Margot and Fergus Henderson at Joe Allen

As a lad, my father would take me to eat at Joe Allen, the enduring West Side gathering place in New York’s Theatre District. He invariably ordered us burgers and not because it was the restaurant’s least expensive main dish. Most of the Broadway personalities seated near us knew to order the burger, too. It was the best thing on the menu.

The father of the great English chef Fergus Henderson of St John Restaurant fame also took his son to the great theatre-land haunt and also insisted he have a burger.

The happy discovery of Fergus and my shared boyhood experience was undimmed by two differences in our stories: First, Fergus’s father took him to the Joe Allen in London’s West End, not the one on Manhattan’s West Side. Second, the Joe Allen burger of his memory was never the best thing on the menu. It was the best thing off the menu: In London the burger has always been unlisted – the worst kept secret around Covent Garden.

I encountered Fergus this week at the London Joe Allen, sharing a table with his wife Margot Henderson, the chef at Rochelle Canteen, and trying the guest burger she had created for Joe’s. Her Margot burger, one of four burger collaborations to be featured at Joe Allen this month, consists of a Swaledale chuck mince patty layered with roast and raw beetroot, roast red onion, watercress, green sauce and Rochelle ketchup on a St John bun.

As good as Margot’s on-menu burger is, I secretly wanted the off-menu burger Fergus and his dad enjoyed all those years ago. And now I’m hankering to take my son to Joe Allen and – what else? – insist he polish off one, too.

Much as I look forward to showcasing still more obscene burgers piled with wild things I do fear we may be losing our way. In the race to out-top one another burger chefs and their fans risk forgetting two burger basics:

– A burger is only as good as its beef patty.

– Get the meat part right and the burger can stand on its own, with little embellishment.

To help put the meat of the matter back in focus I urge home cooks, restaurant chefs and burger dudes everywhere to take the @BurgerMonday #RealBurgerChallenge:

Create a great burger with 1 bun, 1 patty, 1 sauce and 1 topping.

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How to Enter The @BurgerMonday #RealBurgerChallenge

1) Post your name and declare your intentions in the comments section below or visit the #RealBurgerChallenge Facebook page and click join.

2) As your REAL BURGER takes shape, post your photos, illustrations, videos or thoughts on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, using the hashtag #RealBurgerChallenge.

Like/Comment/Share

Like, comment on and share the best posts with the hashtag #RealBurgerChallenge. I will do the same.

The Prize

Win the #ReadBurgerChallenge and you’ll be invited to take part in a BurgerMonday event featuring your 1-bun, 1-patty, 1-sauce, 1-topping burger.

The names of 8 burger greats were drawn from a hat at the BurgerMonday Championship launch party on Monday April 14th to determine the match-ups in the opening round. All quarter-final and semi-final burger-offs in the #WimbledonOfBurgers are to take place at Climpson’s Arch in East London.

Hawksmoor faced Honest Burgers in the opening quarter-final match on May 5th. Hawksmoor won by 3 votes (out of 500 cast) and awaits the winner of the Disco Bistro vs Elliot’s Cafe showdown on May 19th. 

The BurgerMonday Championship is the Wimbledon of burgers, a single-elimination tournament pitting 8 burgers greats –  Almost Famous, Bleecker St Bleecker, Burger Bear, Disco Bistro, Dip & Flip, Elliot’s Cafe,  Hawksmoor, Honest Burgers – against one another in a series of Monday-night match-ups.

The final is August 4th at Climpson’s Arch.

For #LBBfinal updates and news about other young&foodish events like the Y&F Facebook page.
 

Mayfields may be a window box of a storefront East London restaurant treasured for deftly crafted small plates of boutique produce, meat and fish. Yet there was nothing dainty about the steakburger chef Matthew Young created for the January 13th BurgerMonday, was there (see below)?
 


 
Matthew’s initial inspiration, the acclaimed burger at Diner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, served only as a departure point. His end burger was a true original drawing more on influences closer to home, with one innovation layered over another.

1. Bun

The sesame-seeded brioche was sourced from Bread Ahead, the London bakery and baking school opened at Borough Market by Matt Jones and Justin Gellatly. It marked the second BurgerMonday premiere of a Justin Gellatly burger bun: Three years earlier the buns Justin created at St John Bakery were showcased at a BurgerMonday by chefs James Lowe, Isaac McHale and Ben Greeno.

2. Beef

Matthew turned to a trusted supplier, Jorge Thomas of Swaledale Farms in West Yorkshire, and together they came up with a rich blend of three bistro steak cuts – flank, skirt, onglet – enriched with beef cheeks.

3. Cheese

When Beaufort, which Brillat-Savarin called “the prince of gruyères”, was melted over a patty the cheese’s nutty, butter character seemed to vanish before the chef’s eyes. His solution was to sit the Beaufort on the cut side of the top bun half instead and melt it under the salamander. Once the flipped and fitted atop the burger the cheese slowly dripped down over the toppings and patty.

4. Accessories

Lettuce, red onion, fresh mint, beet root, red miso-and-yellow mustard seed mayonnaise. The true revelations were the fresh mint, which enhanced the flavour of the beef (who knew mint was not only for lamb?) and the miso mustard mayo, with umami accent from the miso and some zip from the mustard.

5. Paper

Yes, paper. Karl Doering, one of Matthew’s sidemen, lined the griddles with parchment paper. The enormous benefit of this disposable, nonstick surface proved to be even, uniform cooking. As the burger grease collected in the parchment the patties were effectively fried in their own fat. Doering locked the patties in the deep pink zone between rare and medium-rare – the narrow space where outstanding burgers reside.

 
As the Mayfields burger was designed as a one-off I’m not sure we’ll ever it see again, sadly. (It is hoped Matthew will have second thoughts after he’s viewed the video and then third, fourth and fifth thoughts after he’s browsed Ian Sargent’s photos.) The surer bet is our seeing more burger chefs keeping the interior beef in the pink by frying their patties on parchment.

All photos by Ian Sargent.

Pavilion’s Breakfast Burger

Elliot’s Lunch Burger

Clutching Pavilion‘s brekkie burger is a fleeting thrill quickly surpassed by making it disappear before your eyes. It’s a wholly satisfying and extremely efficient way to both start and effectively finish off a weekend. Rather than spread your recommended weekend allowance of protein, fat, calories and very bad cholesterol over the course of two days the ground sausage patty, bacon, fried egg and melted Cheddar layered into this powerhouse breakfast-on-a-bun lets you get it done in five minutes, for a mere £7.50.

So practical, isn’t it?

The opening round of the championship will begin in May, with the first of four Monday night quarter-final clashes. Match-ups will be determined by a random draw. The winners will meet in two semi-final burger-offs in June, setting the stage for the final in July.

All the chefs from the restaurants and traders featured on the young&foodish Top 10 burgers in London list are invited to compete:

Little Social
Elliot’s Cafe
Patty & Bun
Bar Boulud
Hawksmoor
Bleecker St Burger
Honest Burgers
Lucky Chip
Burger Bear
Goodman

Should 9 or even all 10 of these burger pros accept their invitation the tournament will have to be expanded to accommodate them all. Should fewer than 8 accept the open spots will be filled by worthy candidates suggested by you and your fellow burgers devotees on Twitter, on Facebook or in the comments section below.

So who are we overlooking? Who is an absolute must for the 2014 #BMChampionship?

 
When you hear the meat has been cooked in its own fat your first association may be duck confit. But a beef burger may be cooked in its own fat, too, beautifully so and in much shorter order, if there’s enough white marbling running through the red meat, a good cooking surface with enough intense heat underneath it for searing and a border wall to keepeth the rendered fat. The grease shall not runneth over.

To effectively fry a burger in its own fat there is no better cooking tool than a cast-iron-skillet. As the patty sears and sweats over the pan’s heavy bottom the steep rim gathers the oozing juices into a shallow pool. More of the patty’s surface than just its flattened top and bottom gets encrusted in this bath of sizzling fat as the browning meat develops flavour and eventually caramelises (see Maillard reaction).
 

 
Little Social chef Cary Docherty uses a cast-iron pan to cook London’s best burger. And, as you see in short video above, Brindle Room chef Jeremy Spector uses two cast-iron skillets to cook what Josh Ozersky, the dude who wrote the book on The Hamburger, insists is New York’s best burger.

Coincidence? I don’t think so. The low-tech cast-iron skillet, at about £30/$50 for a good one without glazed enamel (nice but unnecessary), is the ultimate burger cooking machine.