. Whilst the loosely packed, coarse ground patty (with what must have been at least a 25% fat ratio) had been cooked to perfection, the meat/bread ratio was far off sensible. And the saucey toppings took things further out of control; a surfeit of gorgonzola cheese bled onto the plate and grilled onions were flying out with every bite. The bacon, not as generously delivered as the onions or cheese, fails to deliver textural contrast throughout the burger – it just doesn’t have enough coverage. And the arugula (rocket for the uninitiated) adds very little to the overall impact of the burger.

That said, the burger taste itself was not bad – the meat was well seasoned and had a dry-aged funkiness to it that only high quality meat does. The bacon – when it was present – added a delicious salty crunch. The bun and onions contributed a sweetish undertone to what would otherwise have been a very salty burger. The burger’s moistness played really well for mouthfeel. It would just have been better a couple of ounces lighter and the toppings could have been better thought through.

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Magic onion rings, oh yeah.

As for the sides… we ordered a half-n-half onion-ring / fries combo for $7.50. The onion rings were extraordinary. Well seasoned with a light heat, the first bite delivered a wonderful savory crunch… soon followed by a sweet aftertaste as you chewed the onion. The fries were just OK – rosemary and salt on thin cut McDonald’s style fried that weren’t all as fully cooked as they should have been.

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Chipotle sauce vs. Spicy Aioli – spot the difference

$2 bought a selection of sauces; we chose BBQ (American BBQ is sweeter than its British counterpart, and this lacked any other personality to speak of), Chipotle and spicy Aioli.  We honestly couldn’t tell the last two apart, both tasted like mildly spicy mayonnaise. But they were good.

FYI – my brother had a grilled cheese  ((over-thick brad and under-melted cheese) and soup, and his wife had a salad. We did a good amount of sharing to get through it all.

Monkey finger rating

Bun –  3/5
Build – 3/5
Burger – 3.5/5
Taste –  4/5
Sides – 4/5
Value – 3/5 – $17 for a burger with no fries is excessive, even for the standards of the West Coast..

Burger rating – 3.5/5 – Like many here, this burger is more than the sum of its parts.

The deets

This restaurant is in the base of the Roosevelt Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles. You can’t miss it -we walked in on a busy Saturday afternoon and got a booth to ourselves.