Byron’s The Shady

The Shady at Byron, O2 Greenwich

Today is National Sandwich Day in the US.  We don’t have a similar holiday here (outside of the wonderful British Sandwich Week, of course) so I have decided to adopt it (any excuse).

It’s been a while since I have written anything here, but only because I have been busy writing my other blog.  I have a whole list of sandwiches backed up in my draft folder that I hope to share with you soon, but right now I’m going to start with a burger.

A couple of weeks ago I went to see Lady Gaga at the O2 with my friends Madeleine and Joe.  In our younger gigging days we had a pre-show drinking ritual, which has been replaced with a pre-show eating ritual (let it not be said that your 30s are not fun), so turned up a little early, and ravenous, to look for dinner.  Anybody who has visited this curious building on the eastern curve of our river will know that it is hardly a gastronomic destination.  In the trend of all large public spaces in London, it has little more than a series of charmless chain restaurants providing fodder to the masses.  The food is often expensive and usually sub-par, as anybody who has found themselves in a Slug and Lettuce, staring blankly at the menu will attest.  Thank God for Byron, is all I can say.

In recent years, some chains have emerged that have bucked the trend somewhat. Byron is up there with the best of them, making burgers that could rival any in town.  As well as this, Thomasina Miers’ Wahaca and sourdough pizza giant Franco Manca are also good dining options.  Carluccio’s always has been, and remains, excellent.  Hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

So we ended up, not unhappily, at Byron in the O2.  Having worked my way through their permanent menu some time ago, I usually opt for their monthly specials for a bit of a change.  This month, they have The Shady:  a 6oz hamburger with crispy cheese, pickle relish, American cheese, onion and ketchup.  I don’t recall ever seeing this on their menu before, and I was intrigued by the ‘crispy cheese’ which, I was told by the waiter, was a kind of parmesan crisp.  Sold.

The burger, as you would come to expect from Byron, was very good.  The patty was well-seasoned and pink in the middle and the toppings well-proportioned.  My only two gripes were that my patty was more medium than the medium-rare I had ordered, although this wasn’t too much of a big deal, and the cheese was not as crispy as I had hoped.  There was a little snap around the edges, but it seemed that the heat and other ingredients had softened it in the middle.  That being said, the addition of another kind of cheese is never a bad thing.

The staff at the O2 were excellent.  Our fries arrived cold so they replaced them and removed them from our bill.

Byron, The O2, Peninsula Square, London SE10 0DX.

Yalla Yalla’s Chicken Shawarma

Chicken shawarma wrap at Yalla Yalla

On first glance it seems my food photography has hit a new low.  Yes, this is a filled tortilla on a sheet of paper with nothing but the faintest print on the opposite side to identify it.  Although the title of this blog post claims it to be a chicken shawarma from Yalla Yalla, it could, in fact be anything.

There is a very good reason for this terrible photo.

Since discovering the takeaway counter at the Fitzrovia branch of Yalla Yalla, I have made frequent lunchtime visits.  They have a number of wraps on their menu including shawarma, kofte and Lebanese sausage, and vegetarian options of falafel and halloumi.  Each wrap is served with a pot of sour cream and one of a medium-hot tomato-chilli sauce.  All of them cost less than £5, which is a bargain for this part of London.

The wraps are all delicious, but they are not photogenic.  Every time I have attempted to photograph a cross-section it looks so mangled that it is almost impossible to decipher the individual components.  This is common of other wraps too – you should see some of the shocking burrito pictures I have saved in my phone.  Sadly they look completely unappetising, hence why I have photographed this wrap untouched.

This particular wrap is a chicken shawarma, which I usually only eat in the small hours of the morning from a small takeaway on Lordship Lane.  I have convinced myself that the more genteel surroundings of a central London restaurant makes it a viable option for lunch as well as late-night booze fodder, which is just as well as the shawarma from Yalla Yalla is so good.  Smoky pieces of tender chicken with some tomato, pickles and a pinch of sumac, toasted until the flatbread goes crispy.  There is no lack of flavour, and the ingredients work well, especially when the pots of chilli and sour cream are added, but I do have one small bugbear:  the wraps are pre-prepared.  I understand the pressures of a lunch service means that assembling individual kebabs is not the most practical approach, however I do feel a bit sad seeing all of the pre-made wraps stacked up behind the glass display.

Despite this, the wraps always taste fresh and I keep going back for more.  The lamb shawarma is also very good.

Yalla Yalla, 12 Winsley Street, London W1W 8HQ.

Honest Burgers’ Tribute

Tribute at Honest Burgers

I find it hard to imagine a day when I will be bored with burgers.  I confess that when the number of burger joints in the city was reaching saturation point, I briefly foresaw that I would tire of them and start obsessing about something else instead, but that never happened.  Instead, it has invigorated my need to get out and try as many as possible of London’s diverse offerings.  Scotch egg burger?  On my list.  Ramen burger?  Making plans to go as we speak.  See… not bored yet.

Honest Burgers has been on my list for longer than I care to admit.  Considering their original site in Brixton is close to where I live, I really should have been by now.  Blame the long queues, the allure of Franco Manca or the unbearable number 37 bus, the only form of transport between Peckham and Brixton, if you like, either way, I feel as though I’ve been missing out.  It’s been a long time since I read a list of the best burgers in London that did not have Honest Burgers on it.

A new site in Oxford Circus finally gave me the push I needed to go, for it is a mere five-minute walk from my office.  My initial plans for a late breakfast were scuppered when my colleagues protested against a pre-midday burger, so we arrived instead at 12.15pm and got a table right away.  Like many other restaurants of its ilk, it operates a no-reservations policy and has only about 30-40 covers, hence the queuing.  That being said, even when full it did not feel too cramped, and its minimalist decor left it feeling light and airy.

Honest Burgers have a permanent menu of one chicken burger, one veggie burger and three beef burgers, including their eponymous offering with mature cheddar, smoked bacon and onion relish.  As well as this, there are usually a couple of monthly specials.  Their aim is to do simple burgers with excellent local produce, and use dry-aged beef from the excellent Ginger Pig butcher for their patties.  The salads are seasonal and the drinks local – including gins from London and Sussex and an English wine.

I ordered a Tribute burger, one of their monthly specials.  I usually make a point of ordering the most simple burger on my first visit somewhere but could not resist the perfect combination of cheese, bacon, American mustard and pickles – the exact kind of burger I have a weakness for.  Once it arrived, I could see why it was so popular: the patty was cooked perfectly medium rare (I would even say that it was verging on rare) and had an excellent beefy flavour with just the right amount of seasoning.  It was coated in a thick layer of delicious American cheese, my favourite kind, and topped with crisp bacon.  They were generous with the pickles, and I was lucky enough to be dining with a colleague who removed hers, so I quickly swiped them and added them to my own burger.  The brioche held it all together well.  My only gripe is that I wish the red onion had been pickled instead of raw, but that was it.  Honestly (sorry!) a very, very good burger.

Honest Burgers, 4 Market Place, London W1W 8AD.

Caphe House’s Special Banh Mi

Special banh mi at Caphe House

This post is a little later than expected, apologies. My trip to Germany kind of got in the way.

I ended up at Caphe House by accident one Saturday afternoon.  Back in September, I was asked to judge the bake-off at the Bermondsey Street Festival with my Band of Bakers co-founder Naomi.  I don’t know if you’ve ever considered the practicalities of judging a cake competition, but you end up consuming an awful lot of sugar.  We had a plan to taste just one bite of each cake, but some were so good, I ended up going back for seconds, and even thirds, fourths and fifths of the winning cake.  With the wide eyes and slightly manic demeanour of a child that’s overindulged on e-numbers, I went on the hunt for some savoury food to try to counteract the sugar.

The Bermondsey Street Festival has grown considerably since I first visited in 2009 and now has a huge street food section, with many vans pitching up for the day and a number of the local restaurants setting up their own stalls.  There were a couple of beer-and-burger deals, including one from The Woolpack, one of my favourite Bermondsey pubs, but the queues were colossal.  With neither my husband or myself willing to wait that long, I suggested we instead go for a banh mi.

Although there are more Vietnamese restaurants south of the river than there used to be, most are still concentrated around the Kingsland Road in Shoreditch.  Caphe House is more cafe than restaurant, with a few menu items focusing around baguettes, soup and salads, rather than the pages and pages of menu you find in the east.  Their speciality is authentic Vietnamese coffee, which becomes an obsession for anybody lucky enough to have visited Vietnam.  I like mine with ice and a lot of condensed milk.

Another obsession that followed me back was banh mi.  Both my husband and I ordered the special banh mi, which is pork and pate – one of the most common types you will find in Vietnam.  The pork and pork pate have a deep flavour, despite the pork looking perhaps a little pale and the bread, although not the traditional rice flour baguettes, was both crispy and light.  What I liked the most was that the sandwich was packed full with pickled carrot, daikon and onions and topped with a generous amount of red chilli.  I have had far too many banh mis that lack both the acidity and the heat that comes from these items, but this one had those flavours in abundance.  The service was a little sketchy and we had to wait a while, but what the hell.

Caphe House, 114 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3TX

Spit and Roast’s Buttermilk Fried Chicken Burger

Buttermilk fried chicken burger from Spit and Roast

All you need to know about this sandwich is in the following sentence:  it is the thing I always crave when I have a hangover.  There you go.  Only this wouldn’t be a very good blog if I allocated only one sentence to a sandwich, so I will elaborate further.

I discovered Spit and Roast one god-awful Saturday morning when my friends convinced me that I should go to Brockley Market with them rather than languish around on the couch with a box set, a litre bottle of coke and a bag of doughnuts.  I was hungover, it was raining and series four of Mad Men had just arrived in the post.  In a moment of weakness (or strength, depending on how you look at it), I put on my coat and went out.  When I got there and saw the words BUTTERMILK FRIED CHICKEN  on a blackboard, I knew I was saved.

Until this point, I had never understood the appeal of fried chicken in the morning, I would usually wait until at least after closing time before indulging, but then I had never had fried chicken like this before.  Up until now, it was whatever I could get on Rye Lane after the last train has kicked me out at Peckham Rye station, and it was never good.

Spit and Roast have been kicking around the various London street food markets for a few years now and, aside from a few seasonal specials, have not deviated too much from their original formula of rotisserie chicken and an excellent fried chicken burger.  The latter is what saved me from my hangover on that rainy Saturday and restored me to normality.  I have re-ordered many times since and it has become one of my all-time favourite sandwiches.

Spit and Roast’s fried chicken is marinated in buttermilk and given a well-spiced coating.  The result is moist, succulent meat with a crispy skin with just the right amount of grease (i.e. not too much).  This is served in a soft bun with a slaw, made up mainly of white cabbage and red cabbage, and a Korean hot sauce with a base of Sriracha.  The beauty in this sandwich is that it all works together so well – the crunch of the slaw emphasises the crunch of the chicken coating, and the hot sauce brings out its spice.  There’s a decent amount of chicken in the sandwich for the money, and although they do offer it with a side of chips, I’ve always found the sandwich substantial enough not to need them.

Never change, Spit and Roast.

Spit and Roast, at various street food markets across London.  Check their Twitter for details.

Outside of London: Southampton: 7Bone Burger Co’s Double Shuffle to Straight Time

The Double Shuffle to Straight Time at 7Bone Burger Co, Southampton

I think people are beginning to clock on to the idea that I am a little obsessed with 7Bone.  I have written about them quite a lot on my other blog, and they were the only non-restaurant to feature on my Top 10 Burgers list for National Burger Day.  I thought I had written all there was to write on this restaurant, and thought I could instead just go for a quiet dinner whilst back in Southampton without my review head on:  I was wrong on both counts.

Whilst having a myriad of choices here in London when I have a yearning for a burger, the somewhat limited options of my home town left me a little deflated when trying to make dinner plans there.  When somebody told me last year that there was not only a burger bar opening in the city, but that the burgers were good, I hopped on the train from Waterloo to check it out for myself.  Needless to say, the hype was justified and I was so impressed that I have been back several times since (OK, every time I go back to Southampton).

So there we went to 7Bone for our quiet dinner.  Recently it has become almost impossible to get in straight away on a busy night, however they will put your name on a list and call you when a table becomes free, leaving you free to camp out in one of the nearby pubs for a quick drink.  A much better option than leaving you to queue on the street.  We waited about 40 minutes over in the Gordon Arms with a couple of drinks before our call came.  Just enough time to get us good and hungry.

The burger menu at 7Bone lists five beef burgers, two chicken burgers and the option to make any of them veggie.  They also offer hot dogs, sliders and a number of sides.  An extra £2.50 makes any burger a double (why wouldn’t you), and I quickly opted for the double ‘Shuffle to Straight Time’, a cheeseburger with fried onions and American mustard.

Trying to find any fault in this burger was a difficult task as I could not.  The patties, made with the 7-bone cut of the beef (very similar to chuck steak) have a deep beef flavour and are well seasoned with a nice amount of onion.  Both are cooked medium-rare (standard – although they do ask upon ordering if this is OK), although the bottom patty was a little more cooked than the top one – presumably residual cooking from steam-sealing the burger on the hot plate after its assembly? Just a guess.  The cheese was the slappy American kind, my favourite; and there was a good amount of fried onions, some soft and slippery and some crunchy, and a generous slick of mustard.  Initially I was disappointed not to have a pickle, but soon realised that it would have been superfluous and ruined the effect of the onions.

Having had the more elaborate creations in 7Bone previously, it is good to know that they also do the basics very well indeed.  I also had the chilli cheese fries, which were excellent.  Top marks all round.

(I couldn’t eat for 24 hours after this).

7Bone Burger Co, 110 Portswood Road, Southampton SO17 2FW.

Wahaca’s Pork Pibil Tacos: National Taco Day

Pork Pibil Tacos at Wahaca, Fitzrovia

I never had a taco until I went to Los Angeles in my early twenties, until then I didn’t really know what a taco was; it was just something that was mentioned on American sitcoms from time to time.  The first one I had was from Taco Bell, and it was pretty disappointing.  Since then I have learned that there are far, far better examples out there – including ones that you can make yourself.

Today is National Taco Day, which is one of those invented American food holidays I love so much.  For what is better than having an excuse to indulge in something that you love?

My search for lunchtime tacos led me to the Charlotte Street branch of Wahaca, where they have a takeaway.  Wahaca, started by Masterchef winner Thomasina Miers, has helped to up the ante of Mexican food in London, which was previously characterised by terrible fajitas and lurid green margaritas in wooden clad, saloon-style ‘Tex-Mex’ restaurants.  The cuisine in the city has thankfully moved on and Wahaca has only grown in popularity as a result.  There are now 13 branches in the London area, as well as several ‘street kitchens’ and a new branch in Cardiff.  There are rumours of expansion into other parts of the country too.

The Wahaca takeaway offers a pared-down version of their normal menu: tortas, tacos, burritos and salads – all things that are easily transportable back to the office.

The tacos are served up in a portion of two: each wrapped in two warmed mini-tortilla wraps.  As the wraps worked their way along the taco production line, I could see them being filled with shredded lettuce, black beans, pork pibil (other options include chicken, steak and vegetables), a little cheese, a sprinkle of coriander and some bright pink pickled red onions.  The salsa options were mild, medium and hot, and guacamole could be added for an extra 50p.

The popularity of Wahaca is not down to its convenience alone, they make an incredibly good taco.  The pork pibil is moist and well-cooked and has a strong, smoky flavour with a slight acidity behind it that was amped up by the addition of the beautiful little pickled red onions.  The plentiful fillings means that two tacos is a substantial lunch.  On my next visit, I fully intend to graduate from the medium salsa to the hot as it didn’t quite have enough punch for me.  My companion, however, found it had the perfect level of heat.

Wahaca Takeaway, 19-23 Charlotte Street, London W1T 1RL.

The Ship’s Galley Burger

Burger from The Ship’s Galley, Fitzrovia

I don’t know if you’ve ever entered ‘best London’ into a Google search to see what the next word will be.  Of course, it is ‘restaurants’. Duh.

I know that it’s a huge cliché, but one of the things I love about this city is that there are always new places to eat.  I have spoken already about my love for the survival of London’s old establishments, but I cannot dismiss the excitement of the new.  In our social media-led age, it is not difficult to find out about new openings; they pay people to use every platform available to make us aware of them.  The hungrier we become for a certain food trend, the bigger the maelstrom of publicity that surrounds a new restaurant, and the more impatient we become to get down there, Instagram everything in sight and tweet about just how great it is.

In contrast to this, some new places open so quietly that it is only when you literally stumble across them that you become aware of their existence.  This happened to me yesterday.  With the back to work blues following my holiday, I took to the streets of Fitzrovia to seek solace in some lunch.  Turning off Foley Street to answer my phone, I almost walked straight into a couple of guys cooking on a hot plate outside of a cafe.  I was intrigued.

The cafe in question is The Ship’s Galley on Hanson Street, a tiny little coffee shop that has been in the owner’s family for 23 years.  Having recently been taken over by the two young sons of the family, they have branched out into a kind of outdoor BBQ, hoping to attract hungry office workers.  This new venture operates three days a week: burgers on Wednesdays, burritos on Thursdays and steak sandwiches on Fridays.  All priced at around the £5 mark.

I was a little sad to see the patty cooked well-done, as I am a fan of a pink middle, but was cheered up when they split the patty through the middle and filled it with cheese and the red onions that had been cooking on the hot plate next to the burger.  The bun was a standard seeded bun, but was fresh and held together well.  I was offered a choice of various toppings but opted only for pickles, lettuce, mustard and ketchup – which prompted a debate about tomatoes in burgers (my bete noire).  The thing about this burger is that it breaks the rules of what we think to be a good burger at the moment: no brioche bun, no medium rare, no ‘dirty’ sauce or ‘filthy’ sauce, but it tastes good.  The bread is fresh, the patty moist, despite being cooked right through, and well seasoned, and the toppings basic but right for the job.  It is a good honest burger which, with some of the gargantuan offerings about at the moment, is quite refreshing.

The Ship’s Galley, 1 Hanson Street, London W1W 6TA.

Outside of London: Baden-Baden, Germany: Leo’s Burger

Burger at Leo’s, Baden-Baden

I had never intended to go burger hunting during my trip to Germany, in fact I had resolved to ignore them completely and focus on trying to local cuisine.  As it turns out, there is only so much Alsace food you can eat without giving yourself a severe case of indigestion.  Overindulgence in flammkuchen, sausages and cake led me craving something a little simpler and a little more familiar.

The idea that a burger is somehow a remedy to rich food is laughable, but it was the best I could do.  Baden-Baden, as a small town, does not have the array of cuisines one would expect to find in a bigger city.  On our last night we simply wanted to find a restaurant that had food not laden with cream or soaked in vinegar.  Leo’s looked like a good bet.  It was an interesting place – right near the river with a few tables outside, the decor on the inside was like nothing I had seen in some time: dimly lit, white tablecloths, red velvet chairs and waiters in traditional black and white outfits.  The menu was a combination of traditional German dishes, a few from France and Italy, a couple of steaks and an 18 euro burger, highlighted in red text.

Ordinarily, only a very special burger would entice me to part with that much cash, but this lapses somewhat when I’m in another country.  Plus the words “we love it” next to this item on the menu gave me a little extra encouragement.

The first thing I noticed was the sheer enormity of the burger, which made me feel better about the price, however on closer inspection I could see that the patty was being propped up by rather a lot of salad.  We’re not talking garnish here, but almost a full side salad shoved into the bottom of the burger.  I’ve never been a lover of salad in my burger – a few lettuce leaves, some (pickled) red onions and a few pickles are sufficient.  This burger had a lot of lettuce as well as tomato, which contributes very little to a burger, despite the insistence of many to add it, and cucumber, which has absolutely no place in a burger. None.  Once the salad was removed it became a much more manageable size and not necessary to eat with a knife and fork.

The meat used for the patty was of exceptional quality, I suspect it was rib-eye.  It was well-seasoned and cooked medium (sadly not medium rare) and had a good amount of flavour.  The cheese was the slappy American kind, always good on a burger, well-melted and oozing; and the bacon crisp and smoky.  The bun was a generic seeded bun, but was of good quality.  It held together well despite the bottom half being a little soggy from all the salad.  My favourite thing about this burger were that they were not stingy on the pickles which, for a country that sells many different varieties in jars, you would expect.  All in all, an excellent burger.  Just lose the salad.

Leo’s, Luisenstraβe 8, 76530 Baden-Baden, Germany.

Outside of London: Buhl, Germany: Market Feuerwurst

Feuerwurst from Buhl Market

For the past few days I have been sampling the delights of Baden-Baden; namely of the food, drink and spa variety.  For those not familiar, it is a small town in the Black Forest region famous for its beer and thermal waters.  As with the rest of Germany, it is also the place to go for some seriously good sausages.

A few miles away from Baden-Baden is a small town called Buhl that has a farmers’ market every weekend.  The curse of the hand-luggage holiday always scuppers my plans for shopping in markets as almost everything is over the 100ml limit they allow for liquids on the plane.  Sure, you can buy similar stuff at the airport, but it is three times the price and never as good.  Whilst dragging me away from a stall selling German honey in beautiful glass jars, my husband consoled me with the news that sausages were being cooked up on the other side of the market.

Good sausages are as ubiquitous in Germany as good beer, and you never have to go far to find them.  Markets are a good place to start as, like this one in Buhl, they are where most of the local residents can be found on a weekend morning.  Most of them had congregated around the van where several different types of sausage were being cooked up on a hot plate.  The van looked like one you would find in the fun fairs of days gone by, complete with industrial-sized pump-action bottles of sauce.

I opted for the feuerwurst which, even with my limited grasp of German, I knew translated as ‘fire sausage’.  I could tell by the fact that it was redder in colour than the others that it would be the spiciest.  I actually know very little about the differences between the different types of German sausage, so thought this would be a good place to start.  Once cooked, it was placed in a small, traditional bread roll and handed to me.  “Drei,” she said.  Three euros.  For the biggest sausage I had seen in some time.

The feuer was definitely there; the sausage was spiked heavily with both paprika and chilli – I even found some seeds hidden within the meat.  It was a perfect German sausage with a good bend and a decisive ‘snap’ when you bit into it.  Doused with a generous amount of Dijon mustard, it was delicious, if it had a bit of sauerkraut too it would have been sheer perfection.