It is perhaps unfair of me to fault Mother Flipper for slightly overcooking their burgers, missing by less than a minute the liftoff from the flat-top griddle to juicy medium rare. This has happened twice, first in February at its original home ground at Brockley Market in Southeast London and again yesterday at its Eat Street debut behind Kings Cross Station.

In the US you wouldn’t expect short order cooks at diners, truck stops and burger stands to make the distinction between pale and deep pink, especially burgers below the 5-ounce and 4-dollar barriers. So why hold their UK counterparts to a higher standard?

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I could answer my own question by noting that Mother Flipper asks £5 for its cheeseburger, roughly 8 dollars. But prices for satisfactory beef and authentic plastic cheese are higher here. Good cheap burgers (with this notable exception) don’t really exist in London. Comparing US and UK burgers according to price is problematic.

To learn the reason why I make such a big deal about seven small degrees, estimating internal meat temperatures from 55-degree (Celsius) for medium-rare to 62-degrees for medium, you have to inspect the pavement.

I tried two Mother Flipper cheeseburgers yesterday. The first, cooked a notch above medium though I asked for medium-rare, was nicely constructed with beautiful ketchup/mustard art on the bun, very tasty and, importantly, a safe object to hold in my hands. No leaks. I didn’t embarrass myself. But the second, cooked as ordered, was a thing of danger and looming dry cleaning bills, bleeding beefy juices from every pore of its patty.  Unable to wait to find a place to sit I devoured it walking away from the stall, leaving a trail of grease and mourning every lost drip.

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.