Our top 3 burgers

It's fair to say looking at the list of places we've been to amoungst everything else, we've devoured a fair amount of burgers. To celebrated bursting through the 20 (and 21) mark we've come up with our favourites. We don't always agree, especially when it comes to optimal seasoning, so no surprise that we've come to different conclusions. I think the question of the top burgers in the game is always a contentious issue though. What would be your picks?

The US burger invasion: An Honest retaliation

Much has been made of the ever growing population of burger joints in London and the much deliberated 'fast food for the middle class'. With select cuts of rare breed beef, medium rare patties, brioche buns and fries doused in rosemary salt are common place, it has really taking off with the most popular places like MeatLiquor, Patty&bun, Honest burgers have hour long plus waiting times. Clearly this trend hasn't escaped the attention of those across the pond with Five Guys opening to align with Independence day, and Shack Shack from NYC, already synonymous with queues, the day after. Oh yes, and they happen to be within 300 metres of each other.

Both couldn't have asked for better burger beating news storm that surrounded George Osbourne and his Byron burger last week, with Five Guys and Shack Shack's openings being named dropped at the drop of a hat in every news article.

But what of the UK response, is there room for another 2 huge burger joints? Honest Burgers got ahead, under the radar, opening another branch this time in Camden Lock Market and hope to open another soon near Kings Cross. It was a heavy week for me, Meat Market on Sunday, the BurgerMonday from Youngandfoodish (including an phenomenal pastrami poutine), and then these three. I think I need a lie down...

Bain's Big Bacon Burger

We've gone through a far amount of burgers since starting this blog. Although I don't cook many at home, burgers are best with a few mates and drinks, I'd like to think I know what consitutes the making a a fine burger, from a juicy patty, bun to toppings. Introducing the "Triple B™ burger", I put together the following

• A good patty, I used The Butchery Ltd bone marrow burgers
• Demi-brioche bun, from St.John's Bakery
• Candied bacon, green streaky from The Butchery Ltd
• Blue cheese aioli, inspired by Big Dirty Burger
• Grilled lettuced, a la Pitt Cue Co
• Grill Tomato slice

Big Dirty Burger

Over the last few years the popularity of 'fast food for middle class' has grown exponentially, with the humble burger being a dominant player. People are no longer satisfied with grilled to death low quality patties, much effort is spent in sourcing rare-breed cows, finely selecting choice cuts to give a perfect meat to fat ratio with the right flavour profile and cooking it to a perfect medium rare (shhh, don't tell Westminster city council). It's got the stage where this is big business, only this week first round of bidding for Byron was for an approximate £100m, based on profits of £10m(!) for this financial year (see The Independent)  Not bad for only 30 odd stores. Put it this way, that's about £920 profit for an average store each day, if open 7 days a week. Obviously, there is going to be a difference between their scale and somewhere smaller like Honest Burger, that won't have the same economies of scale, but still, most of the top burger joints are constantly packed with +1 hour waiting times. With Five Guys and Shake Shack coming over from across the pond, it's hard for new smaller players to get their foot in the door without necessary investment to compete. 

Street food offers that flexibility of not needing as much capital to get going, and less of a commitment as a bricks & mortar place. Notable mentions for Bleecker St Burger, Burger Bear, & Mother Flipper. Big Dirty Burger are plucky young 'part timers' yet to be able to fully commit, but with a great range of burgers, it's worth keeping an eye out for when they appear. Luckily for me, they appear most at Camden Brewery, one of my locals; burgers and Hells larger definitely hit the spot on a weekend!

Second time lucky

Since we started this blog, we've managed to get through our fair share of burgers, however up until now, not had a chance to sample any of Lucky Chip's offerings, bar their tiny ones at Slider Bar. Lucky Chip have been expanding to different corners of the city, from their van in Neilt market, to Bethnal Green, Soho and now Kentish Town, while becoming Chilli Stand Off champions in between. Then, they moved onto another increasing popular fast-food staple 'done properly' with  their short lived Lucky Fried Chicken residency upstairs at the Grafton (no thanks to a cease & desist from the Colonel :(  ), and it was as good as fried chicken gets, the mash was pure indulgence as well. However it's gone now, but they are staying on purely as a burger bar. Maybe they should have kept on the chicken in a 'now you didn't see anything here, you hear' as a paper bag of edible goodies slides from under the counter.

Food Over....California - Part II

This is the second part of our Californian foodie journal, from a different perspective this time. Owen did a great job of covering the more typically American food in the last post, so in this one I'm going to cover some more cosmopolitan restaurants, including Mexican (lots of tacos!), Japanese, Chinese... and Modern Californian, which to me is basically Mediterranean-style cooking done with the excellent local produce available in the region.

This.Is.Burger.Wars...Let battle commence

To the dread of all colonoscopists, London's love affair with the humble burger shows no signs of abating, instead increasing at an exponential rate. This week saw the opening of 4 new central burger joints of Patty & Bun, Byron Burger (Store Street), and new boys on the scene Burger & Shake, and BRGR.CO Soho. We went to all 4...I need a lie down now.

You make me wanna breakout

Burger Breakout @ The Old Crown 

33  New Oxford Street, WC1A 1BH

3 months after his successful Pop-up at Chad's Place (see here), Dave Ahern is back with a permanent, and even more adventurous, venture in the heart of London, a stone's throw from the British Museum. The foundation of the menu is built on those burgers at the pop up, so the whiskey beast, swine time, the Bambi Bought it, and the baa-baa baby. In addition to these are the OC burger (with Devon Long Horn patty), the camilla burger (chicken burger), and the 'I don't need your bull' veggie option. Each comes with it's own bespoke sauce befitting it's own meat. The choices don't stop there though with steak, chicken wings (10 different sauces!),... each dish has it's own unique twist, with undoubtably a lot of labour (and love) required to go into each of them

Honestly, what you know about burgers internet?

Honest burger (@honestburgers)
4a Mead Street,

Another burger restaurant has ventured into the murky depths of central London. Honest burger have expanded their successful Brixton home to Mead St. just off Dean Street, right near to Burger & Lobster.
With MeatLiquor / Market, B&L, Tommi's burger joint, Slider Bar, not to mention those mini burgers at Opera Tavern, and a new Byron Burger popping up seemingly every month, all within walking distance; is the demand for burgers going to be saturated soon? It sure doesn't seem that way. Honest, continue the trend of a minimal menu with a choice of chicken, beef or vegetable fritter (has anyone actually tried this, surely that smell of burgers on the grill is enough to turn anyone), and the special. 

See that McDonald's over there son...don't let me see you ever go in there

Burger & Lobster - No Alarms and No Surprises

Burger & Lobster (@londonlobster)
36 Dean Street, London, W1D 4PS

Well, you couldn't accuse this one of false advertising. Featuring a minimalistic menu consisting simply of burger and lobster (either whole or as a roll), the Dean Street branch is the second of the two B&L restaurants opened by the team behind the eponymous Goodman in Mayfair. Goodman is famous for boasting some of the best steaks and burgers here, but we were particularly intrigued here by the prospect of £20 lobster.

Slider bar - (Un)lucky Chip

SliderBar
Player Bar, 8 Broadwick St, W1F 8HN

For ages we had been looking forward to the opening of Slider Bar, the new venture of LuckyChip in Soho, to complement their Hackney residence at the Sebright Arms. Their opening seemed to be constantly put back and back, checking out their twitter feed they seemed to be beseeched with bad luck holding back their opening. But finally today was the day, announced only the day before on Twitter. With the Lucky Chip burgers consistently touted as one of the best burgers in London, I didn't want to miss out on this.

The Slider bar is on Broadwick St, just off Wardour Street, it is very discreet with the World's smallest sign, so keep your eyes peeled. We got there half an hour after opening, and managed to get a table for the 4 of us. The set up is quite strange downstairs half bar, half restaurant with the seats all bunched together round the perimeter. There couldn't have been more than 50 people seated.

Burger breakout

This was a long awaited day, not just for the Burger Breakout @ 6 St Chad's Place, but for British summer to finally make it's appearance. Burger Breakout is a pop-up from a collaboration between Dave Ahern (of  The Ship, Wandsworth,The Alex and Ben's canteen) and Cornish Grill (who also do their own monthly pop-ups) for their best Cornish produce. With the burger 'scene' in London hitting a high this was great timing to get in on the act and they couldn't have asked for a nicer day (although probably not to be slaving away in the kitchen!)

The (food) revolution is here

While this recession continues to linger on, people are becoming more and more 'value for money' conscious. Whether it be at home or out, We don't want to be paying over the odds for processed, bland, nutritious-less food. Often called 'guilty pleasures'...well you should be guilty because there is A LOT better out there. Because of this there has been a rise in quality street food, and with twitter great places can be known by 'word of mouth' very fast, very far, very quickly (See: Portland, Oregon). Without the need for pointless things like knives and forks, or napkins these gourmet take-aways are becoming increasingly popular. These enterprises 'out of a truck' has led to two great successes of the 'MeatWagon' (then #MeatEasy, followed by MeatLiquor/Market) and Pitt Cue Co branching out into their own fixed residence...minus the wheels!

Burger Monday @ Joe Allen's

For quite a while now, I've become far to used to opening up my email to find a new Burger Monday event only to be too late and big SOLD OUT signs on the subsequent links. Thankfully patience (and luck) is a virtue and managed to book myself in for the BurgerMonday at Joe Allen's

FD OUT - MEAT liquor

In the words of Harley Morenstein 'A d-d-dripping that meat saWce!!'. Only way to sum up a messy burger, never been as thankful that the table had a whole kitchen roll and not tissues.

Meat Liquor has to be the ultimate 'guilty pleasure' food, combined with an seemingly endless list of cocktails, all served in jam jars (minus the jam), this probably wasn't a good idea for a work lunch.

I've previously been to the #Meateasy pop up when it was at New Cross, so already new how good the burgers were, although after waiting 2 hours for mine, I practically inhaled it. Now I wanted a bit more time to appreciate it!

Meat liquor is not too far off the main Oxford street tourist track, but enough so it's only gonna be visited by those in the know, even more so with the whited out glass at the front and red sign behind wood panels

Luckily, we managed to get in without too long a wait. I've been past since and the queue has been all along the side. Inside is very grungy lit with red spotlights (hence from now on all my pics are red tinted!) and some very different graffiti and murals. It has to be seen to be appreciated.

I ordered the Dead Hippie with fries and onion rings. The dead hippie is 2 patties cooked to perfection, amazingly succulent and indulgent beyond most other places you'll find in London. The gherkin adds that crunchy texture that brings it all together for that eyes rolling in the back of your head moment. As for the fries, was a little bit disappointed with far too much salt, but the onion rings are another little delight with huge onion rings wrapped in delicate batter.

This is one place that you have to go, and hopefully you'll never go to McDs for a burger again, not that you would of course ;)

FD OUT - Byron Burger - The Gizz-mo

It had been a long time coming to savour the Gizz-Mo after several attempts wondering aimlessly around Soho and Covent Garden one Thursday night, ridiculously refusing to wait over 15 mins, despite our adventure to several restaurants lasting over an hour, and queue time getting longer and longer to each place we went. Hind sight is such a great thing and I was not going to let this stand in my way the next day. 

Thankfully a new Byron Burger had opened up just that day in St Giles High Street, looking majestic in it’s new glass fronted abode. Being not more than 10 minutes walk from work in Torrington Place, this will be a temptation that my waist line probably won’t thank me for.

Anyway to the burger itself…..

Normally if I get a hair in my burger I’ll send it back. However, this burger with a moustache is a welcome exception. With the patty cooked medium-rare, the welsh rarebit (made from mature cheddar, smoked cheddar, english mustard, worchestershire sauce and stout) added an extra dimension to the standard byron bun sending me into a cheesy eutopia. 

It is pure melt in the mouth goodness, and could easy do a few of these a week. It’s a shame the Gizz-Mo is only on for the month of Movember, of which Byron are helping to fundraise, and giving away a free burger to anyone raising over £25 every day (well 7-20th november, but that’s good enough)

Washed down with a delightful oreo milkshake (get the extra malt!) it was well worth savouring.

Till the next time, mange tout

Bainio