Top 5 Burger Car Crashes

  • Top 5 Burger Car Crashes
  • Bistro du Vin, July 2011
  • MEATLiquor, March 2012
  • The Crown at Bray, March 2012
  • Burger & Lobster, June 2012
  • Jacob's Ladder, March 2013

 

 

MEET THE BURGERS #LondonBurgerBash

artist’s model for Golden Patty Award

How bad do the six competitors in the 7/8 April BurgerMonday #LondonBurgerBash at Camden Town Brewery want it? How confident are they of getting the mosts vote?

You might get some idea from reading about their designs for winning the one burger everyone wants most, the one burger you can’t eat: The Golden Patty Award version 2.0 is an original work by artist Lewis Stringer, creator of the Burger Bell Jar.

The half dozen burgers to be served at both the Sunday afternoon and Monday night sessions of the #LondonBurgerBash half marathon are below, in no particular order. The list is followed by beer matches proposed for each burger by Camden Town Brewery’s Head Brewer James Garstang. [Read more...]

#LondonBurgerBash: the Movie

Judging six big-league burgers in a single go is no job to be taken lightly. The London Overground may stop at Kentish Town West station, directly over the railway arches of Camden Town Brewery, the competition venue, but it’s up to you to get your mind and body in the right place.

To motivate you for the next @BurgerMonday #LondonBurgerBush 7/8 April I’ve released this video of the inaugural bash held 29 October 2012.

The competitors may not be the same this time as they were in October but the demands on you the voter will be just as great. Promise.

The six new chefs at the April bash are competing in the second of four burger-offs in the group stage. The top vote-getter of this heat books a place in the #LondonBurgerBash finals, to be held in 2014.

photos by Paul Winch-Furness

Japan Centre Brings Rice Burgers to London


When the Japan Centre first introduced a line of Japanese-style burgers to London last year the inspiration was right but the implementation wrong.
 
[Read more...]

No Chef Does Overkill Like Carl Clarke

  • 4in1Saturday Pop-Up, 15 December 2012
    photos by Ian Sargent
  • Disco Bistro EC4, City of London
  • Carl Clarke – @ccdiscobistro, chef
  • Hosted by Daniel Young (and Foodish)
  • Crackled fried clam sandwich
  • Spicy crab & buttermilk sauce on
    hot dog buns
  • Fried clams in a buttermilk batter with salt brine,
    three starch flours & one secret ingredient.
  • Fried pig skin seasoned with shellfish dust
  • French dipped burger, pulled 72-hour short rib,
    beef fat crinkle chips
  • Homemade cheese made with aged beef fat , beer,
    two cheeses & sodium citrate
  • [top] Pulled 72-hour short rib. [middle] Bun slice "French-dipped"
    in BBQ sauce. [bottom] Pure Devon Ruby burger patty
  • Spiced chocolate & coffee doughnuts
  • Coffee glaze on Valrhona chocolate doughnuts
  • Valrhona chocolate sauce

 
The unspoken idea behind the December 15th #4in1Saturday pop-up was overkill. And who better, I thought, to merge four of my daily obsessions – BurgerMonday, WichThursday, FryFriday, CoffeeSaturday – without a gram of compromise than Carl Clarke of Disco Bistro EC4? [Read more...]

MEATMission: Is Grey the New Pink?



 
How do you explain the drab colour and odd texture of the burger patty at MEATMission, the latest from London burger legend Yianni Papoutsis?

If you know and love Yianni burgers from The Meatwagon, MEATLiquor or MEATMarket you tolerate his heavy hand with the ground black pepper shaker. You accept that with long queues and thousands to serve not every patty can be cooked to a pink ideal.

But nothing in your experience fully prepares you for a dense patty with so little colour, juice and crumble. [Read more...]

Cheeseburger Meltdown at Patty and Bun


 
Extreme burgers are, by definition, OTT. The headlining cheeseburgers at Patty and Bun, a new burger joint and instant sensation in London’s Marylebone, are not so much over the top as all over. Open the wrapper and you can’t tell where the orange gooey cheesy stuff ends and the runny orange house sauce begins.

Patty and Bun’s charismatic Joe Grossman has named his radioactive burgers after famous people. The Ari Gold (£7) contains a deep-pink patty just shy of six ounces but not shy of fatty juices, cheese goo, more cheese goo, lettuce, tomato, pickled onions, ketchup, smokey house mayo and more smokey house mayo on a browned brioche bun. The Smokey Robinson (£8) adds bacon and substitutes caramelised onions for the pickled onions. With every Ari or Smokey you polish off you’ll feel more and more like another celebrity, Oliver Hardy.

“Well,” you’ll be telling Grossman as you unwrap yet another Ari Gold, “here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into!”


Patty & Bun, 54 James St, London W1U 1HE (map), closed Mondays

1+1=3 at London’s new Electric Diner

 

A single cheeseburger at the Electric Diner contains two patties; a double cheeseburger, three patties.

Crispy fries “au cheval” with Mornay sauce

The George Osborne arithmetic is a Christmas gift to London from Brendan Sodikoff, chef/owner of Chicago’s Au Cheval diner. (Au cheval is French for “on horseback” or, in food parlance, “with an egg on top”.)

In late September, Matt Duckor, posting on Bon Appétit magazine’s blog, rated the single cheeseburger with two patties at Sodikoff’s year-old designer diner as the best in America.

The Soho House group of restaurants and hotels took inspiration from – and then a partnership with – Sodikoff when it transformed the Electric Brasserie, beside the historic Electric Cinema in London’s Notting Hill, into the ElectricDiner, which opened on Monday. [Read more...]