Same with burgers and meatloaf sandwiches: At their best I love them both. But give me a burger patty with the mealy, mushy consistency of moulded meatloaf and I’m transformed from young&foodish to young&moodish. How fortunate that no one saw this side of me when I, seated solo with no one to the left or right, tried the squashy Aberdeen Angus beef shin burger with foie gras and white truffle mayonnaise (£10.95) at the handsome Princess of Shoreditch pub in London. 

To guard his well being upon arriving in Great Britain the American expat must get accustomed to two phenomena:

1. Left-hand traffic
2. Meatloaf burgers

The impulse to feed bread crumbs, egg, onions, parsley and other assorted fillers and seasonings to burger mince (ground beef) is not unheard of in the USA, sadly, but rarely do you find leading chefs, prestigious cookery writers and, most significantly, experienced short-order grill cooks adulterating their burger recipes in said manner. In the UK you do. Sorry, guys, this is how you make meatloaf and meatballs, not burgers.

With burgers the better the beef the less crap you need to add to it. If you’ve sourced decent, fatty, coarsely ground beef the last thing you want is meat binders and stretchers to fill in its crevices, soak up its juices and mush its texture into a pâté. You shouldn’t need any seasonings other than salt and pepper, both sprinkled on at the last possible moment. And you probably don’t want to bury a good burger patty under chunky spaghetti sauce, as you might a slice of meatloaf or a meatball. Not even if you rebranded that sauce as plum tomato chutney, as the Princess of Shoreditch has done in a local dialect known as gastropub English.

Is it appropriate to tart up a workingman’s burger with the likes of foie gras and white truffle? Reasonable minds may disagree. I could have a four-hour argument with myself over the issue. But top a burger with foie gras and trufflle and then bury it all in chunky tomato sauce? Insanity. I can think of no surer way to complete the unwelcome transformation from Princess Burger to Prince Meatloaf.

Princess of Shoreditch,  76 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE

Last night’s communication breakdown between Yianni and myself at The Boaters Inn in Kingston was less about our respective Englishes than the shading of our burger language. I understood “medium rare” to mean pink. He took my order of “medium rare” to mean he should cook it longer than he thought desirable.

The burger was great, I told him afterwards, “but could have been pinker and juicier”.

“What did you expect?” he replied, not believing I could be the burgermonday dude he’d heard about. “You ordered it medium rare!”

Rare, the default level at this pub-roving burger trailer and twitter phenomenon, is not so much red as very juicy. The Meatwagon’s medium-rare is merely juicy. The utter joy of very became obvious to me when I tried a second burger, this one ordered without mention of the dreaded M word. (When you catch up with The Meatwagon at one of its host pubs I’d suggest you not even wear a medium t-shirt for fear of a mixup.)

Yanni wants no part of the gourmet burger trade. Unlike Goodman, The Gun or  Hawksmoor he was not influenced by the New York School of Steak Burgers. His is a burger-joint burger, the speciality of American diners, drive-ins and lunch counters.

He flattens soft balls of mince by hand on the blistering griddle – no two Meatwagon burgers are exactly alike! – and only then does he season them, liberally, with salt and pepper. The burger sizzles on the griddle, encrusting both sides as the fatty juices leak from the deliberately crumbly periphery. Later Yanni squirts water on the griddle and places a metal dome over the burger to steam it. Quickly it is time to bun the burger and bed it with ketchup, mustard and dill pickle (American gherkin).

Yanni rotates an assortment of burger toppings and variations but doesn’t really get the meaning of a burger without cheese. “They all have cheese” he tells the woman taking orders and managing the queue. Guess it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t speak or think in Greek that much anymore: Once a cheezborger chap, always a cheezborger chap.

To find out where Yanni’s Meatwagon will be next, click here or follow him on twitter @themeatwagonuk.