The Double Candy Bacon Flipper is the creation of Mother Flipper, a new street burger stall now operating on Saturdays at Brockley Market in south east London (see map). Split patties sweating grease from every pore are articulated with the sweet, pleasantly chewy crunch of the smokey streaky bacon Manuel Leal-Andrades (yes, Mother Flipper is a man) candies himself with brown sugar. The coarsely minced patties are housed with the basics – shredded lettuce, dill pickle, squirts of mustard, squiggles of ketchup – on a beautifully toasted and gently squashed brioche bun. Sensational.

To be clear, Mother Flipper isn’t at the top of the street burger tables just yet. Much as the two grillmen manage the preparation of each burger with care they can’t consistently pull off the liftoff to juicy medium rare. Taking burgers off the sizzling flat-top griddle after the cheese has melted to goop but before the comparatively thin patties have lost their interior lipstick pink colour is a game of seconds.

Over-salting is another worry. The two burgers I devoured at Mother Flipper (the second was the cheeseburger at right) were encrusted with twice the necessary quantity of Maldon sea salt flakes. My hope is that this is a temporary blip and not a reflection of London’s increasing tolerance and even preference for ferociously salty burgers. My fear is that indiscriminate salting by MEATliquor, Lucky Chip and now Mother Flipper are making more moderately seasoned burgers seem bland by comparison.

When salting a patty you must factor in the relative saltiness of the burger’s other elements. If you put anchovies in a salad or pasta you’d naturally use less salt. The same should be true if you outfit a burger with aggressively salty bacon, ketchup, processed cheese, dill pickles or all of the above.

Beyond any discussion of its burger components, Mother Flipper has a DIY sensibility I find appealing and promising. From the burger-steaming domes Leal-Andrades made from stainless steel mixing bowls and Champagne corks to the chapati skillet he heats over a Jamie Oliver mobile gas cooker to firm up and toast the split buns the vibe is analog and acoustic, much like The Meatwagon, a direct influence, in its early days.

When you reach the front of the queue and order at Mother Flipper they give you a number. Had I drawn 118, rather than 78, the countdown or, rather, the count up to my Double Candy Bacon Flipper could have been measuring my pulse rate, such was the anticipation. This is the street food experience, made to order. By the time my burger was ready I didn’t just want the Double Candy Bacon Flipper. I wanted the 78 Double Candy Bacon Flipper. In less than ten minutes Mother Flipper already had my number.

Note: E5 Bakehouse has suspended preparation of its bagels until a new, larger oven is up and running.  I’ll let you know when they’re back in production.

If you already found it next to hopeless to graze through all the must eats of London Fields on a single Saturday, from Banhmi11 Vietnamese baguettes at Broadway Market to Lucky Chip burgers and Home Slice Pizza at Netil Market, your life just got a lot more complicated: The not-to-be-missed bagels at e5 Bakehouse, Ben MacKinnon‘s exceptional bread bakery under the railway arches beside London Fields station, are only baked on Saturday afternoons. And good as those bagels are when carried home for toasting at the next day’s Sunday brunch, topped with a schmear of creamed cheese and draped with fat-glistening Scottish smoked salmon, they are at their pristine best when consumed plain and hot – not more than 5 minutes and 5 metres from the e5 Bakehouse’s ovens.

The name “e5” may come from the bakery’s Hackney postcode but I take it to mean “eat within five”.

No one would confuse the 60p e5 bagel, made with white flour and white sourdough starter, with a bloated New York bagel, the world’s most famous. Likewise, it has little in common with a honey-sweetened Montreal bagel, the world’s best. Even the traditional East London bagel or, if you prefer, beigel, is no closer than a distant cousin, the relative proximity (2k) between e5 Bakehouse and Brick Lane Beigel Bake notwithstanding. Lastly, brace yourself for a big shock: Ben MacKinnon is not Jewish.

But the e5 white sourdough bagel is hand-rolled, as all the best bagels are. It’s boiled before being baked, as authentic bagels must be. And it’s soft yet beautifully chewy, unlike the squishy and bready bagels you find at supermarkets. To eat a fresh one you must clamp down on it with your teeth and then tear it away from your mouth to break off a bite-sized piece. Eating a bagel is never effortless. If there’s no exertion there’s no bagel.

Is Ben’s bagel the definitive one? No. Is it flawless? Hardly. It could maybe be sweeter and crustier. A coat of sesame seeds or Malden salt flakes would be nice. A wood-fired oven, perhaps borrowed from neighbour Home Slice Pizza, wouldn’t hurt. Indeed, if you told Ben his bagels could be improved it’s likely he’d agree. They are works in progress: The ones I had yesterday – I bought 8 and devoured 3 on the spot – had a tougher and, in my mind, better bottom than the soft-bottomed versions from an earlier batch.

So should you maybe wait a few months until the bagels get better? No. Such a strategy is all hole and no bagel. Ben’s rings of goodness are already the only bagels of artisan quality I have tried in London since moving here in 2004, other than the pretzel bagels at Luca’s Bakery in East Dulwich. To my knowledge, amongst UK bakers only Pump Street Bakery, in Orford, Suffolk, has comparably high standards and aspirations for its bagels.

The great challenge for the Saturday grazer of London Fields is synchronising stops at e5 Bakehouse with the release of its organic, hand-made bagels. Yesterday I waited a half-hour for my bagels, an improvement over the 50 minutes I waited the week before. During those excruciatingly long 3000 seconds I thought to myself, if only there were an e5 Bakehouse bagel app linked to the oven timers sounding off when breads were nearly done. But then I imagined this Solomonic dilemma: Imagine standing near the front of the queue at Banhmi11, minutes from a pan-fried catfish sandwich, when the hot bagel alert from the app on your iPhone sent vibrations up and down your front pocket. The question is: Would you stay or would you go?

Go ahead, salivate, that’s the carnivore’s natural response to my list of the top 10 burgers in London.

The quality and variety of burgers in London is steadily improving, of that there can be little doubt. But getting them cooked as ordered remains a crapshoot.

Exhaustive as my investigation was, not just of the top 10 burgers in London but also of many that didn’t make the cut, I can’t predict the likelihood of your getting a burger cooked the way you want it. Most burger flippers have good days and off days. This ranking is based solely on my days, my first-hand experiences, my luck.

Since your personal burger priorities are not likely in the same order as mind it’s a shame you can’t click a relevance tab to arrange this list according to the factors which matter to you most: burger style (street, joint, pub, steak), patty (size, shape, density), meat (cut, fat content, grind),  assortment of toppings, cooking method, construction, consistency of preparation, inventiveness, price, value for money, level of obscene drippiness, etc.

Absent a re-sorting mechanism I’ve resorted to taking into account all these factors. But in the end I relied most on a single consideration: pleasure. My top 10 burgers in London are the ones I’d most want to eat.

The Top 10 Burgers in London

10. Goodman

Goodman, once home to London’s best steakhouse burger, is having texture woes. The quality of the beef is as high as ever but the patty’s surface isn’t as crusty or caramelised as it used to be and its coarse, crumbly chew has turned to mush. Seen from the outside the Goodman steakhouse burger remains a handsome handful: You will need to stretch the C-shaped brackets formed between thumbs and index fingers to make a go of it. £15 including chips.
Goodman Mayfair – 26 Maddox Street, W1S 1QH
Goodman City – 11 Old Jewry, EC2R 8DU
Goodman Canary Wharf – 3 South Quay, Discovery Dock East, E14 9RU 

9. Burger Bear 

Give me a jar of Burger Bear’s homemade bacon jam, a spoon and couple of beers and I could make an evening of it, so good is Tom Reaney’s signature burger condiment. But the street food warrior isn’t done there: He also likes to dress his burgers with the crispest streaky bacon in all of Londonium Burgerdom: The one-two bacon punch could lead some to overlook the patty. That would be a big mistake. Balls of coarse mince are crushed but not flattened on the flattop, leaving all the fatty juices in your burger, protected in its effective if homely white bun, until your first bite liberates them. Beefy red droplets quickly rain down onto your plate and, if you’re not careful, your shoes. You can identify the regulars on the queue by the stains on the toes of their trainers. £5-£10 not including chips. Burger Bear will be competing in the 4th and final round in the group stage of the BurgerMonday London Burger Bash.
Red Market, 1-3 Rivington St, EC2A 3DT

8. Lucky Chip

Is it finally time to draw a line in the salt? The hot-off-the-truck burgers from Lucky Chip get their Gareth Bale kick from the Murray Hill Australian sea salt encrusting its patties. As difficult as it is to put these fabulously middleweights down, figuratively and, yes, literally, the heavy-handed salting has gone over the top. There’s no disputing the appeal of the patties, with their desirably rough contours and fat-soaked crevices. When cooked right the buzz you get from the first bite is so great you can almost feel your ears ringing.  The smoked back bacon, however, can border on chewy, occasionally with tiny hard white bits, possibly cartilage. Lucky Chip is in residence at the Sebright Arms pub every night except Sunday.  On Saturdays you’ve find the guys parked at the original Netil Market location from 12:30pm to 9pm. £6.50-£16 not including fries.
Lucky Chip at Sebright Arms, 31-35 Coate Street, E2 9AG
Lucky Chip at Netil Market, 13-23 Westgate Street, London Fields, E8 3RL

7. Honest Burgers

In a makeshift burger luncheonette in Brixton Village Market built with hammer and nails Tom Barton and his able sidekicks stick to the fundamentals. They form 5 1/4 ounces (150 gr) of mince into marbled beef balls and flatten them with their hands (not spatula) on their flat-top griddle. Only then are the burgers seasoned with coarse salt. The crunch of the Honest, their best daily burger variety burger, comes from the level layers of sliced homemade gherkins and crisp streaky bacon; its tang, from griddle-steamed Cheddar; its sweetness, from red onion relish; its oven-browned polish, from a brushed white-flour bun; its juice, from marbled meat put through the most minimal of workouts. Burgers are not like boxers: If you want to develop a middleweight champion, as Honest has done, you mustn’t overwork ’em. £7.50-£9 including chips.
Honest Burgers Brixton – Unit 12, Brixton Village, SW9 8PR Honest Burgers Soho –  4A Meard Street – W1F 0EF Honest Burgers Camden, Unit 34A, 54-56 Camden Lock Pl, NW1 8AF

6. Bleecker St. Burger

If you’re a native New Yorker, as I am, the first thing you notice about this black burger van is that it’s named after a famous Greenwich Village street. The second thing you notice is that Zan Kaufman, the New Yorker-turner-Londoner taking orders, is wearing the hat of the despised Red Sox, a rival baseball team from Boston. In a flash you almost can hear the voice of Greenwich Village native Robert De Niro urging you to “walk away” from the Zan-with- a-van before it’s too late. But if you’re a bigger fan of burgers than baseball, as I am, you stay: Sometime sure smells really good and you gotta know what it is. The extraordinarily thing about the deceptively ordinary Bleecker burger is that it’s at once beefy, juicy, creamy, sweet and salty without feeling dirty. Rarely if ever will you find aged beef of this quality in a street burger. Plus it’s cooked, as promised, to medium rare – no easy task given the relative thinness of the patties. For that alone I tip my New York Mets baseball cap to Zan. £5.50 for a single; £7.90 for a double (not including fries). Bleecker’s double cheeseburger was voted top burger at round 3 of the London Burger Bash.
Go to Bleecker’s Facebook page to follow it’s schedule and whereabouts.

5. Hawksmoor

There are two pairs of hands you want to see around this big and deceptively powerful burger: yours or Hawksmoor‘s. Others have tried to duplicate the lush mince mix, which is said to include bone marrow and obscure cuts like beef shoulder clod, but these imposters have left me and their burgers crushed. Fat fills the grooves within the Hawksmoor burger as it cooks, basting its internal structure with deep, beefy flavours. The wet patty rests over an untidy raft of lettuce interruptus. Squeeze the burger too firmly or not firmly enough, I’m never sure which, and the patty will slide out from its housing, greasing your hands and breaching the bottom of the bun even before you’ve taken your first bite. But, oh my, what a first bite! Danger. Implosion. It’s all there, except, in recent instances, any significant char on the surface of a patty cooked to medium rare. Amongst four Hawksmoors, this ranking only apples to the Seven Dials location near Covent Garden, its burger HQ. £15 including chips.
Hawksmoor Seven Dials – 11 Langley Street, WC2H 9JG

4. Bar Boulud

Some vertical burgers are beefier but none is more stable than Boulud’s: Its hand-minced, hand-packed patty sits snugly beneath a thick layer of toppings inside the domed bun. It’s as if the bun’s bottom half had a contoured seat, like an Eames moulded side chair. Order one medium-rare and it comes to you with charred shell, pink interior, no grey fringes. The burger gives easily to the gentlest of finger squeezes, first lubricating itself and then your mouth with juices. The Frenchie, with melty Morbier, Dijon mustard and pork belly confit, is a splendid Gallic riff on a bacon cheeseburger. The Piggie transforms Bar Boulud into Bar Becue with its layers of red cabbage slaw, japapeno and pulled pork. But it’s the lavish BB that halts conversation: Something monumental happens when the succulent braised short ribs, foie gras, horseradish mayo, crisp fried shallots, red onion confiture, black onion seed brioche and patty are crushed between your teeth. £11.75-£20 not including frites.
66 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7LA

3. Patty & Bun

A burger bun is a handle protecting our hands from drippy greasy, cheese and condiments. Patty & Bun‘s Joe Grossmann did not get that memo. His burgers are not so much over-the-top as all over the place: Open the wrapper and you can’t tell where the orange cheesy stuff ends and the runny orange house sauce begins. Beneath the radioactive goo is an appealingly plump, deep-pink, hand-packed patty just shy of six ounces but not shy of fatty juices. It’s a genre bender, successfully combining classic elements of both joint burgers and steak burgers. Grossman has named burgers after Ari Gold and Smokey Robinson but for me a more voluminous luminary comes to mind, Oliver Hardy. “Well,” you’ll be telling Grossmann as you unwrap yet another Ari or Smokey and lick mayonnaise off your fingers, “here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into!”. Grossmann’s Piggy Smalls was voted best burger in round 2 of the London Burger Bash. £7.50-£8.50 not including chips.
54 James Street, W1U 1HE

2. Elliot’s Cafe

With beer-braised onions, aged Comté melted as if for a gratinée and bread overhead, Elliot’s burger is outfitted in the manner of French onion soup. The accoutrements enhance but do not smother each 160-gram mound of aged, coarsely minced beef shin and rib cap from Borough Market neighbour The Ginger Pig. British Ogleshield has been added to the Comté to give the cheese element more an edge. The plump patty is smartly shaped for height at the expense of diameter. Its shape and fit over a house-baked linseed brioche bun brushed on its cut sides with acidulated dill butter is in the Bar Boulud mould, whereas the meat’s beefy creaminess belongs to the Hawksmoor school. My only beef with the Elliot’s burger is that it’s only available at lunch. £12.50 including chips.
12 Stoney Street, SE1 9AD

1. Little Social

Cooked the old-fashioned, low-tech way in a sizzling cast-iron pan, the crusty burger patty at Little Social, Jason Atherton’s spinoff bistro, is good enough to plate with nothing to go with it other than knife and fork. Okay, if you wanted to throw in some of those golden fries they’d not go to waste. The New York-style chopped steak created by Canadian head chef Cary Docherty is a blend of aged Scottish chuck, flank, neck and clod coarsely minced in-house. The hand-formed patty is so close a match for the garnishes (mild Cheddar, smoked streaky bacon, caramelised onions) that cloak it and the gorgeous Boulangerie de Paris sesame seed brioche bun that houses it you’d think Docherty had employed a Savile Row tailor for the fitting. His classic burger, £15 including fries, can be customised with sautéed foie gras for an extra £10 but that luxurious accessory is unnecessary. Amongst the “est”-ending burger superlatives (biggest, baddest, dirtiest, etc.) there’s only one I’d apply to Docherty’s Little Social burger: best.
5 Pollen Street, W1S 1NE