seasoning – Burger Source

Finely cooked (underseasoned) burger, eccentrically topped

Burger source

Our final meal on this visit to the US was a brunch with cousins from Singapore in a Eastern Mediterranean style restaurant in the most modern style of hotel you can imagine in North Brooklyn. Totally normal.

The burger had no grand billing but it was ground and cooked on site, and sounded interesting, so I thought I’d risk the eccentricity of the Mediterranean stylings and see where it landed.

The order

I had the Seven Seeds Burger – Angus beef, goat cheese, shaved cucumber, pickled red onion, toum.

The meat of it

Let’s look again.

There are some very interesting elements to this burger. There’s a good crust; the pickled onion looks fresh, bright and inviting, offering sharpness and sweetness in one. The bun looks soft and has a welcome light toasting. The cucumber – no. That’s not ‘shaved’ cucumber, that’s not even a ‘sliced’ cucumber. That’s a full on wedge of cucumber. Too much, picked out and eaten on its own. It was fine. You can see a small pot of toum hiding between the burger and the seasoned fries.

In cross section:

You can see how well balanced this burger is. Perfect coarse grind, bright pink meat, lovely juices held pub by a soft, airy, plain bun.

But… and it’s not an insubstantial but… the first bite unlocks very little flavour. The burger is hefty but underseasoned; the cuts of meat used were insipid – if I had to guess – I’d say it was heavy on chuck. The toppings aren’t evenly spread and it takes to bite two or three to get the feta and pickle properly involved… and they do help considerably, the savoury goo of the feta adds a much needed umami tang. But the flavour is just odd (for my palate) and the mouthfeel of the feta isn’t entirely pleasant, gumming up your mouth unexpectedly.

It’s such a shame as the burger/bun combination is in many ways glorious – good crust, melty meat, tender and juicy with every mouthful. It just doesn’t taste of very much.

As to the fries, they were lightly seasoned and (for me) slightly too lightly fried. Occasional crisp bites but some soft ones. The pot of toum was delicious, though and was better than any aioli as a dip for the fries. Perhaps I should have doused the burger in it…

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 4/5

Build – 4/5

Burger – 3/5

Taste – 3/5

Sides – 3.5/5 – bump for the toum

Value – 4/5 – $19 + service for the burger and fries seemed reasonable for this kind of place in this part of town

Burger rating – 3/5 – there really wasn’t enough flavour to score it higher

The deets

The Seven Seeds Restaurant is downstairs in the Williamsburg Hotel, on Wythe Street in Brooklyn. Find it and book here. Probably don’t have the burger, though, unless you’re a huge feta fan. The other food looked more interesting and was great, by all accounts.

Beautifully cooked, beautifully assembled, averagely seasoned.

Burger Source

For many, the notion of going to a Hawksmoor and ordering a burger is sacrilege. It’d be like making a stir fry with foie gras; the restaurant’s beef is famed for its quality and not to be minced and mashed into a burger. Yet it consistently makes the ‘top burger in London’ listicles, and I was keen to try it. The beef is made from “British grass-fed, dry-aged beef from the Ginger Pig” and gets put into two burger variants; the Hawksmoor burger (served with your choice of cheese, pink or well done) and the Kimchi burger – which is what it sounds like. Both can be served with triple cooked chips or salad.

The order

My friend James and I both went for the Hawksmoor burger; pink (obviously), with cheddar, with triple cooked chips, served in a metal mini bucket (hipsters!) on the side.

The meat of it

This is an astonishingly beautiful burger. The 5oz patty is relatively thin yet coarsely ground, loosely packed, perfectly shaped, with a brilliant crisp finish and an evenly pink centre. I’ve no idea how they did this without drying out the burger, which remains tender and juicy and with the lovely aromatics you get with dry-aged beef. Sous vide with a grill finish? Who knows. It’s stacked on some lettuce, a crisp sweet pickle and a thin layer of mustard (spread-on, not fried-in, as far as I could tell), topped with a thick slice of well melted cheese and a large slice of beef tomato in a sizeable and airy brioche. The fries were crisp and looked inviting.

hawksmoor_x-section — Isn’t it beautiful?

Sounds amazing? Almost perfect, but not quite. Here’s what went wrong: the brioche is overly sweet, getting the flavour balance wrong whenever there’s too much bread in the bite. The burger itself, whilst perfectly tender, richly beefy and well cooked – was underseasoned. This turns the cheese from an umami-fest on top of a good burger into necessary seasoning; a necessary addition to make it feel like you’re eating something other than a sweet bread roll. You barely notice it as a result. Whilst the lettuce and tomato were amazing – fresh, crisp, amazingly complementary to the rest of the burger – the mustard spread is uneven. In most mouthfuls you can’t taste it, in others it’s a spike of unexpected heat. I much prefer the Dirty Burger / In&Out practice of frying mustard into the burger on the grill, which gives a richer, more even flavour IMHO. If I’m being picky – the burger wasn’t crisp enough not to need some textural contrast (from, say, a crisp piece of streaky bacon) – it’s all softness and squidge.

hawksmoor_chips — Tin cup! Who needs chips in a tin cup? Give me a basket any day.

The fancy ketchup – unnecessary for the burger due to the cloyingly sweet brioche – is some strange, slightly spiced, watery version (like a hybrid ketchup / sweet chilli sauce) – and it wasn’t a great help for the chips either, sadly. We both agreed Heinz would have been preferable. The tin cup made it challenging to salt the chips evenly (they were also underseasoned). Pouring them out would have cooled them down rapidly, of course…

All that said, it was still a good burger; it just doesn’t stack [sic] up against my current top rankings; Hawksmoor chefs, please embrace salt!

Drinkswise, we both opted for a very nice Eagle Rare bourbon from the menu’s extensive, expensive selection. Served with rocks on the side, it has a smooth, sweet finish and amazing aromatics.

hawksmoor_pudding — I resisted pudding, it would have been spoiling me too much.

Monkey finger rating

Bun – 3/5
Build – 5/5
Burger – 4/5
Taste – 3.5/5
Sides – 4/5
Value – 3.5/5 – £56 for two including a single shot of bourbon and service for two – the burger and chips by themselves list at £16. Hawksmoor has proven its worth its premium pricing for its steaks – not so sure about its burger.

Burger rating – 3.5/5 -It’s a good burger, but is expensive and underseasoned. Dip & Flip trounces it on many counts.

The deets

There are many Hawksmoors, but make sure the one you visit has a bar menu, as that’s the menu with the burger on it. The Knightsbridge branch is just off the Brompton road, an 8 minute walk from Knightsbridge tube. 3 Yeomans Row,

London, SW3 2AL. 020 7590 9290 for bookings and general steak chat.

Tag: seasoning

Seven Seeds Williamsburg, Wythe Street, Brooklyn

Hawksmoor, Knightsbridge