From the inaugural BurgerMonday pop-up on 24 January 2011 with the Young Turks as guest chefs to the first FryFriday pop-up on 10 February 2012 with Anh Vu and Van Tran of Banhmi11 my dinners have been shared experiences only as good as – but, happily, every bit as good as – the London food obsessives who filled the tables and grasped what it meant to be, feel and eat young&foodish(ly). [Read more...]
A Pop-Up Logo for Me & My Pop-Up Dinners
11 February 2012 By 1 Comment
Dutch Designer Marcel Wanders Out-Geeked by Blanch & Shock at Galleria Illy
Only a fool tries to upstage Marcel Wanders by out-smiling, out-dressing, out-tanning, out-hairing or out-flirting the tall, dark and handsome Dutch designer. But were you to tie your hair in a bun, as Josh Pollen did, or hide your intense gaze behind protective goggles, as Mike Knowlden did, you might find it relatively easy to out-geek Wanders. These ingeniously inventive – and skinny – young chefs managed just that at the London launch for Flos of the beautiful Wanders Can-Can Lamp at the Galleria Illy pop-up this October.
28 November 2011 By Leave a Comment
The Lionel Lévy BurgerMonday Pop-Up Question
Lionel Lévy, the Michelin-starred chef at Une Table, au Sud in Marseille, loves to revisit the classics. The protégé of Gérard Garrigues and Alain Ducasse has made a name for himself with his bouillabaisse milkshake and other signature (re)inventions. He added another to his repertoire as guest chef at my BurgerMonday pop-up on the 23rd of May at Andrew’s Gray’s Inn greasy spoon in London. 
He merged two American standards, the burger and the BLT sandwich, replacing their customary condiments with the Provençal accessories he prepared at his restaurant, packed in sous-vide bags and stashed with ice packs inside his hand luggage for the flight from Marseille to London.
When just 15 minutes before service Lévy showed me the very first version ever of his stunning pop-up burger BLT I was startled. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, or how to eat it. As you can see in the video above many diners had the same initial reaction, if varied answers to the question: Which end is ‘wich?
13 July 2011 By 6 Comments
Jaws Drop at Goodman BurgerMonday Pop-Up
photo by Paul Winch-Furness
Why did jaws drop throughout Andrew’s Gray’s Inn greasy spoon when London chef John Cadieux of Goodman steakhouses and butcher Darragh O’Shea of O’Shea’s of Knightsbridge revealed their BurgerMonday pop-up burger? Were diners expressing astonishment at the unreasonable height and drippiness of this bacon cheeseburger? Or was it more the reflexive action of carnivores stretching and shaping their mouths for the imminent entrance of that brioche bun and all the beef, special sauce and accoutrements John stacked beneath his homemade, egg-polished, sesame-seeded dome? [Read more...]
30 June 2011 By 3 Comments
The Next Great New York Burger?
My recent visit to New York coincided with another bout of unease for Andy D’Amico, the chef/co-owner of 5 Napkin Burger as well as Nice Matin, the Mediterranean restaurant where he first introduced the drippy burger (pictured above) with an ensemble of melted Gruyère, caramelized onions and rosemary aïoli for which four napkins are not enough.
5 Napkin built its reputation as well as its growing fleet of burger brasseries – the fourth 5 Napkin opens in Boston in a month and a fifth in Miami Beach’s South Beach soon after – on chuck meat. Even so, the introspective D’Amico was thinking the unthinkable: chucking some of the chuck. [Read more...]
20 February 2011 By 8 Comments
Diners, Like Liquids, Take Shape of their Container
According to the ground rules of the restaurant repertoire you’re not supposed to find a dish like this…
…in a place like this…
Yet when Hugue Dufour, the French-Canadian chef-proprietor of the M. Wells Diner in Queens, New York, asked me if I’d ordered his silky-smooth parsnip soup with the sautéed foie gras topper I was surprised anyone would regard this accessory as optional. [Read more...]
18 February 2011 By 9 Comments
#BurgerMondaySwarm Invades New York
In December I took my @BurgerMonday meatup group across the pond to New York for a pre-Christmas swarm at 4food, a new burger joint devoted to de-junking fast food. [Read more...]
31 January 2011 By 2 Comments
#BurgerMondaySwarm Thwarts Atomic Counterattack
On Monday 15th November 2010 at 19:00 hours I led a red-shirted swarm of BurgerMondiacs to the Burger King at London’s Waterloo Station. Our mission was to elude security, occupy the upper level of the burger monarch’s restaurant and impose table service.
Our plot was foiled. Having intercepted our coded messages on twitter, BK pursued the nuclear option. Two agents disguised as chefs stockpiled the kitchen with a top-secret, untested weapon code-named “the Atomic Whopper”. [Read more...]
23 November 2010 By 1 Comment
