When Alexis Gauthier  accepted my challenge to create a one-off burger for the January 27th BurgerMonday at Andrew’s Gray’s Inn greasy spoon I assumed he would reinvent, deconstruct, Frenchify or otherwise gastronomise the American classic. But the chef at Gauthier Soho, one of London’s highest rated restaurants, chose to preserve the simplicity and integrity of a good burger-joint burger made with bun, patty, melted cheese, lettuce, onion and pink sauce.

Alexis did, however, seek an extra dimension, a special effect to distinguish his BurgerMonday cheeseburger. First he housed each fully assembled burger in its own plastic bag to seal in its moisture and warmth. Then, just before the burgers were served, he blew smoke into their bags from a portable food smoker burning maple wood chips.

This smoky cheeseburger, itself a sandwich, was sandwiched on a three-course menu between two sandwiches. Many managed to get through dinner without touching their knives and forks.

For the starter Alexis squeezed a chopped Caesar salad between two Parmesan crisps.

He layered his burger with an aged Argentine Wagyu beef patty, a slice of Manchego cheese, lettuce, red onion and Sauce Choron, a tomato-tinted Béarnaise. He maple-smoked the ensemble in a plastic bag and sent it out with golden panisses (chickpea fries).

For dessert Alexis and his team filled éclairs on the spot with more praline cream and whipped cream than the choux pastry was meant to hold. Oddly no one of the 80 served an éclair complained about the cream spilling from all sides.

“This éclair is not made with tweezers,” said Alexis. “It’s a real one, the one you’re going to have at home for your birthday.”

As burgers go the absolutely sensational smoked cheeseburger-in-a-bag was a real one, too, the one you’re going to have at home for your birthday, but only if Alexis brings his Wagyu, plastic bags, hand-held smoker and good cheer to the party.
 

 

All photos by Ian Sargent. Click here to see all of Ian’s photos from BurgerMonday with Alexis Gauthier.

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?

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?

You decide. Analyse the pics in the event slideshow below by photographer Paul Winch-Furness. When you feel the lower portion of your mouth falling the first thing you must do is pick your jaw off the floor. Then ask yourself if this involuntary movement was triggered by intense feelings of astonishment or practicality.

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slideshow photos by Paul Winch-Furness

slideshow photos by Paul Winch-Furness

Great fan though I am of Polpo, Polpetto and their new sibling sensation Spuntino, Wednesday the 13th of April was probably not the best night to be dining at any of these madly popular restaurants in London’s Soho. That’s because Spuntino head chef Rachel O’Sullivan and group chef Tom Oldroyd took that afternoon and night off to prepare 350+ meatballs for my SpagWednesday meatballs and spaghetti pop-up dinner (see photos above by food photographer Paul-Winch Furness) at the Gray’s Inn greasy spoon Andrew’s.

Rachel and Tom sent out heaping plates of spaghetti and meatballs with wedges of focaccia to 66 SpagWednesday twirling slurpers who did with it what SpagWednesday twirling slurpers do: They ate like kids and dined like princes.

Although some Italian purists insist you shouldn’t serve bread with pasta, piling starch upon starch, the Spuntino chefs concluded that the far greater crime would have been to leave a roomful of urbane Londoners with traces of homemade tomato sauce on their plates but no bread with which to mop it up. The only viable alternative would have been for diners to use their fingers, which, though hardly unheard of at young&foodish pop-ups, is perhaps not the preferred medium.

Don’t miss out on the fun at my next pop-up. Join the young&foodish community now and as a member you’ll receive email alerts about upcoming SpagWednesday and BurgerMonday pop-ups as well as advance booking privileges.

For my inaugural SpagWednesday pop-up on February 23rd I lured Francesco Mazzei out of his comfort zone in the state-of-the-art kitchen at L’Anima, his posh Italian restaurant in the City of London, to prepare spaghetti alle vongole (with clams) at Andrews, a 1950s greasy spoon.
The environment for Francesco’s version of the spaghetti classic was dramatically altered but not the emulsione with emozione that clings to it. With colleagues Lello Favuzzi and Claudio Milani he created a creamy, buttery emulsion not with cream or butter, as some disbelieving diners assumed, given the evidence before them, but rather by tossing the pasta with some of its starchy cooking water as well as garlicky clam juices and extra virgin olive oil from his native Calabria.

The Formica-clad informality didn’t change Francesco’s vongole but it did foster the unselfconsious manner in which the spaghetti was twirled, slurped and relished. The lack of starch in the air, as opposed to that in the emulsified sauce, freed all 64 diners to accept my invitation to

eat like a kid. dine like a prince.

Within the pop-up video is an homage to a classic American TV commercial from 1969 for Prince Spaghetti and its 12-year old Bostonian hero, Anthony Martignetti. For the 2011 Londonian version, Francesco, Lello and Claudio brought out the 12-year-old prince in all of us.

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