The creator of the historic Hamburg Hamburger has accepted my invitation to bring it back to London to compete in the 3-4 November @BurgerMonday #LondonBurgerBash at Camden Town Brewery
In October 2012 German chef Oliver Trific travelled from his Hamburg house to a London public house to rewrite the origins of the round mound of renown. For one BurgerMonday night only the chef/proprietor of the Restaurant Trific imagined what a hamburger (little h) would be like today had it been invented in Germany and not the USA by a Hamburger (big H).
The Hamburg Hamburger unveiled at The Draft House proved to be much more than an exercise in culinary wordplay. For inspiration Trific looked to labskaus, a famous stew that is Hamburg’s version of corned beef hash. Liverpudlians know it as lobscouse or just scouse and attach their accent and identity to it.
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Deconstructing the labskaus, Trific replaced the mashed potato with fries; the sautéed shallots, with a smoky shallot mayonnaise; and the corned beef, with a Hamburg steak – the classic chopped- (minced-) beef steak introduced to Americans by German migrants. He redeployed traditional labskaus garnishes – beetroot, pickles, pickled herring, fried egg – as toppings, both actual and hopeful: To make the pickled herring more palatable to Londoners Trific prepared it as a salsa and served it on the side in small glass bowls.
The herring has many adoring predators, from sharks, tuna, whales and dolphins at sea to Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, Poles and Jews of Eastern-European ancestry on land. The British, they smell herring from one direction and they run in the other. With pickles, a quail egg and that dreamy smoked shallot mayo already on the Hamburg Hamburger few amongst BurgerMonday’s British majority  saw any need to traffic in Trific’s herring salsa. I insisted they had to try it, arguing that umami-rich fish sauces for steaks and, yes, burgers were very of the moment. If anchovies were good for classic British condiments like Worcestershire sauce and Gentleman’s Relish, I pleaded, why not a pickled herring salsa?
Thankfully there was at least one freethinker at every table to give the herring a go. Seeing their nods of approval others dipped in, first dabbing their burgers with salsa and then spooning more of it on. Soon the little glass bowls were empty. From one table after another people were calling me over with the same request:
Please, sir, I want some more herring salsa.
At London Burger Bash Trific will prepare his Hamburg Hamburger as before, only with one modification: He’ll treble the quantity of herring served at a short but safe distance from the burger.
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