Excellent meat, middling to good toppings
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Mother Flipper is on so many best burger lists, for so many good reasons it was exciting to check it out. The Seven Dials website (where the street food burger has a permanent residency) describes it thusly:
Brace yourself for thick, juicy patties, handcrafted from a blend of 28-day aged cuts, grilled to perfection, and topped with flavours of your choice. Slap that patty on a decadent brioche bun, then stack it high with lettuce, pickles, and onions. In the kingdom of London burgers, many declare that Mother Flipper wear the crown.
Let’s GO.
The order
I had the ‘Candied Bacon Flipper’, feat their aged beef patty, candy bacon, ketchup, mustard, lettuce, red onion, pickle and american cheese. We shared a fries, at £4.95 for a health portion, as well as a ranch and spicy mayo sauce pot for dunkin’.
#YOLO?
I’m too old to know if I used that right. Tell me in the comments.
The meat of it
Right, it’s decent presentation. Pretty stack, lovely glossy brioche, crisp looking fries, generous sauce pots… It’s on.
Time for a cross section:
It was quite dark in the (very busy) seven dials, so flash was required… but wow, look what it showed. Brilliant, coarse ground beef, cooked medium. Perfect melt on the cheese. The candied bacon (check out their Insta/Facebook pages to see how they make it, drizzling it in syrup and leaving it to caramelise) generously portioned on top. The salad looks a little on the anaemic side, other than some healthy chunks of red onion, but it’s a lesser fault.
First taste.
The bun is cold. I don’t know why this offends me so much, and to be fair this might be down to the fact that – due to the crazy-busy-ness of Seven Dials market of a Tuesday evening (who ARE all these people?), we were sat about 150 yards from Mother Flipper when our buzzer went off indicating food readiness – so my plodding schlep there and back might have cooled it down, but nonetheless. It was disappointing. But – crazy amounts of flavour, alongside the back-of-your nose, back of your throat hit from the dry-aged beef. The meat is delicious, heavily seasoned, well coated in the melty cheese, and well supported by the (intemperate) bun.
Second bite, and third, and the candied bacon and brioche, alongside the (meagre) ketchup portion provide a counterpoint to the salt bomb that this burger is, but not quite enough of one – chef went just a tad heavy with the salt shaker. The pickles and sauce are decent but could be more generously portioned – and I’d have liked more salad and onion too, just to balance the ratio of sweet, fresh, crisp, vs unguent, savoury umami. Just a tad off balance as it was made onight.
As to the fries… and the SAUCE.
These are lightly seasoned (would have liked some salt on the side to top them up, ironically), crisp, fresh fries. They had a good potato flavour and were brilliant dunked in the lightly spiced mayo (think mayo + a glug of sriracha) and the creamy ranch. The ranch was good but… needed fried chicken, really, it wasn’t the best compliment to the fries on its own.
Overall, a really good experience. Imperfect, but just a few minor notes and this could have been close to [chef’s kiss].
Monkey finger rating
Bun – 4/5 – did I mention it was cold?
Build – 5/5 – more salad. More sauce!
Burger – 4/5 – less salt!
Taste – 4/5
Sides – 4/5 – more salt!
Value – 4/5 – £17 for burger and side, ish. Which is about the going rate.
Burger rating – 4/5 – would definitely be keen to go again.
The deets
Find Mother Flipper at Seven Dials near Covent Garden, or in Brockley. More details here.
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