Was The Ivy burger good enough to justify its £13.75 (about $21) price?

The Ivy burger was every bit as good as it looks in the photo: Nice shape and proportions, terrific bun (see the air pockets), the model of medium rare. The gentlest squeeze released deep reserves of juice. BP’s best engineers would not be able to seal its leaks.

But was it worth £13.75? Not at first bite. The Ivy burger was a middleweight with no premium accessories. Forget foie gras or truffles: this baby didn’t even come with cheese, bacon or chips (fries). Pale chips were £4 extra. For what you do and do not get this had to be the most expensive burger in London.

Or maybe not. Three-quarters into The Ivy burger I discovered the house secret: The waiter brought me a finger bowl. That’s right, a finger bowl. Without my requesting one. Without charging me extra for the fresh lemon, most likely organic, and the water expertly warmed to the ideal temperature. Bet you can’t name many burger joints that do that. Begins to make £13.75 seem like a bargain, doesn’t it?

Only later did I realise the waiter had not given a finger bowl to my companion, who had also had a burger. This could only have meant one of two things: Either the waiter had recognised me as the founding director of burgermonday meatups and thereafter afforded me the special treatment The Ivy only gives to A-list celebrities or I just had a lot more grease on my hands than my companion did.

Before Crossrail construction extinguished its brick oven and closed it for business, Spaccanapoli, off Oxford Street, was the most famous London pizzeria. In Naples. It seemed that half the clientele was visiting the UK from Southern Italy. Many had heard that Peppe, its head pizzaiolo, had worked back home at Trianon and had established the house style for his colleagues and successors at Spaccanapoli. Peppe tutored both Paolo and Nicola, two pizzaioli who moved to sister restaurant Santoré and brought their incredibly light touch with them after Spaccanapoli was forced to close.

Santoré’s baked pizzas, with their puffy cornicione, are weightless – in the very best sense of the word. Owner Mimo (no one calls him Dominico) Savarese wouldn’t have it any other way.

That the Spaccanapoli spirit lives on in Clerkenwell should be reason enough to come celebrate on the 23rd of March. But Mimo promises to make this #PizzaTuesday extra special by featuring the signature rotolo rustica – rolled pizza filled with three cheeses and aubergine – on top of a tasting of 4 pizza varieties, including a truly classic Margherita. Other surprise additions to the menu are planned.

Everyone will have the opportunity to visit the pizza kitchen, feel the heat of the oven, meet Paolo or Nicola and maybe investigate if the Trianon connection is true. But in the end that shouldn’t matter when the pizza and pizzeria, though located at London’s Exmouth Market, are so very close to Naples.

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At its best, Nosh Bar’s succulent salt beef surrenders to the chew, melting in the mouth and flooding it with flavor. At its less than best, the meat can be tepid and a bit soggy. The rye bread, cut into desirably thick slices, is sufficiently crusty and chewy to accommodate the meat and mustard. Other salt beef bars tend to use limp rye bread through which you can feel the damp, fatty met in your hands.

Salt beef, known as pickled beef in the north of England, is a Jewish deli meat comparable to New York corned beef. The benefits of curing brisket, the cut used for salt beef, were originally twofold: First, the salt preserved the meat and killed bacteria, which greatly extended its storage life in the pre-refrigeration era. Second, the salt softened and broke down the tough brisket while letting its flavors slowly develop.

Most salt beef bars do not prepare their meat from scratch. Nosh Bar sources its cured briskets from Henson’s Famous Salt Beef in North London, which uses meat from grass-fed Irish steers and heifers. (If you live in the UK you can have Henson’s briskets, cooked or uncooked, delivered to your door). This hardly means that anyone who sources meat from Henson’s will achieve the same results as Nosh Bar. Cured salt beef requires hours of careful simmering to further tenderize the meat and sweat out its fatty juices. Furthermore, expert trimming and hand-slicing can make all the difference. Maintaining the quality of Nosh Bar’s salt beef ultimately depends less on sourcing than on diligence, theirs as well as ours. They need to baby their briskets and take care with every slice of every sandwich. And it is up to us to admonish them if and when they don’t. A salt beef bar is no place for British reserve. We’ve already lost the Nosh Bar once. Let’s not let it happen again.

The Nosh Bar – 39 Great Windmill Street, London; 020 7734 5638. Open M-Th, noon-midnight; F-Sa noon-2am. Closed Sundays. MAP