Tag: sauce

Saucy B*stards at the Newman Arms, Fitzrovia, London

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Delightfully messy double smashburger

Burger source

You might call it mindlessly doomscrolling top-10-burger lists, I call it RESEARCH and I do it in the name of science and the thousand or so people a month who seem to enjoy these burger reviews. You’re all very, very welcome.

Anyway, 15 clickbaity lists of burgers later, I finally find a burger that meets my criteria of being not-in-Hackney-and-therefore-convenient-for-a-midweek-meet-up-with-a-mate (honestly, Hackney seems to be some kind of burger utopia judging by these lists), and also sounding fab. I give you, Saucy Bastards at the Newman Arms, a few minutes from Tottenham Court Road station in the most central of central London spots.

They promise dry aged burgers, snacks, sauces & more sauces, courtesy of a Michelin trained chef, and guarantee a messy shirt at the end of it. Did they deliver? Did they ever.

The order

The burger part of the menu is relatively simple. There’s a choice of a double smash burger (the saucy bastard), a crispy chicken burger (the cocky bastard) and a veggie burger… called… no, you got it. That’s it. Naturally I went for the saucy bastard with extra bacon.

Because we were feeling indulgent, we also went with a “small plate” of Korean fried chicken, and the off-print but on-digital menu of jalapeño poppers. For fries, we shared a “salted” fries and a Cajun fries. Yes, we got too much food for two people, but again – in the NAME OF SCIENCE.

The meat of it

Let’s start with the burger.

This is pretty neat. Hot, soft bun; precisely smashed burger patties with amazing crunchy, crenellated edges – a bit like a sort of Slartibartfast had really put his Magarathean magic to work in designing fjord-esque edges in the smash process. The cheese is perfectly melted – and you can probably just about make out the slather of burger sauce and the hefty chunks of pickle in there. Let’s take in the cross section.

Channeling my best Nessa, I think I’d characterise this as ‘tidy’. It’s perfectly stacked – burger sauce, pickles, patties, cheese melt, and a wide layer of crisp bacon before you hit the top bun. You can see how thin and wide those patties have been smashed. The drizzle of grease and burger sauce also promises flavour… does it deliver?

First bite… crunch – beautifully crisp, well seasoned patty, with a delightful dry-aged funk. Double crunch from the crisp, salty, generous bacon topping, adding even more umami. Soft, open crumbed bread just about holds it together. Thick, sweet pickle cuts the savoury contrast down, and smooth vinegary, luscious burger sauce binds and moisturises. Is this a burger or a beauty product, you might ask? If beauty products were anything like this, I’d spend a lot more time wearing a face mask, that’s for sure. As it is, I have terrible skin but an amazingly refined burger palate.

In short; it’s hard not to want to inhale this burger. Every bite leaves you wanting more until you’re uncomfortably full. It’s perfectly formed – with an amazing flavour profile, incredibly high quality ingredients, and does indeed deliver on the promise of mess. Highly recommended.

As to the sides…

To each in turn.

  • The fries – well seasoned, but unevenly cooked, these were a bit disappointing. My friend Matt had the Cajun fries, where were more uniformly crisp on the outside, squidgy on the inside, whereas some of these were, in fact, soggy. The Cajun seasoning didn’t add much flavour but they were a better portion.
  • The poppers come in a light, sort of tempura batter, with a lovely goo from the cheese and a light pop of spice from the mild pepper. The sweet chilli added a good flavour contrast. But there were a lot of these; probably share between four, especially if you’re having another side.
  • The Korean wings were a little disappointing. They were over fried, so whilst the coating had a delightful crunch, the meat was dry and the sauce didn’t compensate – it was slightly saccharine in sweetness and underspiced for heat, IMO, though I’m hardly an expert in the ways of Korean fried chicken.
  • We had a ‘flight’ of sauces for £4. The jalepeno relish was more sweetness, and the ‘Hot Seoul Sauce’ was again too sugary, but with an unexpectedly bitter soy sauce edge. The ranch was the best of the three, smooth and luscious, would have again.

Overall, this was a great experience. The pub had a fab vibe and it felt like quite a nice take on a traditional boozer, freshened for the 21st century. Good selection of drinks on tap downstairs, QR code table service for the food from a resident burger artiste upstairs, very nice. Can recommend.

Monkey finger rating

Bun –  4.5/5 – occasionally gave way to the heft of grease and sauce but otherwise aces
Build – 5/5
Burger – 5/5
Taste –  4.5/5 – just a smidge too much seasoning for me
Sides – 3/5 – burgers are better than their sides, though the sides are decent 

Value – 4/5 – £30 for burger and sides; would have been more reasonable if we’d ordered a more reasonable amount of food, but we (inevitably) got carried away.

Burger rating – 4.5/5 – would go back tomorrow. Night. When I’m less full.

The deets

You can find them on Rathbone Street or in Islington, as well as on Deliveroo. Deets here. Recommend.

Supra Burger, Salusbury Road, Queen’s Park

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Saucy smashburger perfection

Burger source

I was meeting some friends in the area and they mentioned Supra Burger, a pop-up installation in the local high-end French style healthy rotisserie chicken restaurant. I could try to tell you more about how such a juxtaposition came to pass but I think it’s more joyous to let Supra tell you about themselves in their own words, because honestly – this is possibly my favourite ‘about’ content for any restaurant, company, charity or government – ever. Some selections:

Supra is a pop-up burger joint created in collaboration with Cocotte Queens Park, offering a unique dining experience that merges quality with community spirit.

We believe that quality is synonymous with honesty: we exclusively use fresh, superior grade products, sourced responsibly and locally.

We want you to discover a whole new world every time you visit Supra. We always strive for improvement, both as a team and in the products we offer. We persistently pursue superior goods, innovative sustainable materials, and uphold absolute transparency in all aspects of our operations. Our aspiration is for you to embark on a new journey with every visit to Supra..

Burgers act as a unifying link amongst us all. Each burger mirrors our community’s spirit, ensuring no one is left out.

That’s not a boilerplate; that’s bloody poetry. I love it so much; and I share the philosophy. Burgers ARE a unifying link amongst us all. And the friends we share them with? That smells like community spirit. Or maybe that’s the hot sauce, let’s see.

The order

I always try to get a bacon cheeseburger – or closest equivalent – when I order. This place, however, had an eponymous Supra Burger – exactly the same as their bacon cheeseburger but with additional pickle and supra sauce (alongside double smash patty, melted American cheese, and a toasted brioche). So I did the only sensible human thing: I asked them to add bacon to a Supra burger. It was served with french fries and we shared a portion of tenders.

Sauce seems to be a fairly central feature of the menu; so we had four (indulgent, but… when in Supra) – we ordered (off menu) the burnt chilli, as well as the ‘spicy’, the n’duja and the garlic mayo. More on all of the above shortly.

The meat of it

Let’s take a look.

This is immediately promising. Toasted brioche, crisp streaky bacon, healthy slices of pickle, brilliant char on the meat, fantastic melt on the cheese, tidy plating. Let’s continue.

In cross-section, the near perfection continues. The bottom bun is a little compressed, but it’s holding up. The top bun is light and airy with a good crumb. The burger meat is tender bur robust against the knife. The Supra sauce, a vibrant orange, spills out, promising… well, something.

First taste… you can actually taste a delightful char to the burger – it’s crisp on the outside, and tender on the inside. Just like Dime bars (let’s see if my audience gets this reference). The bacon is crisp as it promised; the cheese binds and adds savoury umph to every mouthful – but isn’t overwhelming. The sauce adds moisture, sweetness and an unctuous mouthfeel. The pickle adds bright freshness, sweet and sour sparkles around the edges of everything else. Meat, cheese, sauce, bacon, bread, pickle – all provide separate inputs into a glorious gestalt that honestly just tastes of joy. This is one of the best smash burgers I’ve ever had, and I would have it again RIGHT NOW if I wasn’t so full. It was a thrill. I had to search for any notes – and if I had to give one, it’s that I prefer a thinner sliced, fresher pickle – like those quick-brine ones you can do in the summer at home with cucumbers, in a sweet-salty base. But it wasn’t enough to deduct a point (spoilers).

On the sides…

The tenders were… a bit meh, tbh. Juicy, well fried, but lacking a little on the seasoning front and needed to be sauced for flavour. Which is just as well as we had plenty of sauces!

The fries were pretty much a paragon of a modern french fry – crisp, well seasoned (salt and pepper) and pairing well with the sauces.

On the sauce front – I didn’t get photos of them all – pictured is ‘burnt chilli’ (sweet with a edge that definitely tasted of chilli), a ‘spicy’ sauce that had a deeper red lustre to it and chunks of peppers – tasty, savoury, lightly spicy but more conventional. The garlic mayo was good – strong garlic flavour, more crème fraiche in texture than mayo. The n’duja sauce tasted a bit like the burnt chilli, but with chunks of n’duja in it – so not bad in any way, really. I’m not sure this was £10 worth of sauce, but we definitely enjoyed the variety. A must for the tenders, and a nice complement to the fries.

I had a mixed fruit juice to drink (sorry, again no pic, what was I thinking!) – tasted mostly of apple, but was very nice for all that it had carrot and orange in it too.

Monkey finger rating

Bun –  4.5/5 – not often you get both a soft give and a toasted crunch in one bite
Build – 5/5 – perfect construction
Burger – 5/5 – flawless
Taste –  5/5 – the parts were great and the whole was even greater
Sides – 4/5 – small deduction for lackluster tenders 

Value – 5/5 – £33 for burger, share of tenders, fries, drinks and service (which was super) felt very reasonable in this post-Covid, post-inflation era of eating out.

Burger rating – 5/5 – this is up there with the best of them.

The deets

You’ll find it in Cocotte, just across the road from the Salusbury pub, a few minutes walk North from Queen’s Park Station. It’s a joy. Go now. Tell your friends. And let this burger feed your community spirit. Mike and Leia – a joy to partake in this community moment with you.

Prairie Fire BBQ, Mercato Metropolitano, Elephant & Castle, London

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Excellent, messy, juicy double patty smash burger

Burger source

Mercato Metropolitano London is a sustainable community market; in practical terms, this means it’s a massive half in/half outdoor food court, filled with a myriad of wonderful food stalls including at least three places that serve burgers. And none of the cutlery is single use plastic, hurrah!

Prairie Fire BBQ serves ‘Kansas style BBQ’  founded in 2013 by American Expat in London Michael Gratz; his job titles include ‘founder’, ‘chef’, and ‘Pit Master.’ The philosophy is Kansas style, sauce heavy, smoked meat, or in their own words: the “…slow smoked, sauce heavy Kansas City Style is the apex of the ancient art of cooking with wood. The rub, the char, the smoke ring, the tenderness, the umami, the sauce, the smile and well used napkin define Prairie Fire and the future of European BBQ.”

The order

I have had the PFQ, their signature burger, which is: “two seasoned chuck & rib tip steak patties smashed into diced onion on flattop. Served with melty American cheese, crisp lettuce, tomato, onion & BBQ aioli.”

I had seasoned fries on the side.

The meat of it

The Mercato eating environment is a lot of fun. Noisy, half indoors, half outdoors, all smell, sounds and raucous laughter.

Food is served in paper baskets; the ordering system ‘texted’ me to collect the prepared food hot off the grill and fryer.

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It’s hard to photograph, but there was nothing bad about the appearance. That said, the incredible amounts of sauce meant it was a slippery burger, whilst perfectly stacked, had this been on a plate it would probably have collapsed in moments.

The pickle, to the side, was crisp, sweet and fresh. Very mild on vinegar, it’s a palate cleanser for the main meal.

In cross section…

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Here’s where you can see the structural limitations of the burger; the sauce is so heavy that the burger is slipping apart even as I hold it up for its glamour shot.

That said… looks aren’t everything, and on first bite you get an immediate understanding of the splendour of this burger.

The patties are thin and crisp – 2.5-3oz each, at a guess, the patty smash on a hot (though not the hottest) plate lets them char in their own fat, developing a wonderful texture and flavour – though I didn’t notice the onions they’d apparently been cooked in. Cheese is melted in on the grill, though it’s hard to detect under the BBQ aioli. The salad, too, is somewhat token, lost in the sauce. But none of this is a bad thing.

The incredible umami of the burger, with a faint hint of dry-aged, quality beef funk, is complemented perfectly by the runny sweet aioli, a mild peppery heat, and something like the memory of cheese. The salad is present but provides little more than textural background noise. The bun is soft and pliant, with a lovely crumb but thankfully little sweetness.

It’s pretty glorious, if messy, in all. My only criticism, and it’s a marginal one, is that a hotter grill would have provided even more crunch to the patties (which would have been welcome), and the aioli was just fractionally too heavily laid on.

The fries are ‘seasoned’ fries – a sweet smoked paprika, basically, heavily dusted over salted, thin cut fries. There’s nothing bad about these, though nothing exceptional either; thicker cut potatoes might have provided more natural potato flavour but it wasn’t necessary. The additional BBQ aioli they are served with was possibly a perfect condiment in the context of the meal.

Monkey finger rating

Bun –  4/5
Build – 3/5
Burger – 4/5
Taste –  4/5
Sides – 4/5
Value – 3.5/5 – £12.50 for burger and side – felt a bit toppy in a food market setting, but everything at Mercato is a little pricey.

Burger rating – 4/5 – really good patty smash option. Next time will add bacon for a bit more crunch and request they leave it on the grill a little longer than normal.

The deets

Mercato Metropolitano is a 5 minute walk from Elephant & Castle tube, and 15 minutes from my office in Southwark. Recommended for anyone in the neighbourhood. Find more info on PFQ here.