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.

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.

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.

La Petite Bouchee’s Croque Madame

Croque madame from La Petite Bouchee, Sydenham

This weekend I found the perfect croque madame in the back of a van in Sydenham.  Those are words I never thought I would type.  Allow me to explain…

To be honest, I was wondering when this was going to happen.  My search for a good croque madame has been a long one.  For there are many in London, but few that are actually any good.  Usually they fall down on the cheese.  I’ve seen it all from the poor-quality cheese that somehow refuses to melt, the cheese that tastes of practically nothing and the cheese that is so stingy in portion size that it is barely cheese at all.  I was beginning to give up, but then I was invited to a brunch that had a croque madame on the menu and thought I would have one last go at finding a good one.

There was to be no restaurant at the end of this invitation, but something altogether more special:  a 1973 Citroen H van that had been transformed into a perfect little dining room.  It is called La Petite Bouchee, which literally translates as “the little mouthful” and is parked up opposite a lake in this pretty little south-east London park.  It has everything you might expect when out for brunch: orange juice on the table, the weekend newspapers and a pot of fresh coffee with milk and sugar.  It can accommodate four people and is remarkably spacious considering its diminutive size.  An outdoor kitchen, where all the food is prepared, transforms it into a French bistro serving up local, organic and seasonal foods.

The brunch menu is typically French.  As well as the two croques (monsieur et madame), there are eggs Benedict, Florentine and Royale; and a selection of omelettes.  And like every good brunch, there is booze.  Either prosecco or a bloody mary made with their house-infused vodka.

So, about the croque:  this is not only the best croque madame I have ever had, but one of the best sandwiches I have ever had.  Every element is so well-chosen and executed with such care that when it comes together it is sheer perfection.  The bread is a good-quality white loaf, sliced thickly enough to hold together the filling and lightly crisped in the pan.  The ham is decent and a little smoked and the egg placed on the top perfectly cooked with a soft yolk.  The cheese, often the disappointment of a croque madame, was perfectly melted in the middle of the sandwich, and on the top made into the most delightfully oozing cheese sauce, spiked with just a little mustard.  I asked Anita-Clare, our cook, which cheese she used and she replied “Emmental in the morning and Gruyère in the afternoon.  Gruyère is too much in the morning.”  And she was totally right.

Try as I might, I couldn’t finish it. This is one huge sandwich.  Fortunately there were three other eager diners, forks poised, ready to polish off what I left.

La Petite Bouchee, Sydenham Wells Park, London SE26.  BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL.

For transparency I should mention that I was a guest of La Petite Bouchee, but not in return for a review, simply because they are kind … I just had to share the croque!

Kin Cafe’s Roasted Vegetables with Feta Sandwich

Roasted vegetables with feta sandwich from Kin, Fitzrovia

I really should rename this blog ‘half a square mile’ as a lot of my sandwich hunting seems to be concentrated to the little patch of Fitzrovia around Great Portland Street and Great Titchfield Street.  I really need to start branching out a bit further.  This post is not the beginning of this new-found sandwich wanderlust, in fact, it is almost as close to my office as you can get.

Kin Cafe was a treasure I found at a particularly low ebb, unusually on a Friday.  I had been up late the night before, partly due to having a disagreement with a friend, partly due to the disagreement that Scottish voters were having with one another.  Once the referendum results were in, I sloped off for a very short and disturbed sleep.  The next day, understandably, was difficult.  By the time lunchtime rolled around, I was craving not comfort food, which is the way I usually go when tired, but the restorative power of vegetables.  I went for a stroll along Foley Street and found this sign:

It made me laugh so I popped in for a look.  Almost as soon as I was in the door I was invited to play ‘Guess the Bride’.  All of the staff were dressed up as you might on a hen night: all plastic tiaras, veils and glitter.  Only one of them was getting married.  I managed to guess right.  It was so fun in there it cheered me up immediately.

Kin Cafe has been open since June and seems to be thriving despite the huge concentration of cafes in this area vying for the money of local office workers.  It has the classic Fitzrovia set-up of good coffee, home-baked treats, bright salads and a couple of sandwiches, enough space to sit in and quick enough to take out.  There were two sandwiches on offer that day, thankfully one that was heavy on the vegetables – a combination of aubergine, red peppers and spinach with a little feta.  They quickly whipped it into a panini press before I took it back to my desk.

The trouble with roasted vegetables is that they can lack flavour if not properly seasoned – not the case here.  The aubergine had a little smokiness, like it had been cooked over a flame, and the red peppers were sweet.  The salty creaminess of the feta brought everything together well and the bread was good and robust.  If I had one small complaint, it was that it was on the small side, but that might just be an example of my greediness.  £5 – obvs (Fitzrovia).

Kin Cafe, 22 Foley Street, London W1W 6DT.

Sylvan Post’s Angus Beef Burger with Cheddar

Angus Beef Burger with Cheddar at Sylvan Post, Forest Hill

First up, apologies for the worst food photo ever taken.  Photography in dark bars is not my forte.  I would have taken this burger to a better lit area if I were not so hungry. Sorry.

Sylvan Post is one of the new additions to Forest Hill that happened after both the Overground arrived and I moved out.  It coincided with the SEE3 project, an initiative headed by Mary Portas to boost the businesses of Forest Hill, Kirkdale and Sydenham.  The pub was not part of that scheme, but is a welcome addition to a high street with few places to eat.

It is on the site of a disused 1960s post office and has kept some of the original features of the building which, combined with some vintage furniture and interesting artwork, makes a warm and welcoming pub.  They have quite an extensive beer menu, offering a range of bottled beers, as well as some on tap.  The menu is largely British bistro food with a few international influences and seasonal ingredients.

I ordered the burger, billed simply as an ‘Angus Beef Burger’ (£10.50 with chips) and added some cheddar at a further £1.  You could also add blue cheese and bacon for the same price.

Without much description on the menu, I was not entirely sure what to expect, but was not disappointed.  I could see the shine on the brioche bun before the plate even reached the table, and they were definitely not stingy on the side.  There was definitely value for money on the cheese, as the patty was topped with a slab of cheddar so enormous that I feared what kind of dreams I would be having that night.  Having removed the slice of tomato and most of the raw red onion inside the burger (for me, neither add anything good – pickled red onions on the other hand…) I noticed that it was missing some of the additions that really make a burger.  For me, some gherkins and a sauce, either mustard or ketchup.

That being said, the patty was very, very well seasoned and cooked perfectly pink in the middle whilst retaining the outer crisp.  The abundance of cheddar may be too much for some but I loved it.  Given a few little extras, this would be an excellent burger worth venturing to Zone 3 for.  Also, the chips were homemade, which is a rarity in pubs and such a delight.  They were not quite as good at my Mum’s, but that’s an impossible standard to live up to for anybody.

Sylvan Post, 24-28 Dartmouth Road, London SE23 3XZ

MEATLiquor’s Dead Hippie

The Dead Hippie at MEATLiquor, Marylebone

I don’t know what I can say about this burger that hasn’t been said before.  I have already hailed it as the best burger in London and put it to the top of my Top 10 Burgers list.  And yet somehow I still find myself wanting to write more about its many charms.  It seems that I have a bit of a thing for the Dead Hippie.

My love affair with these burgers goes back quite a long way.  It began when I used to visit a small van on a Peckham industrial estate.  It then moved to the upstairs room of a closed-down pub in New Cross, the legendary #Meateasy, very convenient as I was studying just around the corner at Goldsmiths at the time.  A brief stint at The Rye in Peckham brought these burgers dangerously close to my house before they finally moved to the MEATLiquor site in Welbeck Street, Marylebone.  This journey was just the beginning as sites are opening all the time, from the second restaurant, MEATMission in Hoxton, to the most recent establishments in Leeds, Brighton and, imminently, Bristol.  MEATLiquor; part restaurant, part Berlin squat; remains my favourite.  Yes, it’s dark in there and the queues are long, but it’s fun and the drinks are strong.

And it’s around the corner from my office.

I have sampled most of what the menu has to offer, but always come back to the Dead Hippie.  When asked to describe it, I always say “imagine a really, really, REALLY good Big Mac,” but, of course, it is so much more than that.  It has two mustard-fried patties that manage to be both crisp on the outside and beautifully rare within.  The flavour on the patty, probably due to the mustard is one of the best I have ever had.  It comes with a blanket of melted American cheese and the closely guarded ‘special sauce’, iceberg lettuce and thickly cut pickles.  I seem to remember from the old days of the open kitchen, that they are a fan of ‘sealing’ everything under a metal bowl on the hot plate.  The bread is soft and soaks up all of the sauce but somehow doesn’t disintegrate.

I have nothing negative to say about this burger, for me it remains the best of the best.  I would also recommend a side of either the deep-fried pickles with blue cheese sauce, or the chilli cheese fries if you’re really hungry.  Did I mention the drinks were strong?

MEATLiquor, 74 Welbeck Street, London W1G 0BA.

H T Harris’ Double Salami

The double salami from H T Harris, Fitzrovia

 In this ever-changing world of post-recession London, it is sometimes difficult to see too far into the past.  The constant churning of businesses opening and closing in the city means that streets can become unrecognisable from one year to the next.  Several times have I been to visit a cafe I used to love years ago, only to find that it has been turned into a Caffe Nero.  It’s quite a depressing thought.  Places that have been there for generations are becoming much fewer.

H T Harris on Great Titchfield Street has managed to survive the waves of chain eateries, new restaurants and ‘craft’ coffee shops that have moved into the area in recent years, and has become something of a Fitzrovia institution.  This little Italian cafe-deli has been serving up cappucinos and sandwiches to the local office workers for just shy of fifty years and has queues forming outside almost every lunchtime.  The approach is simple and probably unchanged for many years:  good Italian sandwiches, coffee and the usual deli items of pasta, amaretti biscuits, cheeses and cured meats.  The first time I went in, I asked for a sandwich menu.  The gentleman behind the counter replied:  “Anything you see here, we can do.”  He also gestured to the sandwiches piled up on three trays in the window, “Or we have double salami, some parma ham or a vegetarian one.”

I love this straightforward approach, he has probably been making the same sandwiches for years.  There’s no menu, no description of what the sandwiches are, or what is in them.  You just have to trust that they are good.  A double salami sandwich, in a piece of focaccia the size of a house brick was swiftly placed in the panini press for a few minutes and then was mine for a fiver (Fitzrovia, right?)

What I actually got was an enormous sandwich, generously filled with wafer thin Italian salami, some very good mozzarella, six or seven sundried tomatoes – sweet and almost black in colour, a layer of basil and rocket and more than just a hint of chilli (he did warn me that it would be spicy).  The focaccia was crisped and warm on the outside but still oily and moist enough that it was necessary to wipe your fingers before touching anything so not to leave greasy fingerprints.  A perfect example of how the best sandwiches are made with the best quality ingredients.  It’s easy to see how those piles in the window sell out every day.

H T Harris, 41 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 7PG.

The Meatball Sub of My Dreams

The meatball sub of my dreams

As the summer turns to autumn and the days get shorter and cooler, I find myself with an urge to fill up the freezer for winter.  One of the first things I make is a stash of meatballs and tomato sauce which can quickly be defrosted and turned into a quick and hearty meal when it’s just too cold to leave the house.  As well as this, they can be used to make one of the greatest sandwiches ever invented: the meatball sub. 

I first encountered this Italian-American creation at the Southampton branch of Subway in the 1990s during the dark days of sandwiches when few were available outside of chain restaurants, supermarkets and what you could buy in the buffet carriage of the train to Waterloo.  20 years, a move to London and two trips to New York later, not only have I tried many far superior examples, I have also perfected my own.  It seems fairly straightforward; a simple combination of meat, bread, melted cheese and sauce, but there are a few pointers that can turn a meatball sub into a thing of beauty.

A quick google search will bring up a number of recipes for this most delectable of comfort foods.  Reading them and tweaking them will lead you to the combo that is just sheer perfection.  Below is not a recipe for my own meatball sub, but instead a few pointers from years of trying to get it right.  Seriously, there are few things better on a cold autumn day. 

The Meatballs
I use this recipe by Polpo.  I have experimented with meatballs of various sizes, but have found that the best ones for a standard-sized submarine roll are 35g balls.  The best thing about these meatballs are that they are baked in the oven, rather than cooked in a pan, which gives them a lovely soft texture.  If you like the crispy edges, by all means, fry them instead.  They use both beef and pork mince, which gives a lovely depth of flavour and stops them being too dry.  The addition of garlic and chilli flakes makes them extra special.

The Sauce
The traditional sauce for a meatball sub is marinara, however as I always make large quantities of meatballs and sauce for the freezer, I tend to use what I have rather than make a whole new batch of sauce especially.  This  great recipe, also by Polpo, that uses both fresh and tinned tomatoes.  Once the meatballs have been poached in the sauce, I pick them out and arrange them in the sub before ladling a little sauce over the top.

The Cheese
Parmesan, or a similar hard cheese, is the best option here as the strength means that a little goes a long way.  You can also use a decent strong cheddar if you have one, although many meatball sub purists may wince at this suggestion.  Always finely grate and add after the sauce.

The Bread
Arguably the most important part of the meatball sub experience, only a white submarine roll is acceptable here.  One of the best ones I have found is a cheapo 2-pack from Sainsbury’s, it is just the right size and has that lovely dusting of polenta on the top which gives the otherwise soft sandwich a bit of crunch.  Slice the submarine roll in half lengthways and scoop out some of the bread from the inside.  This creates a groove for the meatballs to snuggle into and a neater sandwich.  You don’t need all that bread after all.

Other Additions
It’s up to you whether you add any salad.  Many don’t, but I always feel a little undernourished without at least a little something green, so add a single layer of lettuce leaves (soft part only) under the meatballs.  Because neither my sauce nor my meatballs contain any basil, I also like the addition of a few torn basil leaves.  Other salad items don’t really work.  Black pepper is essential.