Burgerac

The Burgermat Show at Royale, Cape Town

2012-03-02T15:16:00.000Z

When I teamed up with Daniel at BurgerMonday to cook up The Burgermat Show, I had a dream that after the initial London event the exhibition of burger artwork could travel the world, appearing at burger joints all over. Well, now I get to live the dream: The Burgermat Show is travelling to Cape Town in South Africa for an evening of burgers'n'art TONIGHT!

Yes, that's right, I've brought a suitcase of beautifully printed, A3 Burgermats with me to the super-cool Cape Town burger joint Royale Eatery in order to showcase the 24 burger-themed artworks specially created for last summer's show.

Once again, the exhibition will appear on tables - with each diner's place set with a Burgermat which they can take away with them at the end of the night.

Together with the good folk at Royale, we've also cooked up a one night only Burgerac Burger as a special. Follow @BurgermatShow and also @Royale_Eatery to keep up with news on the show and details of the special burger offering!

There's also gonna be a raffle to win sets of Burgermats and a Burgerac T-shirt - NICE!!

To see all the artworks, find out who the artists are and how you can buy A2 giclée prints of each artwork for just £30 a pop, visit www.burgermat.com.

The Burgermat Show will appear TONIGHT: Friday 2nd March (from 7pm onwards) at Royale Eatery, 273 Long Street, Cape Town.

www.royaleeatery.com

Fashion Week McFancy concept

2012-02-25T18:52:00.004Z

It was fashion week here in London this week so here's some fashionable burger shizzle cooked up back in 2009...

Access Agency is the creative agency arm of The Cool Hunter and back in 2009 it came up with a super fancy McDonalds concept to sell into fashion weeks around the world. The idea is simple - McDonalds food but in super fancy pop-up restaurants with tuxedo-wearing waiter service, private dining rooms and designer branded packaging. Anyone fancy a Burberry Big Mac? Gucci fries?

I've got no idea if the concept ever saw the light of day - but I do like the packaging concepts a lot.

You can see more photos (these were taken by Amy Moss of Eat Drink Chic and find out more about the McFancy concept at www.access-agency.net/mcfancy.cfm

The Admiral Codrington Chilli Cheeseburger

2012-02-17T09:14:00.004Z

£15.50 Only on for two weeks as a special, the Ad Cod Chilli Cheeseburger should be on the top of every discerning burger-lover's Must Try list

Listen up burger fans: for the next two weeks head chef Fred Smith at the Admiral Codrington is serving an 8oz Chilli Cheeseburger as a lunchtime-only special. I had one the other day and found that there are no vinegary jalapenos here - nor is the chilli a standard mince meat affair. Instead the base of Fred's chilli is slow braised short rib, with smokey chipotle and smoked paprika providing the flavour and the heat...

BOOM! Let me talk you through the basic structure: the 100% beef Ad Cod patty sits on a layer of chilli slaw comprising super-thin strips of red and green finger chillies, shredded iceberg lettuce and what Fred describes as "pickled jalapeno mayo". The patty itself, as you can see, is positively dripping with glorious American cheese - which seems have become one with the braised short rib chilli that makes this burger so special...

So, in the hand, this is a weighty burger - the burger patty is around 7oz and there's a further ounce of the short rib chilli. There's nothing firm about it either - The bun is soft and light and easily squashes around a beautifully pink medium rare, cheese-shrouded patty. The chilli slaw adds a crisp crunch and a lovely flavour of fresh chilli. There are tiny cubes of pickled red onion too that add tiny bursts of sharpness. Wow.

The short rib chilli itself is absolutely delightful, with a deep, warm comforting smokey chipotle flavour and heat. It's not blow-your-head-off spicy - but it does pack quite a punch in a sneaky kind of way. You know, the kind of chilli heat that you don't notice in the mouth so much as makes your eyebrows sweat.

Here's a bite through that shows the structure with the slaw at the bottom and the lovely juicy patty. You can also see that both the top and the bottom of the bun have been rubbed in a reddish paste of some sort. That ain't nothing but an even application of chipotle paste. Genius.

I will say that there's a lot of cheese in this burger. Fred has sandwiched the chilli between layers of American cheese - which means that the weight of chilli-laden cheese makes it prone to the whim of gravity. Some made a bid for freedom in a southerly direction as I was eating and I was glad to have a knife and fork to simply transfer the cheesey chilli stuff that fell onto my wooden board onto my chilli cheese fries.

And the fries? Well, what a treat! They're not actually on the menu at all but were offered when I ordered the burger. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out that chips are a really super vehicle for the short rib chilli. And I love the addition of tiny cubes of lime-soaked red onion and the sprinkling of finely sliced fresh chilli and herbs which make a big bowl of chips blanketed in American cheese and chilli feel light and refined.

Basically, I strongly advise you book an afternoon off work next week (if you don't work within walking distance) and head over to Chelsea for a relaxed lunch to sample one one of these. And if your waitress happens to ask if you'd like chilli cheese fries with your burger? Well, you know what to do...

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The Admiral Codrington
17 Mossop Street
London SW3 2LY

Tel: +44 (0)20 7581 0005

www.theadmiralcodrington.co.uk

Read about my previous Ad Cod adventures here

The Cobra Snake x Colette Cheeseburger Vans

2012-02-13T19:40:00.007Z

Hell yes! Regular readers may recall the Cheeseburger Vans I blogged about last summer. Well, now the skate brand is releasing these totally rad Cheeseburger Eras, a collaboration between LA event photographer and man-about-town Mark Hunter (aka, The Cobra Snake), and super hip Paris store, Colette...

The sneakers sport an illustration of a high-stacked burger and will soon be available exclusively via hip Parisian store, Colette and will be packaged, I think, with a batch of burger-themed, illustrated Cobra Snake stickers.

This news is so freakin' hot off the press that I can't yet give you price info as it's all yet to be announced. The truth is, I only know about this because I spotted a cheeky "first look" Instagram tweet by Nylon Mag this morning. Oh, hang on, Cool Hunting just posted and say that the sneakers will launch March 1st during Paris Fashion Week.

Price confirmed by Colette's press office: €100

Limited to just 60 pairs.

More info and images at www.colette.fr

In the meantime, here are some photos taken at the launch party in NYC the other night: www.thecobrasnake.com

Facette your French fries!

2012-02-07T08:00:00.002Z

You know the card cartons that McDonalds serves French fries in? Imagine if the design was interpreted into a beautiful white sculptural porcelain form. Actually, don't imagine it, simply observe it with your eyes and believe that such a thing exists!

Royal Limoges has been making fine porcelain in Limoges in France since 1797. But the company, in collaboration with another Limoges-based porcelain company, Non Sans Raison, has only just started making these awesome porcelain French fries "cartons" that will undoubtedly add a certain je ne sais quoi to any discerning burger-lover's table setting...

The porcelain fries cartons, called FACETTE, are now on sale at €26 a pop. Could it be that the reign of the standard silver cup o'fries in posh burger-serving establishments is doomed? Is this delightful object destined to be the de rigeur method of serving fries in fancy restaurants? Only time will tell!

Find out more and purchase a porcelain FACETTE at www.nonsansraison.com

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE: Prime Burger, NYC

2012-02-04T19:27:00.003Z

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE is a series of short films that explore the places that, for one reason or another, feel like home. The latest film focuses on Prime Burger in Midtown Manhattan – a joint that has been serving burgers since 1938 and remains largely unchanged in terms of decor since the 60s...

PRIME from thismustbetheplace on Vimeo.

Big Burgerac shout out to the directors of the film, Ben Wu and David Usui of Lost & Found Films. Loving your work!

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Prime Burger
5 East 51st Street (between Madison and 5th)
New York
NY 10022

Tel: 212 759 4730

www.primeburger.com

Bread Street Kitchen Short Rib Burger

2012-02-02T09:02:00.002Z

£12 plus £3.50 for the chips but, says tweep @gubgub08, when your visit is arranged with the chef via Twitter, it's worth every penny

You can't just pick up the telephone and ask to speak to the executive chef at Gordon Ramsay's latest restaurant. Well, of course you can, but chances are Chef is too busy to get to the phone to talk to a complete stranger that has nothing whatsoever to do with the restaurant or its business. You can, however, drop the guy a tweet. That's what Anthony - or @gubgub08 as he's known on Twitter - did when he wanted to eat at Bread Street Kitchen a few weeks ago. Here's his account of what happened...

I'd heard good things about the burger at a new opening from some chef called Gordon Ramsay and so was looking for an excuse to pay Bread Street Kitchen a visit. The time came when a friend from out of town was in London for a week, so I established contact via Twitter with the executive chef Simon Gregory (@chefgregory01) and he kindly arranged a table for lunch for us. Which was rather nice of him. Isn't Twitter wonderful?

While I don't know Simon personally, he's a friend of chef Fred Smith of the Admiral Codrington pub who I've become friends with over the course of the last year - and it was that connection that emboldened me to tweet Simon out of the blue. FYI!

When we arrived the first thing I noticed was the striking decor and the enormous size of the place. Once sat at our table we ordered a well-deserved Meantime beer. Chef Gregory emerged from the kitchen and popped over to say hello and informed us that there were regularly over 200 lunch and nearly 300 dinner covers, confirming that the restaurant's capaciousness is most definitely required. Despite some well reported teething problems with service, BSK has become incredibly popular in the short time since it opened. Being needed back in the kitchen Simon parted by telling us to choose what we wanted (the burger obviously) and that he would send out a selection of starters in the meantime as a treat. Who were we to argue?

The first of the extra goodies we were sent was a flat bread with butternut squash puree, Taleggio cheese, field mushrooms and a basil dressing, which was excellent, just enough to whet our appetite. We then placed our order for two of the short rib burgers (medium rare), chips and mac cheese - and then Simon sent out a selection of starters which included spicy chicken wings, stone bass ceviche and a tuna carpaccio. All were lovely and disappeared in no time.

Then the main event hoved in to view. It was enormous! Er, perhaps ordering the chips and the mac cheese had been something of an error of judgement. In for a penny, in for a pound - we persevered, in the name of Important Research.

The burger gives away chef Simon's friendship with chef Fred Smith of the Admiral Codrington. It features an iceberg lettuce slaw with mustard and garlic and also Bermondsey Frier cheese, pickled cucumber all housed in a shiny Miller's brioche bun _ not unlike Fred's Burgermat Show Burger Monday burger. However, Simon's Bread Street Kitchen burger features a super-thick 8-10oz short rib beef patty and a secret spicy tomato sauce. It was cooked to perfection and super juicy...

When it was served, the burger looked stable but after I'd cut mine in half it seemed to lose stability and the sauciness/juiciness slightly overcame the lovely brioche bun. The accompanying sides were standard offerings but very good, particularly the mac cheese which was extremely cheesy, I find this sometimes goes missing. The chips were crispy on the outside and fluffy inside and, like the burger, massive. There seems to be a running theme. This is in no way a complaint!

Coming to the end we were bloody stuffed and definitely had no room for pudding. But Simon insisted we try a tiny but exquisite dessert and, well, it would have been rude not to. So we finished with a gorgeously rich chocolate tart, caramel ice cream and honey comb (blurry shot above). The perfect end to an outstanding Twitter-enabled lunch!

All in all without the extras the burger is well worth a trip for £12. It is extremely generous in size, the chips however are extra but for £3.50 well worth it and I'm not going to argue at £15.50. The price puts the burger in the Hawksmoor, Goodman bracket where I feel it certainly holds its own. Chef Gregory's generous opening treats also helped to make our burger mission seem like even better value (thank you kindly, sir). In Burgerac terms, this is a solid "must-try" four star burger.

Thank you Chef Gregory. And thank you Twitter!

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Bread Street Kitchen
10 Bread Street
London
EC4M 9AJ

Tel: 020 3030 4050

www.breadstreetkitchen.com

The Hand Burger (Singapore) brand identity

2012-01-27T08:05:00.000Z

The Hand Burger in Raffles City, Singapore serve a range of burgers from classic beef burgers to confit duck, pulled pork, chicken and also a lamb burger – all served in a choice of buns baked daily on site. And the restaurant's paper-cut identity by Singapore design studio, Couple, is totally awesome...

"Produced entirely out of paper, The Handburger's identity forms a visual commentary on the food's transformative process, highlighting the artistry of making a good burger," say Couple.

"Paper-crafting every ingredient allows each to be distilled to its basic shape, creating an identity system that is visually appealing and instantly recognisable," continue Couple. "Its many seemingly disparate but harmonised elements are held together by a set of custom alphabets, constructed letter by letter to give The Handburger a fitting personality."

These paper-cut ingredients can be combined to form larger illustrations and even the restaurant's logo:

As well as being combined to form the restaurant's logo, the different paper ingredients form illustrations that adorn the beautiful take-out packaging:

And to ensure you see the packaging, take-out bags are transparent:

And the illustrations of the different ingredients also help to identify individual items on a platter of different burgers:

The menus are delivered on clipboards and utilise the bespoke typeface created specially for the restaurant by Couple.

And yes, you can see on the menu above, burgers are served in the restaurant on plates and delivered on wooden boards thus:

The above shot was found on the singapuradailyphoto blog. The interior shot in this post is by Stzernstudio.

www.thehandburger.com

This graphic identity is one of dozens of brilliant projects featured in the brilliant EAT ME book I blogged about last week. Read that post here.

PS: I just found out that some friends of mine are relocating to Singapore. That's it, I'm going!

Honest Burgers Honest Burger

2012-01-25T08:00:00.001Z

£8.50 plus an hour and a half of waiting around for a table on a cold January evening. Was it worth it? Yes, quite frankly. Hell, yes it was!

Honest Burgers in Brixton has been on Burgerac's hit list for longer than we care to admit. Despite meeting co-founder Tom back in June last year, Burgerac himself STILL hasn't been (oh, the shame) but thankfully, regular Burgerac contributor, Cheeseblogger, has picked up the slack to file this HB report...

Hello burger fans! Guess who's back? Yes, it's me. It's Cheeseblogger! And yes, before you ask, the rumours are true: I've been based in Kentucky for the past six months helping to fight for my brothers' freedom in the Sausage Wars. Those chickens have gone too far... But I digress, I'm back in London and I'm ready to get down to some Burgerac business!

My first assignment from Burgerac in 2012 was to investigate a far away land, somewhere that he himself hasn't yet dared to venture, a place called South London. After days of considering my options, I packed my toothbrush and jumped aboard the Victoria Line in search of my exotic destination: Brixton.

Within minutes, I'd arrived. It really is a lot easier to get to Brixton from central London than it is to get to most East / North East London destinations (by which I basically mean Shoreditch) and within a few more minutes, I was greeted by my sister who recently moved to and fell in love with the area. Pretty quickly I realised why, as we soon found ourselves a great little bar called Seven that serves splendid cocktails for a very reasonable £5 a pop and is located just a few doors down from Franco Manca – which was doing a very good job of looking like it might just be the best pizza joint in town.

The reason we were in Seven was not only for the vibes, but we were awaiting a phone call from our main destination, the reputable Honest Burgers, to let us know when we should head over to take our seats. We were told that we had a 30-40min wait, which of course isn't always ideal, but when you can go and wait in a nice cocktail bar nearby it's instantly not a problem, and actually almost a bonus. The very fact that they operate this service earned them an instant tick from me before we'd so much as sniffed a burger.

After 45 minutes, there was still no phone call but we were all feeling the warm glow of a large Mojito by this point so we decided to stroll over to the other section of the Brixton market where Honest Burgers is based and see if we could now take our seats. Unfortunately, they weren't ready - the place was packed and no one looked like they were in hurry to leave this lovely little burger spot, so the wait continued. Perhaps amazingly, this wasn't a problem as we discovered that Brixton Market is possibly one of the coolest and most vibrant places to be in the whole of London on a Friday night - it's packed full of bars and restaurants that each manages to exude a perfect blend of both quirkiness and quality with apparent ease.

But, as the minutes passed by and the 40 minute wait that had originally been suggested stretched over the hour and 20 mark, the excitement of being in this exotic new land was starting to wear off and our craving for burgers was becoming almost unbearable. Just as frustration was about to boil over, the phonecall-moment arrived and we were finally shown to a table by a very sweet and apologetic waitress. Sadly ours wasn't the indoor table we'd been promised. We were hungry and a bit cold, but the smell of burgers and the welcome option of blankets for diners sitting outside brought our spirits back up.

Honest Burgers itself is very easy on the eye, all stripped back NYC-inspired simplicity, it's got just a few tables inside that are wedged-in around the active kitchen workspace, with a number of tables outside to help feed the masses of people that want the Honest Burger experience. You have to give it to them, the place looks good and despite the very long wait and sitting outside in mid-January, we felt excited to be there.

I opted for the namesake Honest Burger (a dry aged beef patty, smoked bacon, cheddar, pickled cucumber, red onion relish and lettuce in a brioche bun) with triple cooked rosemary salted chips, an apple and mint side-salad, and a portion of beetroot and apple coleslaw. Bring it on!

Presentation 4/5 Set on top of a white grease-proof paper with chips on the side as standard (see topmost image on this post), the presentation is both straight to the point and absolutely mouth-watering. It smacks of confidence of produce as there are no frills here, but yet it still looks amazing. I want another one now just looking at the photos.

Structure 4/5 Favouring the brioche-style of bun that houses many-a-gourmet burger, the structure just works well and the size of it meant that there was no need for any cutting-in-half or whatnot. This was a light bun that acted as a frame for the art in its centre.

Components 5/5 This was dry aged beef of the highest quality, sourced from meat connoisseurs Ginger Pig, with smoked bacon, cheddar, pickled cucumber, red onion relish and lettuce. I liked this combo a lot, it's essentially a classic set of ingredients for a burger but in cutting the pickle in lengthways slices and using red onion relish, Honest made the combo their own without being overly flashy about it. One of my dining buddies had a more exuberant burger in the form of the current Special which consisted of the same beef patty but with black pudding, apple tempura, tarragon and caper mayonnaise and baby leaves - something I'd definitely love to try next time.

I should also mention that my side salad and coleslaw were both absolutely delicious!

Taste/Texture 4/5 The taste! Well, this is the thing… the Honest Burger could well be my new favourite burger in London – and I don't say that lightly. It was an absolute taste sensation with every bite giving me the distinct impression that I was doing my taste buds a massive favour. But, seeing as I had to wait for nearly an hour an a half before I got to sink my teeth into my Honest Burger, I can't help feeling that there's a chance that I might have enjoyed ANY burger just as much. It wasn't that all the ingredients didn't jump out and make it a truly great eating experience, it's just that I was bloody hungry and I ended up polishing it off in record time, so I can't be 100% sure.

Experience 3/5 Put it this way, once we'd sat down, it was great. The phone call service to let you know when your table's ready and the blankets at your table were stand-out touches, but the service didn't quite work this time round and despite having warm legs, my feet were very cold by the end which happens when you're sat outside at night in January. Could it possibly be that they need to supply extra socks as well, or is the eating of an Honest Burger simply better suited to inside dining when it's cold outside? The thing is, now I've had a taster, I reckon the next time my sister suggests coming down to Brixton for a burger, I doubt very much that I'll get cold feet.

Total score 20/25 = FOUR STARS

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Honest Burgers
Unit 12
Brixton Village
London
SW9 8PR

Tel: 020 7733 7963

www.honestburgers.co.uk

EAT ME book from Victionary

2012-01-16T08:09:00.004Z

If you're going to create a book that celebrates the collision of food and good design, then this is probably what it should look like. Victionary's new biscuit-like EAT ME book comes in either a "vanilla" or "chocolate" version and even features a "bite" out of the top right corner as standard...

The 256 page book showcases dozens of food-related design projects – from restaurant identities, to innovative kitchen implements, food packaging, and food based art projects (including, two spreads on the Burgermat Show I curated last summer). It really is a wonderful book (although I am, of course, somewhat biased) so here's a taster of the contents:

Eat Me really is a beautiful book, and if, like me, you get excited by beautifully packaged food, elegant and inventive food brand identities, restaurant interiors, and even food based art projects, well, you should really have a copy on your shelves. So much food for thought - and a feast for your eyes!

Personally, I'm ordering a second copy. I've got the vanilla colourway, but I simply must have the chocolate version too!

Find out more (and order a copy) at www.victionary.com

In-N-Out (USA) Double Double Cheeseburger (ordered "Animal Style")

2012-01-11T08:32:00.002Z

At In-N-Out Burger, less than $10 buys you two burgers, fries and a shake. SCORE! Big Dave McRockford reports from the west side of the US

Guest reviewer and ol' Burgerac pal, Big Dave McRockford, was in LA last week and made a point of visiting In-N-Out for a Double Double Cheeseburger Animal Style. Well, when in Rome! I'm hugely jealous, naturally, but happy enough to live vicariously via the following photos and write up which he kindly submitted...

For the uninitiated, In-N-Out is a chain of burger restaurants dotted across some of the western United States. Although they've seeped into neighbouring Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Texas, the classic Americana stylings of the sign are still a positively Californian sight (there are 208 branches in the state of California alone) when driving along the freeways. To put in its own words, the company strives to "Give customers the freshest, highest quality foods you can buy and provide them with friendly service in a sparkling clean environment."

The dining space of our chosen location of In-N-Out in Thousand Palms, California is fairly modest and identikit to the other outlets dotted across the west. It's fast food, so the surroundings, service and general vibe are what you'd expect for a low price point American food outlet. Not a complaint, however the popularity of the food on offer here sometimes means that it can sometimes be tricky getting yourself a table.

My good lady and I ordered a Double Double Cheeseburger (animal style), a standard Cheeseburger, fries and a chocolate shake. It's worth noting that our oder came to just shy of ten US dollars – which is tremendous value for money.

The first port of call was the Double Double Cheeseburger, Animal Style. Animal Style is part of the secret menu that everyone knows about, which offers variations on the regular menu items. The presentation was perfect - a voluptuous sandwich housing a tandem of mustard-fried beef patties interspersed with cheese, arriving in a simple paper bag to catch spillage / aid handling. The beef was well cooked and lightly drenched in the special 'animal style' ingredients – a combination of fried onions and mustard, with extra pickles and salad.

The sandwich contained just the right amount of elements, and so handled perfectly. The opening bite released the wonderful smoky flavour of the animal style dressing, and minimal grease-juice dribble. Thin patties are a welcome contrast to the now familiar thick slabs of ground beef found in gourmet burgers, and in this instance I love the return to simplicity - allowing for more rich, charred flavour across the ensemble. The bun that played vessel to the Double Double is also worth noting, with a lightly toasted flavour and the lightness of the just-baked.

The regular cheeseburger was naturally less exciting by contrast but still a strong contender with a firm meaty flavour that required no additional ketchup. In terms of size, these are not heavyweights in the burger arena. I see this as a positive, as there's either room to try a couple of burgers or simply call it a day after one without feeling stuffed.

The fries, sadly, were fairly forgettable. Although they are lightly fried in sunflower oil (as we are reminded on the base of the trays) it pains me to say that McDonalds fries taste better. The chocolate shake, however, was a perfect way to cap the meal and close the palate. A thick consistency carrying a creamy yet light chocolate flavour, without the ice-cream bottlenecks of cheaper milkshakes that you find elsewhere.

Overall, the In-N-Out experience is very positive - the most pleasing fast food outlet of the bunch in my humble opinion. It will always fall short in the context of the great gourmet burger, but I think there's a certain democratic beauty to well prepared, locally sourced fast food. If you ever find yourself 'out west', definitely make a stop at a branch of In-N-Out!

Further reading: Check out the awesome blog post about In-N-Out's secret menu over at A Hamburger Today.

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In-N-Out Burger

72265 Varner Road

Thousand Palms

California

CA 92276

USA

Tel: +1 800 786 1000

www.innout.com

Henry Hargreaves Rainbow burger

2012-01-09T07:57:00.001Z

Nope, this rainbow-burger isn't the product of the latest burger craze in London. Rather it was created by Brooklyn-based photographer Henry Hargreaves a couple of years ago as part of his Food of the Rainbow project which saw a host of food dishes receive eye-poppingly colourful makeovers...

Rainbow spaghetti, anyone?

Apparently using the food colourings didn't actually affect the flavour of the food too much and these incredible edible sculptures tasted surprisingly normal. Bright, rainbow colours aside, for me the appeal is the generosity of the servings!

The photos are all styled by Lisa Edsälv.

To see more work by Hargreaves, visit his site at www.henryhargreaves.com

This is one of dozens of amazing foodie projects that appear in publisher Victionary's brilliant EAT ME book.

Lobster & Burger: Burger with Bacon and Cheese

2012-01-04T07:55:00.003Z

£20 buys you a big burger (cheese and bacon is optional at no extra cost), a silver bucket of chips and a side salad. Pricey but really good

The Russian owners of London's American-style steakhouse, Goodman, opened up their new restaurant in Mayfair just a week before Christmas. Called Burger & Lobster, there really are only those two things available to eat. £20 will buy you a burger (served with a silver cup of fries and a side salad) or a whole lobster (or a lobster roll). Naturally, I opted for the burger..

Situated just off Curzon Street in what used to be an Irish pub on Clarges Street, Burger & Lobster boasts a bar run by Soul Shakers – the same outfit that set up the bar at Meat Liquor. And, like Meat Liquor, it operates a no-booking policy, you just turn up and wait to be seated by the super-friendly front of house in the smart wood-paneled interior.

Once at your table, or sat at the bar, the menu is, in fact, a drinks menu. Well, when there are only three dishes to choose from consisting of either burger or lobster, there's really no need for a food menu. To drink, I ordered a pint of Sierra Nevada pale ale – something of a Burgerac favourite (they serve it in bottles in Byron). To find it here on tap was a joy!

The burgers are served on a great big tray (as above) and with good reason. They're considerably bigger than Goodman's excellent burger offering, each sporting a 180g patty (Goodman's patty is 150g) and the beef is ground on-site every day and served in freshly baked brioche buns with lettuce, a slice of tomato and some thin cut red onion slices. A silver cup of chips and a small remekin of sliced pickles and a ceramic bowl of dressed salad makes up the burger platter. Nice.

The chips are absolutely delicious, the pickles have a lovely mustard seed twang and the patty consists of super-heavenly beef - beef so good that I didn't mind one jot that my medium rare burger was bordering on steak tartare rareness in places.

The brioche bun is tasty and super fresh but really not quite strong enough see the eating through – although, to be fair, placing a juicy, rare, 180g beef patty directly onto the bottom part of any bun doesn't really give it much of a chance of maintaining its integrity. It is only this lack of consideration to the ensemble's architecture that stops me giving it five stars: it really is an excellent burger well worth seeking out.

I've heard the lobster roll is pretty special too so I'll be back soon to check that out. Important research, you understand.

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Burger & Lobster

29 Clarges Street

London W1J 7EF

Tel: 020 7409 1699

www.burgerandlobster.com

Burgerac's most read stories of 2011

2011-12-21T17:59:00.000Z

Burgerac began in the first week of January this year, the result of a new year's resolution to seek and destroy London's finest buger offerings. Almost a year – and over 146,700 page views later – I thought I'd cast an eye back over a year of burger detecting and pick out the top five most read stories...

My personal highlights of being Burgerac in 2011 are thus:

Meeting and recruiting Burgerac's ace New York correspondent (Colonel Mustard); finding Burgerac recommended in The Guardian's Guide Internet section; meeting Daniel Young of Young & Foodish / BurgerMonday and subsequently putting on the Burgermat Show with 24 amazing artists and illustrators (and invaluable support from print-process.com); working with the super talented Jon Boam on a Burgerac T-shirt for label Lazy Oaf; making a tea towel with Crispin Finn; and being added to the blogroll of various proper food blogs I really respect.

While those are my special bits of the year, Google analytics tells me what you, my readers have enjoyed the most on the site. Without further ado, here are the most-read stories of 2011:

The Admiral Codrington 8oz Cheeseburger

Cooking a burger is one thing. Turning it into a beautifully built dish that delivers carefully considered and balanced flavours in every single mouthful is no mean feat. Yet Fred Smith at the Ad Cod makes it seem like child's play on a daily basis. If you haven't had a burger cooked by Fred yet, you haven't fully explored London's best burgers.

Bar Boulud Piggie Burger

Bar Boulud's burger offerings are small compared to say one of Fred Smith's 8oz cheeseburgers. But they are nevertheless an absolute delight, with the Piggie being my favourite of the three New York burgers conjured up by Daniel Boulud.

Gift Couture's Cheeseburger wrapping papers

I only posted about this burger-themed set of wrapping papers a few weeks ago – and already the story is in third place. A great idea - I hope it takes off for the Gift Couture peeps!

Illegal Burger (Oslo) brand identity

Until only about a month ago, my post about the brand identity of Oslo's Illegal Burger (by Oslo design studio The Metric System with illustrations by Frode Skaren) was the most-read story by a country mile. Then I wrote about...

Meat Liquor Dead Hippie

Yup, perhaps unsurprisingly, given the joint's queue-round-the-block popularity, my Meat Liquor Dead Hippie review has been read more than any other story posted on Burgerac. Meat Liquor's launch got a huge amount of press which leads me to one more highlight of 2011: The Evening Standard's Fay Maschler namedropping burgerac.com in her Meat Liquor write up. Nice!

And that's it. All that's left to say is a whopping great THANK YOU to all the chefs, kitchen and waiting staff that have conspired to give me an enormous amount of burger-based pleasure over the course of this year. Thanks to all my friends and colleagues and especially my missus for putting up with my burger obsession. And finally, of course, thank you, dear reader for keeping my burger blogging dream alive. Have a very merry Christmas and a cracking New Year! See you in 2012!

Burgerac x

Know Your Condiments Tea Towel

2011-12-16T09:04:00.001Z

Since putting on the Burgermat Show earlier in the year, I've been talking to some of the artists involved about developing products, made with love here in the UK in limited numbers for discerning burger-lovers. Here's the first of those products: the Know Your Condiments tea towel brought to you by Burgerac and the super-talented Crispin Finn. Aren't they lovely?

For more pics and full details, visit www.burgermat.com

Bukowski Cheese & Bacon Burger

2011-12-13T09:02:00.002Z

£7.50 Bukowski's menu (and food) functions as an unfortunate lesson in How Not To Do A Burger Joint in London. Alas, more bullshit than burger

Bukowski has just popped up in Box Park, a stack of shipping containers being used as retail spaces just outside Shoreditch overground train station. Bukowski describes itself as a "new-school fast slow-food American diner serving delicious burger innovations". What the heck that means is anyone's guess, so I decided I should head to Shoreditch and investigate...

Shipping containers are big if you're packing them full of canned food. Packing them full of a diner set up makes them feel very small. When I say "diner set up" imagine a diner created by a carpenter who only has chipboard as a material to work with. There are four and a half booths on the right hand side and a countered kitchen at the far end of the unit.

We took a seat and checked out the menu and read this:

Well, that certainly lifts the spirits and raises expectations. I ordered a Cheese & Bacon Burger and asked for it medium rare. Me and my dining buddy also ordered a large portion of "hand cut Heritage Organic Chips triple cooked and fried in beef dripping" (£2.50) to share. They arrived first in a wide but shallow bowl lined with grease proof paper. Good job too. These were soggy, greasy bastards. As soon as you picked one up, just the slightest of squeezes made grease flow from each "chip". And rather than tasting all nice and beefy, they just tasted like the chip oil hadn't been changed since the venue opened.

Another thing they tell you via the menu at Bukowski is that all the condiments are homemade. Organic Heritage Tomato Ketchup made from single estate organic San Marzano Tomatoes can be found in small glass jars on each table. Nice idea. Shame it doesn't even vaguely compare to Heinz. It's a strange texture and the chips seem to positively repel it. Also on offer is Organic Horseradish Mustard (not what you want on a burger, but rather what you want with a steak or slices of roast beef), and a Scotch Bonnet Relish - which is also a very strange texture, but tasty enough. Blending this with the ketchup made for something almost worth putting on your chips. Heinz please!

The Josper-cooked burger is served in a bun way more buttery than is necessary for a burger. On a more positive note, the inside is toasted to perfection. The patty sits on a slice of ridged gem lettuce, on top of which is a slice of Double Gloucester cheese, a couple of rashers of smoked Gloucester Old Spot streaky bacon and then some slices of oven dried tomato. There is no sauce or condiment in the burger, so I smeared some of the homemade ketchup on the inside of the top bun.

And so (at last) to the eating... My burger wasn't a bad medium rare - but if indeed this was a patty made from rare breed beef, it was a shame I couldn't taste it. The brioche bun is very buttery and a strong flavour. Perhaps this is why the patty has been imbued with a mustardy flavour. The cheese is an odd choice for inclusion in a burger as it doesn't become one with the burger patty but simply sit on top like a cheesy duvet, ready to slide out of the ensemble under its own weight at any moment. The bacon, however is cooked perfectly and tastes great.

But tasty bacon didn't save this burger from being a huge let down. The bottom part of the bun broke along the line of the ridged piece of lettuce under the patty when I was approaching half way through. I persevered. I sampled a bit of the patty on its own. As I suspected, although very bland, mustard was the strongest flavour in the mix, maybe with a hint of onion. Very little in the way of a discernable beef flavour at all. And the point of a Josper charcoal-burning oven is to deliver a lovely char-grilled flavour which was also lacking in this burger.

I just don't get it. Why bang on about the provenance of your beef if you build a burger that totally disguises its flavour? Why make your own tomato ketchup if it doesn't compare to the public's favourite Heinz? And why boast about the triple cooking of your beef dripping chips only to serve soggy spud sponges soaked in week-old chip fat? And why the heck would you cook thin burgers in a Josper when they'd be much better cooked on a flat grill? The whole thing smacks of "on-trend" kitchen gimmickery rather than the bunch of well researched burger-making decisions that the Bukowski owners presumably think they're showcasing. And why say "we're more typewriter than harp, we're more Bukowski than Byron" and then say in the same breath (press release) "we don't do Heinz". So let me get this right - Bukowski is down to earth, but incredibly snobby at the same time? All this makes no sense to me at all.

To be honest, I thought the days of hyping everything up in the burger business was over. Banging on about how great your produce is and then serving a burger that doesn't compare in any way to the competition is the practice of yesteryear. Everybody knows this business model is dead. Wouldn't it be far better to call the place Bukowski, branding it (as they have) with a slightly distressed typewriter font and then NOT bang on about how everything is cooked or sourced but let the food (and its consumers) do all the talking instead?

The big irony here is that's EXACTLY what Byron does. And Meat Liquor. And Lucky Chip. And Honest Burgers in Brixton. Keep it simple, do it well, stay humble. All the "organic this" and "homemade that" posturing in the world doesn't mean shit if you can't deliver a tasty burger. Actually, that's not strictly true, it does mean something, it means you've embarrassed yourself. And, even worse, you've pissed off your target demographic by insulting their intelligence and taste buds.

My Bukowski experience (can you tell) literally left a bad taste in my mouth. Which is why me and my dining buddy jumped in a cab afterwards and let five English pounds take us to Lucky Chip.

There we ordered the weekly special burger, the Rude Off - a tribute, apparently, to Rudolph. It consisted of a dry aged venison patty, smoked bacon, stilton, garlic aioli and a homemade berry and gin compote (Heinz doesn't make that). Here's a picture. Now THAT is what a truly awesome burger looks (and tastes) like. Yes, it really was as good as it looks:

It would seem that Lucky Chip (and Byron on Hoxton Square) still haven't got any decent burger competition in Hackney.

*******************************

Bukowski

Unit 61 Boxpark

Bethnal Green Road

London E1 6GY

www.bukowski-grill.co.uk

Burgermat print packs at The Peanut Vendor

2011-12-12T18:08:00.003Z

While there are plans in the pipeline for a bunch of different Burgermat Show products, we have a number of very limited digital offset A3 prints that we've organised into four different packs of six prints. They're now available from London shop The Peanut Vendor. More info at www.burgermat.com

Cheeburger Cheeburger Classic (NYC)

2011-12-09T09:00:00.000Z

$5.99 buys you a big but mind-bogglingly bland burger. Colonel Mustard just filed the following dismal, one-star report from New York City...

Regular Burgerac contributor Colonel Mustard remembers visits to Cheeburger Cheeburger as a student with some fondness. So when she recently stumbled across a branch of the US fast food chain in New York's JFK airport, she popped in for old times sake...

I first came across Cheeburger Cheeburger when on the classic college vacation we Americans call Spring Break. While staying at my friend's parents' home in Naples, Florida, a group of us frequented this souped-up diner on several occasions. In fact, on one of these visits, I succumbed to the restaurant's big-ass burger challenge: to finish their "famous pounder." The Pounder has a stonking pre-cooked weight of 20 ounces and if you can down this bona fide whopper in one sitting, you get your name posted on the Wall of Fame.

While this seems like a doozy of a prize for such an awesome feat, even way back then I had a lot of confidence in my appetite for burgers. I felt sure this was a challenge I could rise to with victory being the only possible outcome. And, hey, ask any American: who doesn't like to score big on Spring Break? However, about three quarters of my way through the burger, with roughly four ounces remaining, I just couldn't handle any more meat in my mouth, and had to shamefully admit that despite the burger's juicy goodness, I could not finish the challenge.

That was quite a while ago. I haven't had a Cheeburger Cheeburger burger in nearly ten years but while traveling recently I spotted a Cheeburger branch in none other than JFK Airport in New York City. Despite the breakfast hour, I decided to take it on again — admittedly I chose the weak route this time around and only opted for the bog-standard Classic, which weighs in at a mere half-pound before cooking. I cannot explain the excitement that overcame me as I waited for what memory served was a very handsome burger. When winter semester's harsh conditions got me down, thoughts of a Cheeburger Cheeburger rendezvous on the horizon always kept me going.

Turns out I've been recalling happier days with no small amount of nostalgic whimsy. I can only describe this recent visit as a major let-down. I will readily admit I was reconnected with my Spring Break flame at JFK airport, a place not typically known for high quality food affairs. Regardless, there was no saving this burger. Despite it arriving wrapped in attractive silver foil with its traditional olive on top held in place by a cocktail stick, these sorts of gimmicks couldn't charm me.

The Classic burger consisted of dry, tasteless buns with a similarly insipid patty shoved between them. I wondered was it because it had been prepared by careless airport cooks? One can't be sure, but based on this experience I can definitely say I likely won't be bothering to find out if it was a location issue any time soon. One thing I do know about burger chains in the States is that they tend to deliver the same brand of meat, buns and condiments to every venue so the experience is the same no matter the location. Chances are all CC burgers are shit.

The crazy thing is that I will always relish in those former Cheeburger moments with the same enthusiasm I held before this JFK escapade and I would still encourage burger fans out there cruising Southern Florida and beyond to give it a go (a look at their online map shows Cheeburger's become a bit of a beefy slut in recent years). But for this particularly stale experience, I have to sum it up by saying "Hey hot buns, who's the loser now?"

************************

JFK Airport
Terminal 5
Jamaica,
NY 11430

Tel: +1 718 656 6210

www.cheeburger.com

Gift Couture's Cheeseburger wrapping papers

2011-12-06T17:03:00.001Z

Unsurprisingly these wrapping papers, available to pre-order from fledgling wrapping paper company Gift Couture, are right up my street. Yes, as its very first project the company has devised a set of five burger-themed papers. Respect!

Gift Couture is taking pre-orders through kickstarter.com - where supporters of the project support the project with as much or as little financial help as they can muster.

Once a fund target of $7,900 has been reached, the company will start sending out paper to its backers and customers and more ideas (hopefully every bit as good as the cheeseburger papers idea) will have the opportunity to see the light of day.

Find out more / get involved at www.kickstarter.com

Le Club des 5 Cheeseburger au Cheddar (Paris)

2011-12-05T13:09:00.001Z

€12,50 Served on a wooden board with a heap of perfectly crisp fries this burger is well worth sampling if you find yourself in the vicinity

I was in Paris for a few days so made a point of seeking out a burger or two. Simon over at Burger Anarchy used to live in the 17th arrondissement so was able to point me in the direction of a great spot just round the corner from my hotel at the foot of Montmartre, and that's where I began my Parisian adventures...

Le Club des 5 is a pretty cool spot right in the heart of the village Batignolles that has the motto "Les aventuriers du goût" meaning "taste adventurers". I like. The wooden tables and red chairs occupy a smart interior which is injected with a fun vibe by shelves groaning with toys and childhood books - and a wall collage made up from images from kids comic books.

The Cheeseburger au Cheddar (€12,50) comes with frites maison and is served as above on a wooden board with slices of pickle on the side. I was asked if I wanted the burger well done and said "non, monsieur, 'medium' s'il vous plait". I took the lid off to find that the cheese had been grilled on the top part of the sesame seeded bun with a squirt of mustard. Unusual but not a problem as such. Under the patty there was some lettuce and some very thin-cut tomato and red onion. I added the two slices of pickle, popped the cheesy bun top back on and tucked in.

There's no doubt that this was a tasty burger - it had a slight gamey-ness that made me assume that the beef was nicely aged. However, while eating it I wished I'd mentioned 'rare' when asked how I'd liked it to be cooked. It wasn't particularly juicy which made me wonder if the lean to fat ratio leaned a little too favourably towards lean. Had it been rarer, more juicy, I know I would have enjoyed it a little more.

That said, I did really enjoyed the burger and the time I spent in Le Club des 5. The fries were also excellent (a credit to the French) and the staff were super friendly. As we left, we were given a loyalty card with two stamps in it. A really nice touch. Next time in Paris, I'll be going back for more, for sure - and will try asking for a rarer burger next time. I look forward to one day finding out what happens when I've got a full compliment of stamps on my carte fidélité! A free burger, perhaps?

************************

Le Club des 5

57 rue des Batignolles

75017 Paris

France

Tel: +33 (0)1 53 04 94 73

www.leclubdes5.fr

Maxime Pécourt's Pouf-Cheeseburger

2011-11-28T13:53:00.000Z

I've seen a lot of burger cushions and beanbags on the world wide web over the last year or so but only just clapped eyes on French artist / bricoleur Maxime Pécourt's awesome homemade effort which he posted a couple of years ago complete with a list of ingredients (in French, naturellement) on his blog...

Et voila, les ingrédients pour faire un pouf-cheeseburger :

- divers tissus (polaire, coton épais, doublure, vinyle, feutrine)

- des tapis de salle de bain

- un matelas en mousse

- du rembourrage

- du latex (pour les graines de sésame).

See more of Pécourt's creations (including this needlepoint rendering of a burger illustration (by Ben Fischer) his blog: http://maximepecourt.blogspot.com/

More French-themed burger stuff to follow - I was in Paris last week and sampled a couple of burgers. Quel surprise!

Meat Liquor Dead Hippie

2011-11-22T08:18:00.005Z

£7.50 Yianni's double-patty cheeseburger might not be the most handsome burger in town. But it is without doubt one of the best. Good times!

Despite the fact that I was one of the first to eat in Meat Liquor, London's new burger Mecca, I'm probably the last person to get round to blogging about it. I've been three times now, sampling almost all of the items on the impressive menu of (mostly) meaty Americana, and have established the fact (beyond doubt) that the Dead Hippie Burger is fucking outstanding...

For any readers who don't know (er, where have you been?) Meat Liquor is the latest venture from Yianni Papoutsis and Scott Collins of Meateasy fame. It's the pair's first bone fide restaurant - they've secured the lease for three years of a premises on the corner of Welbeck Street and Henrietta Place just behind Debenhams on Oxford Street. It's also just a five minute waddle from Burgerac's office. Needless to say I'm as happy as a pig in shit about this state of affairs.

The interior of Meat Liquor is probably worth a blog post on its own merit. I've heard it used to be a strip joint - but also that it used to be an Italian restaurant. Whatever its history, you walk in to one corner of a square-shaped galleried area with a rococco style domed ceiling. You can walk down a couple of steps to a big round table (designed to be danced on, Yianni tells me, with no small amount of pride) under the dome and marvel at the arched columns that support it thus forming the galleried area around it which is equipped on the two exterior walls with ox-blood red leather banquettes and wooden tables.

The walls (detail above) and domed ceiling (below) have been adorned with a host of black, white and red illustrations, all created specially by London graphic studio, ilovedust, who were brought in by the interior designers, Shed. They've done a really great job of drawing on the history of Meatwagon to create the continuous mural that covers all the wall space.

Lighting comes courtesy of red neon signs that spell out 'liquor' in each of the round windows along two sides of the corner venue. Industrial cage lamps hang on wires over wooden topped tables. The lights are on, but it's still quite dark. The combination of red neon, round windows, arches and illustrated wall murals lend the place a kind of sleazy yet hallowed vibe, a shrine dedicated to meat and liquor-fuelled late nights.

Drinks are served in jam jars from the excellent bar set up by Soulshakers. There are whiskies so fine I'd advise keeping them separate from mixers. Woodford Reserve is a favourite of mine so far. I've still got some work to do though to sample them all!

OK, I got a bit sidetracked. Let's get to the food. First things first: starters. The Buffalo wings are delicious, but the Deep Fried Pickles (£3) are really where it's at for me. Crisp, battered tempura-like slices of sweet pickled cucumbers are served on a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce with a blue cheese dip. The batter gives way to hot vinegary sweetness with every bite and the blue cheese dip pairing is the work of a genius.

Before I tell you about The Dead Hippie (above), I want you to know that while I've had three perfectly servicable and tasty burgers at Meat Liquor, the first two didn't make me jump in the air and shout FUCK YEAH, in the way The Dead Hippie did. I had to have another one (the very next day). Once again: FUCK YEAH.

Essentially the Dead Hippie is Yianni's take on an In-N-Out Double Double Cheeseburger Animal Style and consists of two mustard-fried beef patties, American cheese and a special sauce that's got finely diced onion in it all sitting on a bed of ridge cut pickles and shredded iceberg lettuce. It's more manageable than you might think and incredibly tasty. Juices spill out onto the tray in front of me. I can't quite put my finger on what's going on - but the beef has an almost gravy-like reduced stock kind of beefiness that you just can't argue with. It's much tastier than the Bacon Cheeseburger I tried on my first visit to ML. Maybe double the beef means its flavour shines through more than a single patty ML burger allows.

The truth is, objectivity isn't easy when trying to describe something this good. And, tending as I do to wolf down a Dead Hippie in probably less than a minute I'm not at my most critical. However I know two things with absolute certainty: I wouldn't change anything about this burger. For what it is, it's perfect. The other thing I'm certain of? I want one of these at least once a week. Sorry, I meant at least once a day.

Oh and there's another burger on the menu I can't recommend highly enough - Meat Liquor's Buffalo Chicken Burger (£7.50) a deep fried, crispy on the outside, soft and moist on the inside breast of chicken in a bun that comes "slathered in hot sauce" and sprinkled with shredded lettuce and a dollop of mayo. It might just be the best chicken "burger" you'll ever have.

************************

Meat Liquor

76 Welbeck Street

Marylebone

London W1G 0AY

Tel: 020) 7224 4239

www.meatliquor.com

Lazy Oaf Burger Socks

2011-11-18T14:20:00.002Z

OK, so Lazy Oaf products feature quite a lot on Burgerac. But guess what? They just keep on producing totally ace burger-related stuff – and the latest product to catch my eye is the perfect seasonal gift for the burger-loving apple of your eye...

Yes, these burger socks (£8) are new additions to the Lazy Oaf range of burger-themed products! And let's face it, who doesn't need an extra pair of socks? Exactly. A pair of these beauties will raise a smile or two when you're sitting on the tube on the way home of an evening - heck it may even start a burger-related conversation. Make new friends by wearing burger socks!

Oh, and if you are using the tube or any other form of public transport, you might want to check out Lazy Oaf's recently launched travel card wallet (£9):

More Lazy Oaf burger clobber here and also here.

www.lazyoaf.co.uk

The Barking Dog Beef Shin Burger (Belfast)

2011-11-14T12:54:00.001Z

£11.95 including Chunky Chips. I only had one burger in Belfast during my weekend stay. And I'm SO glad that it was this one. Top drawer!

I have no doubt that many of m'regular readers will look at this image and the 5-star rating and wonder what the heck I'm playing at. Yes, there is rocket. Yes, there is mayo spilling out the edge of a large white bready and heavily floured bun. And yet this burger is nothing short of spectacular. Let me explain...

I was over in Belfast for the MTV Europe Music Awards (I didn't win anything) at the weekend and while there are many highlights of the trip, lunching on Sunday at The Barking Dog restaurant is the pick of the bunch. There's only one burger on the menu - a tweep by the name of @Paul_Designer suggested I check it out - and I can't thank him enough. His recommendation made six rather hungover party people VERY happy indeed.

OK - so The Barking Dog is about a 20 minute stroll from Belfast's town centre. Head south towards Queen's University and it's only just beyond the main college building on the opposite side of Malone Road. We were greeted with smiles and shown to a big round table in a bay window. We were already pretty pleased with ourselves, but then we were handed menus and everything looked really good. Great choice of typeface too ;)

We decided we'd order some pints of the black stuff, but they only had bottles. Our waiter then told us that they had their own beer, Barking Brew, on tap - so we ordered that. Turns out it's brewed exclusively for The Barking Dog by the Whitewater Brewery in the Mourne Mountains just outside Belfast. The BD's Richard Stitt explained: "It's basically a cross between two of its existing brews - Belfast Lager which is a pilsner lager that uses the original yeast culture from the Old Belfast Brewery, and its Copperhead, which is an earthy, hoppy red beer."

The beer is the result of the restaurant giving the brewery the brief that they wanted a beer that perfectly complimented its best selling dish: its legendary 8oz Beef Shin Burger. BINGO!

Seeing as I was hungover, and very excited to be in an environment where the food was reputed to be good, I thought I'd start with a bit of flaked crab with creme fraiche and chive on sourdough toast. Very nice indeed.

The truth is, I probably (definitely) didn't need a starter. Because the Beef Shin Burger, with Chunky Chips is one heck of a main course. Here's how it arrived:

Under that generous blanket of perfectly melted cheddar is an 8oz shin burger (more on that in a moment) which sits on a bed of caramelised onion on a perfectly toasted, if rather floury, bun. The chunky chips are served in a miniature fryer and the top of the bun is upside down, smeared in a creamy horserdish "mayo" (it's more like freshly grated horseradish and creme fraiche) and a nest of rocket on top. In for a penny, in for a pound, I popped the lid on the burger and tucked in.

First impressions taste wise was good - but I was kind of amazed that various things I normally don't like were combining to deliver a really super taste sensation. Rocket in a burger? Usually I'd say no thank you. But here the peppery rocket is complimented perfectly by the freshly made horseradish "mayo".

The beef patty itself isn't of the pure beef variety. It's got an almost sausage-like depth of flavour - there's beef, chopped onion and garlic, mustard, ketchup, breadcrumbs and very probably some binding egg here. Yet, this slightly stuffing-like patty is forgiven because, combined with the cheese, caramelised onions, rocket and horseradish the toasted bun, it's bloody delicious. And just as I was wondering how beef shin factors in this burger, something amazing happened... I found it!

Yes, in the centre of a tasty but fairly standard burger patty is a mind-blowing beef shin centre that's positively bursting with a deep, rich beefy flavour and that just-fallen-off-the-bone texture that comes from slow cooking such a cut. The Barking Dog's Richard Stitt told me a little of the meaty processes involved in creating this tasty shin burger...

First the beef shin is marinated in red wine and celery, onions and carrot overnight. Then it's seared off and braised overnight in veal and chicken stock. The next day meat is picked (falls) off the bone while hot and the juices are reduced until it becomes a thick syrup. This is then combined with the loose meat and rolled in cling film and then tin foil in a sausage shape and chilled in the fridge - this becomes the centre of a big burger sausage that is sliced into discs to become the final, 8oz burgers. Richard tells me that each patty is about 6oz burger mix, and 2oz glorious shin magic in the middle.

The Barking Dog has created an unusual but delightful beef burger experience that makes for a brilliant alternative Sunday lunch. If you live in Belfast, or are just visiting, you HAVE to check this place out. And don't even think about having the burger without an accompanying pint of Barking Dog Brew. Absolutely delicious. I hope I get back to Belfast soon!

*************************

The Barking Dog

33-35 Malone Road

Belfast

BT9 6RU

Tel: +44 (0) 28 9066 1885

www.barkingdogbelfast.com

Burgerac T-shirt at Lazy Oaf

2011-11-07T16:45:00.009Z

Folks, I kid you not, this is probably the most exciting day of my life: today Lazy Oaf is launching a Burgerac T-shirt (sporting Jon Boam's cracking 'portrait' of me) which will be sold in its super awesome London store on Fouberts Place off Carnaby Street, and also online from www.lazyoaf.co.uk...

The T-shirt is really beautiful quality soft white cotton and looks totally amazeballs, with a Burgerac logo screenprinted on the left sleeve. It's actually one of a series of six Lazy Oaf Drawing Club II T-shirts that are also launching this week, each sporting a design by a different image maker - including Andy Rementer, Marcus Oakley, Tom Edwards, and Jim Stoten.

The T-shirts all cost £35 BUT Burgerac readers can help themselves to a 10% discount when buying the Burgerac tee by quoting the discount code "burgerac" during the checkout process on their online shop. OR, if you want to claim the discount in the London store, simply present a print out of this blog post.

The T-Shirts will launch with an open-to-all live Drawing Club extravaganza on Friday 25th November at Shop 25, Hanbury Street, London E1 6QR. You'll be able to do some drawing, have a beer and a dance, purchase T-shirts AND meet some of the artists behind the designs. Lazy Oaf events are always SUPER TOP FUN!!

www.lazyoaf.co.uk

Lucky Chip Bacon Burger

2011-11-04T09:05:00.001Z

£6.50. Lucky Chip's burgers are proving divisive in the Twittersphere. However, when they keep things simple, for me, they're bang on the money

I'd heard mixed reports about Lucky Chip's burgers - but now the mobile burger business is established in Netil Market near Broadway Market in Hackney and open five days a week (Wednesday - Sunday) it was only right I do some investigating of my own. Plus, Lucky Chip has just changed meat suppliers, ditching London's famous Ginger Pig in favour of Wiltshire-based butchers Walter Rose & Son in Devizes...

The change of supplier is explained succinctly by Lucky Chip's Ben Denner: "I moved to Walter Rose from the Ginger Pig because I believe they have a superior product," he told me. He also informed me that the beef breed is Hereford-Angus and comes from Tim Johnson's Stokes Marsh Farm in Wiltshire. It's also aged a little longer than the beef that Ginger Pig had been providing - aged approximately 32 days rather than 28 - and is delivered to Lucky Chip fresh from Devizes every day.

OK, well that's all good to know - particularly as I'm a little late to the Lucky Chip party so it kind of gives this review some semblance of newsworthiness. But really, the big question is what's the burger like? When we were there it was dark so my bright flash photographs don't really show the burgers in the best light - although it should be said that this ain't no restaurant - and it ain't no fancy pants gourmet pub burger. This is street food served on a paper plate in a carpark.

I was at LC with my mate John and between us we ordered a Bacon Burger (above), a Charlie Sheen burger, a portion of fries to share and some Beetroot Flavour Onion Rings. Just so you know, the Sheen burger is one of LC's weekly specials which has stuck around on the menu due to its enduring popularity with the punters. We took a seat at a table undercover in a corner of the carpark and awaited excitedly the arrival of our order.

Now then, I feel I should clarify at this point that this here five-star review is of the Lucky Chip Bacon Burger specifically. It consists of a dry aged beef patty which starts life as a ball of unseasoned minced beef but is squashed into a patty on the hot flat grill in the Lucky Chip van. Then it's seasoned liberally with sea salt before being flipped and more seasoning applied. The burger sits on a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce and pickles and is smothered in yellow, perfectly melted, American cheese, atop which sit some rashers of applewood smoked bacon. French's Yellow Mustard and Heinz Ketchup provide the flavour-glue that binds this magical concoction together within the soft glazed demi brioche bun that houses it all. Just for the record, Ben visited over 50 bakeries before finding the Lucky Chip bun. Respect is due. It's fucking awesome.

Doing Lucky Chip's Bacon Burger justice in mere words (er, or pictures) is no easy task. It's absolutley heavenly. The beefiness of the patty is deep and rich. The exterior of the burger is salty and charred, the interior pink and oh-so-juicy. The bun is soft, ever so slightly sweet and a real treat for you mouth. The bacon is tasty as hell and bites with no drama. The pickles are crisp, juicy and tangy. The cheese is, well, just so perfectly American. This really works. And within seconds of it appearing, it was gone. Replaced by a kind of excited burger mania as John and I exchanged notes and wolfed down the DELICIOUS beetroot flavour battered onion rings and fries.

We also enjoyed the Sheen (£7.50) - shown below complete with John's jazz hands in the background - smothered as it was with beer-soaked onions, Philadelphia and cheddar cheese, the same applewood-smoked bacon and garlic aioli. It was delicious but the garlic aoli rather overpowered the ensemble. The fries (£2.50) were excellent and the Beetroot flavoured Onion Rings (£3.50) were jaw droppingly revelatory. You gotta try 'em!

Comparisons have and will continue to be made between Lucky Chip and Yianni Papoutsis' Meatwagon. There's no doubt that what they do is similar - but don't write Lucky Chip off as a mere copycat operation. Ben has been in the food game for many-a-year and researching burgers specifically for the last five years. And guess what? Ben's passion and no small amount of know-how in the way of the burger is evident in each bite of one of his Bacon Burgers - which are, dare I say it, just as good as anything that Yianni serves out of his converted Ambulance.

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Lucky Chip
Netil Market
London Fields
London E8 3RL

Opening times: Wed - Sat 12.30pm-10.30pm / Sunday 12.30pm-8pm

www.facebook.com/Luckychip
@Lucky_Chip

PS: Here are a couple more Lucky Chip photos taken on a Saturday lunchtime visit a couple of weeks after posting the above:

Haba Plush Burger Toy

2011-11-01T08:42:00.002Z

Why teach your toddler about shapes or numbers, when you can start laying the foundations of how to construct the perfect burger? Yes, this burger plush toy comes apart so it can be layered up any which way. And the plush chips should get your little one au fait with the perfect size of potato chip...

The toy, made by German toy company Haba, is actually part of its Biofino range of soft toys all of which are designed to teach little ones about food. Also in the range is this pizza:

A French baguette toy:

and even this cuddly kebab:

All of these toys in Haba's Biofina range are made of soft furry felt with separate components that stick together with internal magnets - so kids can play around with assembling them.

They're not difficult to find online – although Burgerac contributor Mayor McCheese stumbled across the Burger plush whilst perusing the wares at chic Paris store Colette. Nice!

Oh, for those of you wondering what the heck Haba is doing "educating" the world's toddlers about such foods as Doner Kebabs and Burgers, fear not - it's not all fast food. Here's another example of what you can find in the Biofina range:

So your kids can have their cake (burger) and eat (play with) it. As long as it's part of a heathy balanced toy diet!

www.haba.de

Goodman Burger with cheddar

2011-10-28T18:15:00.001+01:00

£13 with chips included. Goodman's burger is beefy, salty and full of flavour. Sadly a stale bun disqualified it from a full 5-star score

Having got through 10 months of blogging about London's best burgers, it was undoubtedly extremely remiss of me not to have visited Goodman sooner than last week. I'd heard great things about the steakhouse's burger from various people - not least from Daniel at Young & Foodish who considers Goodman's burger offering to be the best in London at the moment...

Needless to say I was super excited about a spot of lunchtime burger adventuring at Goodman's Mayfair restaurant. Once seated I couldn't help think what a huge contrast there is between the decor at Goodman and that at Hawksmoor – London's other great, much celebrated American steakhouse. When I've dined at Hawksmoor I've felt like a king. Taking my seat at Goodman, I simply felt like someone at a steakhouse.

The next impression of the place was provided by the guy that served us - who clearly couldn't care whether we ordered some food or stabbed ourselves to death at our table. Interesting.

However, when our burgers showed up (both ordered medium rare) they represented burger presentation perfection: on an impressively large Goodman-branded oval plate sat a ceramic bowl of fat golden, perfectly salted, crisp-on-the-outside-fluffy-in-the-middle chips next to a similarly proportioned, beautiful looking domed brioche-bunned cheeseburger – sporting perfectly melted cheese, a leaf of crisp lettuce, slice of tomato, a few onion rings and some very thin slices o' pickle.

My dining partner, occasional Burgerac contributor Mayor McCheese, wasted no time in clefting his burger in twain, and it's his juicy, super rare, bloody-as-hell burger you see in the blurry shot above. While I would say his was cooked under the requested medium rare, mine was cooked a shade over. But, as well I know by now, c'est la vie. Getting a burger cooked precisely how you want is no easy task, even in one of London's premier steakhouses. Order the same as your dining partner and you might still have wildly different burger experiences...

So to the eating. Goodman's is one of those burgers that is compact in circumference and almost as tall as it is wide until you pick it up and give it a squash. As soon as I did pick it up, it was clear that the bun was brittle, rather than being soft and fresh. First bite confirmed the bun was dry and a little crumbly - BUT the meat patty is really very fine indeed. Made from aged beef and cooked in a charcoal burning Josper it's wonderfully beefy and there's a depth of salty flavour delivered, I believe, from the use of a splash of Nam Pla (fish sauce) used to season the mince. It really works, yum!

Architecturally, the burger held together well, despite the patty sitting directly on top of the bottom part of the bun and leaking burger juice into it, threatening its structural integrity. If I'm honest (and I always am) I thought the thin, 1mm thick lengthways slices of teeny tiny pickles (were they cornichons?) were too small and too thin to offer the sweet and tangy crunch and flavour that makes the inclusion of such things worthwhile. BUT, the overall impression was one of immense burger satisfaction. This is, undoubtedly a wonderful burger well worth tracking down. And with the chips included for £13, remarkably good value for a sit down, steakhouse affair.

If the pickles had been cut more generously, and if the bun had actually been fresh, Goodman's burger would very possibly have warranted 5-star status. However, besides these flaws there is also another dimension of disappointment that needs to be addressed. Goodman should try and serve its burgers consistently like the generously-topped delight pictured in the number one slot on the Young & Foodish Top Ten Burgers in London list:

The burger cooked specially for Daniel Young to sample in his quest to rate London's top ten burgers in descending order of greatness (his photo, above) seems a different beast to what is delivered to the table of Joe Bloggs or Jim Burgerac.

That said, I'll be revisiting soon and often. I want more.

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Goodman Mayfair (also check out their City branch)

24-26 Maddox Street

London W1S 1QH

Opening Times: Monday-Saturday, from 12noon to 10.30pm

Tel: 020 7499 3776

http://www.goodmanrestaurants.com/

Movember and the Byron Gizz-Mo burger

2011-10-21T08:47:00.002+01:00

November means Movember. And Movember means fund-raising moustache-growing AND, as of last year, an awesome monthly special at Byron – HOORAY! This year Byron has teamed up with TV chef Gizzi Erskine to create the Gizz-Mo burger. Being London's premier burger detective I've managed to track one down ahead of its release to bring you juicy news of its awesomeness...

Et voila - here's one I ate earlier: the Gizz-Mo comprises Byron's regular six ounce beef patty with a Welsh Rarebit topping (made from smoked Cheddar, super mature Cheddar, English mustard, a little egg yolk, stout and Worcestershire sauce) that is put atop each burger then grilled before serving. Then a few thin-cut red onion rings and some lettuce and a splat of mayo sit betwixt the burger (plus its cheesy topping) and the top bit of a standard Byron bun. And let me tell you, folks, to taste the Gizz-Mo is to step into cheese-heaven: IT'S WONDERFUL!

The Welsh Rarebit goo has a tangy maturity and richness that surpasses that achievable by cheese alone. This is complimented perfectly by the thin slices of red onion, and the combo makes for the most flavoursome cheese burger I've ever tried. Only a few bites in, I knew that I already considered myself a Gizz-Mo devotee. This is FIVE-STAR AWESOME - I want one every day!

Which brings me back to the ol' moustache-growing charity thing. Byron will be rewarding registered Movember fundraisers (who can show that they have raised £25 or more) with a FREE Gizz-Mo burger EVERY DAY for two weeks from November 7th – 20th. WOOHOO!

To get on board and sign up for some moustachioed Movember fund-raising (and to find out more about what Movember is all about) check out the website at http://uk.movember.com

For peeps not able to cultivate a hairy top lip, the Gizz-Mo will be available throughout November at all Byron restaurants for £8.25. For every one sold, Byron will donate 50p to Movember. Moreover, Byron staff (those that are able) will be growing moustaches for the cause too. Last year the company raised an impressive £23,000 for the charity through individual team member and company fundraising – and Byron founder Tom Byng hopes to more than double that amount this year. "Movember is such a great fund-raising idea. We should do it because we can – and it's fun too," he says. "As a company we're hoping to raise between £50,000 and £75,000 this year." Go, Byron, go!

To track down your nearest Byron visit www.byronhamburgers.com

Kua 'Aina 1/2lb Cheese Burger

2011-10-18T08:16:00.001+01:00

£7.70 for the burger, £1.95 for Crunchy Fries and £2.45 for Sweet Potato "wedges". All really very tasty. Worth a go if you're in the area

On my second visit to Kua 'Aina in a week I fared much better than I did on my first when I had a 1/3lb Cheeseburger that was overcooked and, consequentially, not-at-all-juicy. This time I opted for the plumper of the patty options and asked for the half pound Cheeseburger to be cooked medium rare...

And I "ate in" this time too. It's not so much a restaurant that you go for a meal at so much as a burger shack you park your butt in while you wolf down a big fat juicy burger. Which is, of course, a lunchbreak-dream-come-true kind of burger vendor.

So this is how m'burger looked when it arrived, served in one of those little plastic "baskets" that are designed specifically to serve burgers like this in. Perfect. I took the top off, removed one of two slices of tomato (no burger needs two slices of tomato) and took a bite. This time the patty WAS juicy, as well as being perfectly seasoned and delightfully beefy in flavour. In fact, it was so damn juicy that on the first greedy bite, juice ran down this burger detective's chin. Score!

However the second bite revealed something not quite so pleasing: the remaining thick slice of beefsteak tomato was fresh out of a very cold fridge. Not ideal in my book. Even less ideal in my burger. As with my last KA burger, the cross-section of grilled onion avoided slimy-worm syndrome admirably but I found myself questioning its inclusion (along with limp lettuce) in a burger. I'm not sure it brings enough to the party.

What I'm really getting to is that, while the beef patty this time round was really super delicious, the Kua 'Aina burger is one you have to basically fuck around with before you can enjoy it: First you've got to remove the superfluous second slice of tomato – or all of it if its noticably colder than 5 degrees C. Then there's the lettuce which might need tidying up or simply removing altogether. And once you've started this cull of extras, you start to question the validity of the grilled onion too. After a few bites, you'll probably remove it as it's more annoying than it is worthy of inclusion with the tasty patty.

I guess the point to make here is one I've made a few times before: a burger is a dish, a recipe. There needs to be a concept that gives every ingredient a reason for being there. Yes, if you happen to remember to order your KA burger to be cooked medium rare, then you're likely to get a tasty and juicy burger, but the cheese is unlikely to be perfectly melted into the surface of the burger - and you will undoubtedly need to arse about with the extras before eating it.

Don't get me wrong, Kua 'Aina IS def worth a visit if you're in the area – not least because the fries and the Sweet Potato Wedges (above) are totally amazeballs. Just remember that if you want your burger cooked on the rare, juicy side of medium - make sure you mention that when you place your order.

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Kua 'Aina

26 Foubert's Place

London W1F 7PP

Tel: 020 7287 7474

www.kua-aina.co.uk

Lazy Oaf 10th Birthday Collection

2011-10-10T08:59:00.000+01:00

Nobody does fast food fashion quite like London boutique and clothes label Lazy Oaf. To mark its 10th anniversary, the label has put together a special collection which includes some classic burger items from its back catalogue, namely this happy burger bobble hat (£18) and a bright burger sweatshirt...

Lazy Oaf began life as a market stall ten years ago run by founder Gemma Shiel (one of the contributors to the Burgermat Show project) who was then a fresh textiles graduate selling printed T-shirts featuring her own super illustrations and slogans. Since those early days of developing her own brand of affordable, fun fashion items, Gemma has seen her label stocked in Selfridges, designed a range for the Tate and is now the proud proprietor of a lovely shop just off Carnaby Street on Fouberts Place in central London. These days Lazy Oaf clobber can also be found stocked in fabulous stores around the world in cities including New York, Paris, Hong Kong, L.A. and Tokyo.

I should also point out that Lazy Oaf doesn't JUST create clothing and accessories with a fast food bent. No sirree, fast food is simply a recurring theme in Lazy Oaf's seasonal collections which invariably feature bright colours, bold graphics, smiley faces and an infectious sense of good ol' unpretentious fun. Burgerac LOVES the Lazy Oaf aesthetic!

This bright Burger Sweatshirt (£60) comes in Small, Medium, Large or XL size 100% cotton with brushed jersey lining – perfect for autumnal burger adventuring. If you're feeling like really going for it on the burger clothing front you could pair the sweat with the hat AND accessorise with a French Fries Tote Bag (£7.50) also in the 10th Birthday collection:

Heck, add a pair of Cheeseburger Vans while your at it!

Or if that's too much burger in your look, you could always mix things up with this totally awesome Pizza Face T-shirt (£35):

Check out the Lazy Oaf website for more amazeballs fast food products (hot dog scarf anyone?) or visit the store off Carnaby Street in central London and have a browse. If you do pop in, remember to wish them a very happy 10th birthday!

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Lazy Oaf store

19 Fouberts Place

London W1F 7QE

Tel: 020 7287 2060

www.lazyoaf.co.uk

Kua 'Aina 1/3lb Cheese Burger

2011-10-07T09:05:00.000+01:00

£6.70. Crunchy Fries are an additonal £1.95 and are so good they stole the show this time round. I'll be back to try a 1/2lb version soon

I'd read favourable reports about Kua 'Aina's burgers on both Chris Pople's Cheese & Biscuits blog, and also on Nick Andrew's Burger Me blog, so fancied an investigation of my own. However, my Kua 'Aina experience wasn't of the four-star Must Try variety. More a three-star Shows Promise kind of affair...

OK so let's just clear something up straight away. I didn't actually eat in Kua 'Aina's just-off-Carnaby Street restaurant, but rather carried my burger back to my office, five minutes walk away to share a take out K'A experience with a couple of my work mates around a table in our office, four floors up, with a view straight down Berwick Street. Another thing to note is that I opted for the more modest size of K'A's burger offerings, a 1/3lb rather than a 1/2lb patty. Well, I did have to work that afternoon and 1/2 a pound of flesh at lunchtime tends to lower my productivity considerably. Another thing I did (or rather didn't do) was totally neglect to ask for my patty to be cooked rare. The girl that took my order didn't ask me how I'd like it cooked so I just took what I was given. On the menu it says all burgers are cooked medium unless you request something different. Sadly the patty in my 1/3lb Cheese Burger was cooked beyond medium rendering it not at all juicy.

As you can see from the top picture, my burger patty wasn't the only thing that was overcooked. There was quite a few black scorch marks on the seeded toasted bun - which otherwise had fared rather well wrapped up for five minutes on the walk back to the office: the bread had kind of steamed in the patty heat in the takeout wrapper making it really soft, with the seeded crust remaining lovely and crisp.

Two thick slices of tomato in a burger is unnecessary (and cause for much slippage) so I removed one, but I actually really liked the soft grilled cross section of onion in the burger which somehow managed to avoid slimy worm syndrome. Despite being a shade overcooked, the patty was really well seasoned and also had a really super tasty beefiness. Promising stuff.

Actually, when I tweeted that I'd had a slightly overdone burger at Kua 'Aina, a couple of tweeps asked straight away "Did you have the 1/3 pounder?" adding that in their experiences Kua 'Aina had been much more adept at cooking perfectly the thicker 1/2 pounder than the smaller burger. I can understand how that might be the case, but it seems a shame K'A can't provide the same juicy experience across the two patty options it offers.

Worth noting is K'A's Crunchy Fries are cut with the skin on and are REALLY good - light, crisp and perfectly salted. This time they outshone my less than juicy patty, but I have to say I'm excited at the prospect of returning to try a 1/2 pounder (which I shall ask to be cooked a juicy medium rare). I'm rather hoping I'll soon be even more impressed with this relatively new addition to London's thriving burger scene.

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Kua 'Aina

26 Foubert's Place

London W1F 7PP

Tel: 020 7287 7474

www.kua-aina.co.uk

Serge Seidlitz's Royale With Cheese print

2011-09-30T09:24:00.000+01:00

Artist and illustrator Serge Seidlitz has produced this super-awesome screenprint, entitled Royale With Cheese, for his forthcoming solo show at London's Coningsby Gallery...

And guess what? There's a similarly hunger-inducing stacked cake print to go with it too – entitled Have Your Cake And Eat It:

"I drew the burger print out of my love for burgers," Seidlitz tells us of his Royale With Cheese print. "Actually, when I saw your blog I thought 'I wish I'd thought of that' as I'm always looking out for the best burger in town," he adds. "As for the cake, well my girlfriend's a bit of a cake fiend and it seemed to sit nicely with the burger tower of power."

Both prints are screenprinted on 300gsm Saunders Waterford paper at 560 x 760mm but if you want one, you'd best get your order in real quick - Royale With Cheese is in an edition of just 28, and Have Your Cake And Eat It has been printed in an edition of 30.

Burger lovers (who else would be reading this?) might also like to know Seidlitz has also produced an extremely limited run of burger emblazoned T-Shirts (nice!) which will also be on sale:

It's not all about burgers though. Seidlitz will exhibit a range of artworks and prints (many hand printed by his own fair hand) which showcase his illustration work. Of all of those things (besides the burger-related stuff, obviously), this rug is probably my favourite:

To see more of Serge's work, chickeddy-check out his website at www.sergeseidlitz.com

Serge V's Spaceship Earth will run from the October 24 - November 4 at The Coningsby Gallery

The Coningsby Gallery

30 Tottenham Street

London W1T 4RJ

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7636 7478

www.coningsbygallery.com

All Star Lanes 1/2lb Prime Beef Burger with Fries

2011-09-28T09:10:00.000+01:00

£9 with fries included. Bacon costs an extra £1.50 and Swiss cheese a further £1. Neither addition rescued this from bland mediocrity

Wooden board: check. Silver cup o'fries: check. Little pot of burger sauce on the side: check. By serving its burgers thus, All Star Lanes invite comparisons between its burger offering and similarly presented burgers at some of Burgerac's top London burger spots such as Bar Boulud and Rivington Grill.
However, if my experience the other night is anything to go by, ASL's burger totally fails to walk the talk...

Here's what happened: I took a hoard of peeps to All Star Lanes on Brick Lane after the other week's Burgermat Show opening at Beach London on Cheshire Street around the corner. We all needed some food and another drink or two and it seemed only right that we went for burgers. All Star Lanes twitterer-in-chief has been tweeting me for a while asking me to do a review so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to sample ASL's burger offering.

The truth is it probably wasn't the best night for me to do a review. I was so hungry by the time we headed over there, I could have eaten a cow pat in a bun and convinced myself it was the best thing ever. I was also a little tipsy and giddy from the joy of putting on the Burgermat Show. We got a table for ten, placed our orders and waited hungrily for our burgers to arrive. Took about 40 minutes. Fast food, this ain't.

When the food finally showed up I wasted no time assembling the burger adding pickles and the least frilly piece of lettuce on the board. I added a scoop of the thousand island dressing and also added a splodge of the barbeque sauce that was on the table. I was super-duper hungry so practically inhaled the first mouthful or two, before realising that actually, there was going to be no WOW moment with this burger. Here are the notes I took:

Bread stale, dry and chewy.

Patty beefy but overcooked, chewy

Strange acrid bitter taste I can't put my finger on.

Bacon, tasteless, soft.

Fries limp, soggy, cooked from frozen? - taste of old chip fat.

Thousand island sauce with finely chopped gherkin is quite nice.

When we'd all done eating, I asked Roxy, one of my dining buddies (and my favourite ice cream blogger), why she only ate half of her burger. Her response summed things up rather well: "I was chewing a mouthful of burger and I couldn't work out whether the thing that was chewy was the bread or the meat."

I was also in the company of fellow Burgerac contributor, the enigmatic Cheeseblogger. He too had noticed the strange bitter taste that pervaded our burgers. He had a theory: "It's that barbeque sauce. It's off." I gave it a sniff and it did seem to have an aggressively acrid smell. Did I, you might well wonder, try a little more of the sauce to work out if that was indeed what had saved the burger from total blandness, (though obviously not in a good way)? Hell no. I rallied the troops, we paid our bill and we fucked off. Probably never to return.

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All Star Lanes

95 Brick Lane

London E1 6QL

Call for opening times and bookings: Tel : 020 7426 9200

www.allstarlanes.co.uk

Trolli Mini Burger sweets

2011-09-26T12:26:00.000+01:00

Ah, the Trolli Mini Burger sweet... Individually packaged in miniature, transparent burger cartons, and around 2cm tall, these fruity chewy sweets are just too cool for school!

I'd never encountered a Trolli Mini Burger until a few months ago when my other half bought me at least a year's supply of them as a little burger-related pressie. I dished 'em out at last week's Burgermat Show - and my 1000th Twitter follower got a load too as part of a package of Burger related goodies.

www.trolli.de

Byron Uncle Sam Burger

2011-09-17T12:05:00.001+01:00

£7.50 How do you make a really good American style cheeseburger, no messin? Byron answers this question with the Uncle Sam burger...

As London embraces and celebrates the notion of the gourmet burger, and chefs experiment with obscure cheeses and fancy-pants flavour combos, Byron takes things back down to basics with its take on a classic American cheeseburger...

Throughout September Byron is serving the Uncle Sam, a no-messing cheeseburger comprising a 6oz 100% beef patty, a slice of American cheese, sliced pickle and French's mustard and tomato ketchup. That's right, no buttery glazed bun, no lettuce shredded or otherwise, no onion rings, no slippery tomato slice, no bacon... just a beef patty, a slice of Kraft cheese, thick discs of sweet pickle, and the red and yellow stuff. It's so simple, it seems crazy that Byron haven't done this before. And, once you taste it, it seems crazy that Byron haven't added this to the permanent menu: It's a really super cheeseburger!

The Uncle Sam is also a really great example of the ol' less-is-more philosophy. You'd be right in thinking that there's nothing clever or innovative exhibited here. But that's the beauty of this wonderfully unpretentious burger. Made with super tasty components, perfectly cooked and assembled, it laughs in the face of more ambitious burgers that invariably fail to walk the talk. Refreshingly devoid of grandeur, the Uncle Sam's keep-it-simple approach is a welcome and tasty one. Bravo Byron!

Some readers might wonder why I'm giving such a standard burger five stars. But just because a burger isn't complex in its layers and flavourings doesn't mean it's not flippin' beautiful. Mine was served a perfect, juicy, medium rare (as requested) and every mouthful was full of perfectly balanced flavour. The Uncle Sam quite simply achieves what it set out to. It's a celebration of the American Cheeseburger worth celebrating. Aesthetically, it's no work of art, it's plain and simple, but I could find no fault in it, only the kind of joy that on this blog is rewarded with an accolade the same colour as French's famous mustard.

Folks, you've got two weeks left to sample one, unless of course Byron decide to add the Uncle Sam to its permanent menu.

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There are numerous Byron branches in London. Find your nearest one by visiting www.byronhamburgers.com

The Burgermat Show at Beach London

2011-09-13T18:24:00.002+01:00

It's been a while since The Burgermat Show two-night BurgerMonday event back in June. But now the Burgermat Show artwork will now appear not on tables as placemats, but framed on the walls of Beach London's gallery on Cheshire Street WHOOP!

As well as showing the Burgermat Show artwork by no fewer than 24 TOTALLY AWESOME ILLUSTRATORS, there will be very limited numbers of a special Burgermat Show gift pack on sale exclusively at Beach London – developed and made in an appropriately lo-fi way by Burgerac in cahoots with the East London gallery / shop / café. I won't say any more at this stage but simply show the below photo as a "clue"....

If any Burgerac blog readers happen to be in the Cheshire Street / Brick Lane area this Thursday evening from about 6.30 onwards, do pop along and say hello and check out the show at the private view and maybe have a Gin & Tonic with us and consider investing in some totally affordable, Burgermat Show stuff!

Full list of contributing Burgermat Show artists:
Andy Rementer, Asbestos, Blam, BrenB, Chris Gray, Chrissie Macdonald (in collab with John Short), Crispin Finn, Dick Hogg, Emma Kelly, Gemma Shiel (Lazy Oaf), Holly Wales, Ian Stevenson, Intercity, James Joyce, Jen Bilik (Knock Knock), Jon Boam, Linzie Hunter, Malika Favre, Nishant Choksi, Peskimo, Ping Zhu, Richard Hart, Rob Flowers, and Timba Smits.

A BIG THANK YOU to Charlie at Beach London, and to Ravi and Michelle for sorting out drinks for the private view.

Remember, you don't have to visit the show to buy A2 Giclée Burgermat prints, as they are available from print-process.com. Browse the artwork / choose a print at www.burgermat.com

Ben Tish & Ben Mulock's OT Deluxe Burger

2011-09-08T08:59:00.022+01:00

Skillfully and oh-so-cleverly putting (Iberico) ham into a "hamburger", Ben Tish and Ben Mulock of London's Opera Tavern have created a dish (never mind a burger) deserving of legend...

For the other week's installment of BurgerMonday, Opera Tavern chefs Ben Tish and Ben Mulock created a beautifully deluxe version (with added truffle) of OT's delicious Iberico Pork and Foie Gras burgers which I raved about back in May here on Burgerac. It was absolutely fucking spectacular...

As is the tradition at BurgerMonday events, there were three courses. To start we were served Gazpacho with spiced green tomato and manteca croutons. The whiteness of the croutons is actually whipped Iberico pork fat (there's a running theme). The soup itself was heavenly - although the more of it I ate, the more I thought the balance leaned a little heavily towards being slightly too acidic. A minor quibble. It was top drawer.

Ah, the main event hoved in to view looking like this. But before I focus on the burger, let me tell you that the fries were cooked in – wait for it – Iberico Pork fat! They were really, really good. OK, now let's consider the burger, a full size beast accessorised with truffle pecorino and aged jamon....

Just look at it. Wow... And it tasted DIVINE. Even as I tried hard not to audibly moan in gastronomic ecstacy whilst masticating on this hammy treat, I was in awe not just of the deep rich and brilliantly balanced flavours, but of the ingenuity of the thing. This really is a cleverly conceived burger, and without a doubt the most technically brilliant piece of cooking I've encountered in all my burger-scoffing jaunts.

Instead of the aged manchego that appears in the OT mini pork and foie gras burgers, this burger sported truffle pecorino, and lurking underneath the melted cheese, was a thin slice of aged jamon, which had practically melted into the burger patty. The patty's deliciousness is hard to define in mere words and I was keen to chat to the affable Ben Mulock who very kindly took the time to tell me about his approach to making it...

"I wanted to do more with the truffle flavour than just use our pecorino, so I thought about how to get it inside the burger," Mulock explains. "I had chopped and sliced some going through the first prototype but felt it didn't come through smoothly or evenly enough. Eventually I decided to make a truffle milkshake in a blender so I could get it through the mix evenly. This worked a treat - but I wanted more so I also shaved on the mandolin more truffle to fold through the burger mix to give more flavour and texture to the burger. It was still missing something though. Even though it was great I knew I had to change the mechanics further and it was only when I upped the foi gras quantity that I was finally happy with the patty."

But hang on, Mulock wasn't done yet with tweaking the burger just yet. "The next thing to undergo a rethink was the relish," he told me. "The burger had grown richer so I needed to make it slightly sharper to give balance. I used the same butterhead lettuce as normal and me and Ben Tish created a chopped truffle aioli to give it a last hurrah and extra double amazingness. Thicker, crispy lightly battered onion rings were called for to help give a contrasting texture. Getting the bun size right was also crucial as too big and the whole thing is stifled by bread, too small and it's too bloody messy. And the guindilla (pepper) on top through the skewer is just too playful not to do."

And here is the final course, an Orange and Manteca Pudding with Tip Top sauce. Not that I ate much of it. Hayley who was sat to my right during this particular BurgerMonday session doesn't like foie gras and while she had a go at the burger, couldn't eat more than a mouthful. I felt sorry for her, really I did. But not for long. I "helped her out" by taking her burger and halving it with my dining buddy. After one and a half burgers (it was so worth it) I couldn't really do a pudding.

While the Opera Tavern's two Bens say that the OT deluxe burger won't appear on the OT's regular menu, I urge you to check out the mini pork and foie gras burgers on the menu. Check out my review of those lovely little mouthfuls of joy here.

I've said it before, I'll say it again – if you haven't been to a BurgerMonday event, you're missing out on the most exciting burger action in town. The bar seems to be raised higher at each event. I wonder who will be the next chef to step up to the hot plate and prepare a one-off burger of untold awesomeness?

Stay tuned to BurgerMonday activity by joining the Young & Foodish mailing list. Find out more at http://youngandfoodish.com/events/burgermonday

DCi Photorealistic Burger Pouch

2011-09-06T08:52:00.002+01:00

Wow, I've seen burger wallets before, but never have I seen one that takes realism as it's number one design cue quite so successfully! Made of photoprinted polyester it has two zippered compartments for storing your cash, cards, burger restaurant vouchers and all your other super-important stuff...

Made by Decor Craft Inc (DCi), the wallet is one of a range of photorealistic food "pouches". Check out their cupcake pouches:

The Burger Pouch will set you back $14 and a Sprinkle Cupcake Pouch is priced at $12. You can find these foody pouches (there are more too!) at fredflare.com

Pleasure vs pain: the triple-burger tasting menu

2011-08-31T18:58:00.006+01:00

In the last month I've been privy to a new kind of burger-eating experience: that of the gut-busting three-burgers-in-one-sitting burger tasting menu. Here's the deal, diners are served a three course meal - only every course is a beef burger, each one showcasing a particular flavour concept. I've actually experienced three-burgers-at-once TWICE in the last month...

On the first occasion I was at the Admiral Codrington pub, at the behest of chef Fred Smith who'd invited a squad of burger loving tweeps to come and sample three of his recently honed burger concepts: The Lardo Burger, the Isle of Avalon Cheeseburger, and the 333 Chilli Burger. Yes, this really is the kind of event you can find yourself invited to if you're an active member of Twitter and following the "right" people (friendly chefs that like to showcase new burger ideas).

Only here's the thing: maintaining the joyous burger vibe consistently as you eat three hugely calorific burgers laced with lardo (pig fat), stinky cheese, not-to-mention sugary condiments all wrapped up in brioche buns... well, it can be tricky. But, of course dear readers I persevered... for you!

Here are some photos and my thoughts on The Ad Cod burger swarm evening which took place on Wednesday 3rd August:

The first burger served was the Lardo burger (above) which was served in a perfectly toasted glazed brioche bun rubbed with tomato chutney, a 'French' slaw (consisting of shredded iceberg, chopped cornichon, chopped shallot, parsley, Dijon mustard and a little mayo) then sliced tomato, pata Negra lardo, beef patty, more lardo and all topped with morbier cheese...

Now, when you're eating three burgers in one sitting, the first one you encounter is when all your burger-assessing skills are at their sharpest. On my very first bite, I thought the texture was awesome, but I couldn't taste the morbier, so I'm guessing it wasn't quite ripe enough. Other folk on my table said the burger was really mustardy but I couldn't detect a strong mustard flavour from the slaw in my burger at all. Actually, my burger was so mellow in flavour that I could really taste the slice of tomato - which was, actually, delicious. I could also taste the lardo which had an interesting, almost gamey mellow flavour but I didn't particularly like the texture of it, cut as it was into small slices that slipped around in the ensemble. Tasty, but I couldn't help wondering if the lardo might be better if it was 'built-in' somehow to the beef patty.

Next, the Isle of Avalon Cheeseburger, which was served in a toasted, seeded brioche bun, the inside of which was rubbed in a caramelised onion and tomato compote. 'English cucumber slaw' (shredded cucumber and iceberg dressed in an English mustard mayo with chopped dill) a slice of tomato, the patty, and confit old spot pork belly was topped with Isle of Avalon cheese.

This was probably the most ambitious of Fred's three burgers on the night. There was a lot going on - and I'm not sure all the ingredients combined to deliver one beautiful flavour concept. The first mouthful all I could taste was the bang-on ripe cheese which overpowered everything else in the burger. A couple of bites later I got less cheese and really picked up the flavour of the white, lean pork meat which was absolutely delicious. The problem was that the taste of pork didn't marry well with that of the beef patty. I'd rather have one of the meats and enjoy it - or the other. As a burger accompaniment, the Old Spot pork doesn't work nearly so well as say the AMAZING salty bacon Fred used in the Burgermat Show burger back in June. And when that Isle of Avalon cheese is in full effect, it wipes out the flavour of both of the meats. Too strong! The cucumber slaw though, was GENIUS. I hated the concept "on paper" but the flavour of it was super. Actually, it made me think that this bun, that slaw, the Burgermat Show burger bacon, and a reasonably tasteless cheese such as mellow cheddar or Monteray Jack - would make for a super bacon cheese burger...

And last but by no means least, the 333 Chilli Burger. This came in a toasted brioche bun rubbed with chipotle relish, 'green chilli slaw' (green chilli Mayo and iceberg), home pickled Jalapeños, and a beef patty topped with ancho chilli braised short rib. Just look at it with a thin strip of green chilli protruding... Even before I'd tasted it I was a fan of this one.

For me, Fred's 333 Chilli Burger is ready to stick on the Ad Cod menu with no tweaks required. I LOVED the slaw in this one with its thin raw strips of hot green chilli - and the braised short rib was absolutely delicious. Really great flavour and I could eat one of these every day for the rest of my life NO PROBLEM!

Fred, if you're having any more tasting sessions at the Ad Cod, looking for feedback on your latest burger concoctions, HOLLER!

Now then, the second triple-burger feast I attended recently was a BurgerMonday organised affair – cooked up in cahoots with The Draft House pub on Tower Bridge Road. The burgers on the menu were The Yolk Burger (topped with a trimmed flat fried Egg), The Smoke Burger (topped with smoked cheddar and smoked streaky bacon), and The Foie Burger (topped with a slab of Foie Gras).

None of these burgers were as ambitious as Fred's Admiral Codrington burgers, but rather featured one particular flavour or ingredient that would give each burger a strong identity. The Yolk Burger (above) would make a fantastic burger-shaped brunch – the yolk and the hollandaise sauce really complimenting the gentle beefy flavour of the patty (which includes finely chopped challots and some parsley, a burger recipe trait Draft House founder Charlie McVeigh inherited from his mother).

The Smoke Burger was a wonderful celebration of smoked bacon flavour and the in-house smoked cheddar was a lovely touch. I don't know where Draft House get their burger buns from, but they're also worth a mention. Soft, fresh and slightly sweet with a perfectly glazed top.

The Foie Burger, although served as the third burger of the evening (and quite a challenge for many of the assembled), was cooked to perfection and an absolute delight to er, inhale.

And guess what? Unlike most BurgerMonday events, this triple whammy of burger joy can be yours to experience, as the Draft House burger feast is on the menu to all and sundry PROVIDING you're in a group of eight or more (at £14.75 per head) AND that you phone and book in advance. Please note, this burger-tastic menu is only on until the end of this month (September). Click here for details: www.drafthouse.co.uk

Of course, booking yourself in for a triple-burger experience isn't something you should undertake lightly. I strongly suspect the ease with which I inhaled the third (Foie) burger at The Draft House the other week had a lot to do with the three-burger "training session" at the Ad Cod a couple of weeks before. Even though it's totally wrong that my body should adapt to this kind of over-indulgent burger fest, I can't help wonder when I'll next get to guzzle three burgers in one sitting...

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www.theadmiralcodrington.co.uk

www.drafthouse.co.uk

http://youngandfoodish.com/events/burgermonday/

Jonathan Blaustein: The Value of a Dollar

2011-08-24T22:38:00.001+01:00

Jonathan Blaustein's photographic project The Value of a Dollar, in which he documents numerous food items bought for a dollar, is no stranger to the blogosphere. However, I'd never seen it until a day or two ago and so I thought I'd show it here...

The burger at the top of the post is a rather sad looking one dollar's worth of Double Cheeseburger from McDonalds. Reminds me of the double whammy with cheese scene from Falling Down.

And this is what Blaustein bought for a dollar on a visit to Burger King - a side salad with ranch dressing

Above is one dollar's worth of Beef shank from Supersave

And this is a dollar's worth of a salty sea-dog's beard. Just kidding, it's pork floss. Pork floss? What the heck is that? A reasonable question – I hadn't heard of this stuff myself until I saw this photo and read the caption on Blaustein's site a few days ago. I looked it up and now I know that pork floss is also known as rousong in Mandarin and it's basically dried, sweetened roast pork pulled to separate the fibres and then spun until it has the texture of crispy candy floss. It's sweet, salty, porky and melts in your mouth – so I'm told. Sounds totally amazing to me. Which leads me to wonder if all the above ingredients could somehow be combined to make a kind of pork floss burger? Don't worry, I'm not really thinking about including that BK salad.

Blaustein's The Value Of A Dollar project really is food for thought. See more images from the project at www.jblau.com

And now I'll leave you with a song for a dollar. Nothing to do with Blaustein's project – I just happen to know and love this Bobby Darin record. I hope he got more than a dollar for it!

Soho Hotel Refuel Restaurant Soho Burger

2011-08-20T09:24:00.001+01:00

£15.50 with fries. Served in a croissant bun with avocado, it's different, I'll give it that. But there's something missing here...

Having eaten three burgers in one sitting the previous evening, the decision to have a burger for lunch at the Soho Hotel with a friend on Tuesday was an impulsive one that my wife-to-be, and indeed my GP, would undoubtedly have advised strongly against. However, what I like to believe is that by blogging about it – my blatant probably-need-help-greediness is somehow validated...

As you can probably tell from the above image, my impulsiveness meant I was sans camera on this particular burger-reviewing occasion so my iPhone camera was large and in charge (apologies for the drop in image quality in this post). So, yes, there I was in the Soho Hotel with a good friend of mine eying up the most affordable thing on the menu: the Soho Burger, which comes with French Fries for £15.50. We ordered one each (naturally) and were both delighted to be asked how we'd like our burgers cooked, and to be able to order them medium rare. We were both also asked if we wanted cheese which is an available addition at no extra cost. Er, do bears shit in the woods?

The burger was served on a plate with it's lid served ajar, showing an ever so slightly translucent layer of melted cheddar on an impressively large burger. To give you a sense of scale, the bun itself, more croissant in texture and taste than brioche, was a good five or six inches in diameter. T'was a veritable beast! I lifted up the lid to investigate...

The inside had been toasted to a tee - and then spread evenly with mayo. I would have preferred to have made that call myself, but anyhoo, I continued my explorations. The enormous beef patty had nice seared grill marks and it was sat on, to my surprise, a wedge of avocado, which in turn sat on a slice of tomato. Curiouser and curiouser, I thought. Then I stopped thinking and put the lid on - but only after cutting and adding some slices of gherkin from the two length-ways cut halves of pickle served on the side – and also a splodge of the tomato relish provided.

Next I decided to cleft the beast in twain. As I mentioned, the bun was more croissant than brioche - actually flakey on the outside and aerated on the inside. The meat was juicy and ready to fall apart. After taking the photo below, I didn't really make time to take any more photos. I just ate. The burger patty was of the unseasoned, unadulterated beef kind that only gets a good ol' seasoning as it hits the grill. It wasn't the most deeply flavourful beef patty I've ever had, but it was good.

The gherkin was a bit strong on the vinegar vibes - but actually that worked really well as the relative plain-ness of the burger needed something sharp to work with it. The bun I really liked. The avocado was also quite nice although avocado and tomato together in a burger is an architectural disaster waiting to happen – they're two of the most slippery things you could possibly have two slices of next to each other in a sandwich. Perhaps unsurprisingly the burger did, eventually, fall apart just mouthfuls before being finished – not because of bun failure, but because of the avocado / tomato slippage issues.

In summary, there's potential here. I love the croissant bun, I like the beef patty, the earthy cheddar and the separate bowl of crisp, perfectly salted fries – and also the tomato relish served on the side. The avocado and bun also provide points of difference to other Soho burgers, which could really work in its favour. As it stands, the Soho Hotel's burger is perfectly serviceable - it does the job. However, if the chef wants the Soho Burger to be considered as one of London's best, something else will need to be added to the mix: finesse.

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Refuel Restaurant

Soho Hotel

4 Richmond Mews

London W1D 3DH

Call for opening times and bookings: Tel : 020 7559 3000

www.firmdale.com/london/the-soho-hotel

Burger & Barrel Bash Style Burger (NYC)

2011-08-17T13:37:00.001+01:00

$15 including fries and onion rings. Burgerac's authoritative new reviewer, Major Tightbuns, has just filed a most favourable report from NYC...

The newest addition to the Burgerac reviewing team, MAJOR TIGHTBUNS found himself (and his deputy) in NYC's Soho district last week on a sweltering summer day with just one mission in mind: to check out Burger & Barrel's highly rated burger menu – and the joint's Bash Style Burger revealed to them why it's an award-winning jewel in its burger-shaped crown...

TeeeeenSHUN! Major Tightbuns here reporting for duty in the US of A. Currently deep undercover in the Big Apple, hunting out anyplace serving up fine quality meats between two slabs of dough. Any below-par foodstuffs encountered will immediately be issued with a COURT MARSHALL, dagnammit!

Right, first things first. Burger & Barrel, situated on the south side of W Houston Street, just a block west of Broadway, describes itself as a "winepub". That was a new one on us but translates as chef Josh Capon's combination of gastropub and American bar. That means a packed wine list (some house wines on tap, hence the "barrel" of the title), a selection of house cocktails (Tequila Mockingbird, anyone?) beers on draft (and also in bottles), plus, far more importantly, a great looking menu full of fine-tuned comfort food and classics with a twist – at the heart of which are B&B's fabled burgers.

Decor is somewhere in the region of Gallic-bistro-meets-hip-winebar, resulting in much dark wood and high slung wine racks, celebrity vintner-signed bottles, and a comfortable looking bar greeting you as you enter the room. It's a cosy layout, plenty of room but with an intimacy to the individual tables. Ever entered a fairly quiet restaurant and they seat you at the worst table in the place? The opposite happened here and we were offered a great spot by the open fronted restaurant, a good combination of sunshine and air con. Nice. Service was fine - friendly, efficient, and if the waitress couldn't answer a question (there were a few burger shaped gaps in her knowledge) she was happy to consult the chef.

We made the most of salivating over the lunch menu by immediately ordering a couple of Bacon Bloody Marias to help us through: Bacon and Jalepeno Tequila with spiced tomato juice and a finely sliced grilled bacon garnish. Now then, bacon in a drink may sound strange but this, let me tell you, works.

Refreshing deep tomato, just the right amount of kick coming out of that Jalepeno-infused tequila, mellowed by the smokey saltyness of the bacon smuggled into the mix. Delish, and as far as the Major is concerned, a new benchmark for the brunch cocktail. The Caramel Twist "spiked shake" (made with Makers Mark bourbon) was also winking at us from the menu, but by then we'd pinned our colours to the flag.

Navigating the Bison sliders, Tuna Tartare, and Shrimp Ceviche, a tough decision was made and to start we went for the Spicy Buffalo Chicken Lollipops (the fine bone of the chicken providing the "lollystick"), served with a blue cheese dipping sauce, plus a summer special of Watermelon with Shishito Peppers (which are similar to chargrilled Padron peppers), feta cheese and lime juice – a perfect plate for a humid summer day in NY. Both were amazing and lasted mere nano seconds on our plates.

And so, to the burgers. Six were listed on the menu – although given that this place takes its burger innovation seriously, more appear throughout the year as seasonal specials, such as the the Black Truffle Burger, aka the BTC burger. However, we were interested in B&B's round-the-year show stoppers, and so ordered a B&B Classic and also a Bash Style Burger.

The B&B Classic is good. Good bun, good burger patty (although possibly slightly underseasoned), but juicy, served with lettuce, tomato, pickles and American cheese. The pickles start to take over the taste party, but it's a good burger. There's nothing really wrong with it. But is it a great burger? Well, all bets were off as soon as we tasted the Bash Style Burger!

Named after B&B's award-winning entry in the People's Choice category of New York's 2009 Burger-Bash event (now a well-established and much loved part of the city's annual Wine & Food Festival), this is an amazing heavyweight of flavour. A griddled 6oz beef patty, like the Classic, is served with American cheese, finely sliced pickles, and a soft glazed Parker House roll. However, the key ingredient that lifts it higher than the Classic is the inclusion of a caramelized onion and bacon jam.

Apparently devised by Capon to deliver bacon and onion in every bite, it also helps the structure of the burger by making sure the thing doesn't collapse around strips of bacon and onion rings. It brings a sweetness (but not too sweet) and depth of flavour to the whole affair which perfectly compliments the meat - super juicy and complete with rivers of oozing fat (in a good way), which you notice creeping down your hands half way through the meal. Somehow the bun perfectly stands up to such saturation without slipping out of place, getting too soggy or falling apart: a great piece of burger engineering. Just enough thinly shredded iceberg lettuce adds a little texture to the experience. Ketchup is provided on the side.

Both of these burgers came with plenty of thin potato fries (fried only once but full of flavour), and were topped with crispy red onion rings that, when you took a bite, left the rest of the onion in place – one of the first times we've had an onion ring and the onion didn't slip out of the batter to slop around your chin after the first bite.

After that there was barely room for a desert, but we valiantly managed to squeeze in an order of mini ice cream cones: two small chocolate dipped, vanilla ice cream caramel cones topped with almonds. Simple but just right, served in a yum-tastic belgian waffle-esque cone.

Without a doubt, Burger & Barrel lives up to the multitude of favorable reviews it has received since opening last year. Interesting to note that although the B&B burgers are the obvious draw, everything we ordered was top notch and it is clearly a place that prides itself in quality across the menu. All in all, this was a great experience and one ripe for repeating next time the Major finds himself undercover in the USA.

Major Tightbuns' verdict?: "Son, you're gonna go far: 5 stars!"

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Burger & Barrel

25 W Houston

New York, NY 10012

www.burgerandbarrel.com

Sarah Illenberger McForest burger

2011-08-15T13:36:00.001+01:00

Every now and then I have the misfortune to encounter a burger that's about as tasty as a plank of wood. However, until now, I'd never clapped eyes on a burger actually made from wood. This image of a wooden burger popped up the other day on Sight Unseen blog on which there's a great interview with the Berlin-based illustrator who created it, Sarah Illenberger...

There aren't many (any) materials Illenberger won't utilise in her vivid and fun artwork. She regularly creates sculptural works (out of paper, meat, wool, vegetables, plants... you get the idea, anything really) for a host of clients including Nike, Vanity Fair, Time Magazine, and Wallpaper*. This particular piece, entitled Mc Forest, appeared in publisher Gestalten's 2008 book Sideways, and was created in collaboration with a carpenter (the bun was turned on a lathe) to comment on McDonald's deforesting activity in South America.

While Illenberger's work has appeared in various books about contemporary illustration over the last few years, Gestalten is set to publish the first monograph of her work next month. Here are a couple more of her food-based illustrations:

Fashion Vegetables (Modegemüse), 2009
Neon Magazine

To see more of Illenberger's work, visit www.sarahillenberger.com

To read the interview with her on SeenUnseen, visit www.sightunseen.com

For more info about Gestalten's forthcoming Sarah Illenberger book (cover shown, left), visit https://shop.gestalten.com

Friends With You: Mr TTT

2011-08-09T08:34:00.000+01:00

Meet Mr TTT. He's the plushest burger toy around and pretty much the main man in the Burger Bunch – a series of plush (soft) toys from Miami-based good vibes crew, Friends With You...

Mr TTT is about the size of a generously-proportioned burger at about 15 cm in the round and about 18cm high, unless of course you take him to pieces. Yes, he splits into three separate pieces of cuddly fun. And, like all of Friends With You's characters, Mr TTT has his own "biog" printed on his label:

Awakened by the conjuring of Bumble Grump, Mr.TTT Burger and his fine ingredients live a wonderful and delicious existence. With the ability to come apart and back together, this soft and cuddly little burger will warm your heart and tummy with his charismatic charm.

We live in a cynical world and I for one am a huge fan of Friends With You's upbeat products, artwork and installations, all of which are designed to spread "magic, luck and friendship" no matter what. Find out more at www.friendswithyou.com

Westville Cast Iron Turkey Burger (NYC)

2011-08-05T08:13:00.001+01:00

Yes, that's right, a turkey burger: $10 with a choice of fries or salad thrown in for good measure. And they deliver. Good times!

If you consult The Westville Cookbook, founder Jay Strauss will tell you that other than the built-in flavorings provided by a "well-used cast iron pan," the only other secret to his succulent turkey burger is a liberal seasoning of salt'n'pepper. Served on a toasted Portuguese muffin, this simple burger is something of a departure from my usual meaty adventures – but it turned out to be a deliciously worthwhile gamble...

The all-white-meat ground patty tasted neither like classic turkey breast, nor (unsurprisingly) a regular ground beef burger. This ambiguity may sound scary, but rest assured it was not. Instead, with melted smoked Gouda cheese layered on top (you can also choose from American, cheddar, mozzarella, Swiss, goat or blue), the juicy turkey burger is in a taste category all of its own. I've tasted other turkey burgers which try too hard to mock beef, and some that taste like a dried-up leftover Thanksgiving meal. Westville, however, gets it right by following product design hero Dieter Rams' motto: less is more.

OK, so it's possibly not the most mouthwatering cut through to ever appear here on the Burgerac blog, but I'm happy I didn't let this stop me getting stuck in – proof of the pudding and all that... Once piled high with red onions, pickles, lettuce and tomato, I was an even happier camper. And as a self-confessed salt-fiend, I was pleasantly surprised that no additional seasoning was needed. It was absolutely delicious, this turkey burger is a revelation! Taking into additional consideration that my Westville meal was delivered to my workplace from its Chelsea branch, a good ten blocks from the office (there's also a Westville in the East Village and another in Grenwich Village), it should receive even more props for its freshness.

Ninety-nine times out of 100 I'll take an all-beef patty over a turkey burger – but for anyone in NYC looking to switch things up, I can totally recommend Westville's Turkey concoction.

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Westville Chelsea

246 W 18th Street
New York, NY 10011
Tel: +1 212 924 2223

www.westvillenyc.com

Burgerac's My 7 Links

2011-08-03T07:45:00.001+01:00

I don't really know much about it, but I was nominated by the hunger-inducing Skinny Bib blog to participate in Tripbase's My 7 Links project – where bloggers post links to stories on their blog in response to seven different prompts: Your most beautiful post; your most popular; your most controversial; your most helpful; a post which was surprisingly successful; a post which didn't get as much attention as it deserved; and the post that you are most proud of. Yup, I can do that, so here goes...

The idea with the My 7 Links project, according to the page about it on Tripbase, is that it "unites bloggers in a joint endeavour to share lessons learned and create a bank of blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again." Without further ado here are my seven links:

Most beautiful post goes to my post about Stephanie Anderson's tiny paper burger artworks. Read that post here

I've now written up and rated all three of Bar Boulud's excellent burger offerings but my write up of the Piggie Burger (shown above) is, according to Blogger's built-in blog analytics, my most popular post to date. Read it here

If indeed anything on Burgerac could be deemed such, I'd imagine my most controversial post is the one in which I reveal that Hawksmoor's burger offerings don't float my boat on account of being rather sickly tasting to my palate and being prone to self-destructing. Many of my friends regularly rave about Hawksmoor burgers. Personally, I just don't get it. OK, it is slightly controversial... You can read that post here

My most helpful post, surely has to be the review of Spuntino's Beef and Bone Marrow Slider that turns out to also be a review of Spuntino's secret, off-menu burger. I've only had it once, but it was ruddy marvelous. And hopefully the post empowered a few readers – in a helpful, secret-burger-knowledge kind of way.

And so to the post which turned out to be surprisingly successful. Well, I didn't expect so many readers to tweet about my Whoop Ass Barbeque Sauce back in April, but tweet they did. It's since been eclipsed, but for a couple of months after posting it, it was the most read story on Burgerac. Read it here

A post you feel didn’t get the attention it deserved, you say? Enter Opera Tavern's amazeballs mini Iberico Pork and Foie Gras burgers. Just look at them for crying out loud. This post from May, and far more importantly, these small but perfectly formed burgers, deserve more attention and praise. Read it. Tweet it. Then book a table at Opera Tavern. Shut up. Do it.

And finally, my seventh link: the post of which I'm the most proud. There's no contest - it has to be my post revealing the first few images of artwork which I commissioned for the hugely enjoyable Burgermat Show – a collaboration with BurgerMonday. I guess really I'm more proud of the event than of the actual blog post. But, without doubt, this is where Burgerac's pride is at. Loved working on the project and can't thank all the artists involved enough. Read that post here. More info about The Burgermat Show can be found here.

Et voila. These are my seven links. All that's left for me to do is to pass the torch to five fabulous food blogs:

thirtyoneseventyfive.com

More info about the My 7 Links project can be found at www.tripbase.com

Illegal Burger (Oslo) brand identity

2011-07-31T15:55:00.000+01:00

I totally love the brand identity of Oslo's independent Illegal Burger restaurant. Designed by Oslo design agency The Metric System, and launched late last year, it features a host of illustrated masked foodstuff characters – including a cigar-smoking sauce bottle and a gun-toting wedge of cheese...

OK, so the name of the restaurant makes you wonder what the heck the meat patties are made of, in an undeniably Sweeney Todd kind of way, but with graphics as super as this, Illegal Burger totally gets away with it. And in truth, the name of the joint isn't to suggest dubious meat sourcing, but rather a nod to the former use of the restaurant's address as a non-licensed speakeasy bar. And guess how they launched the restaurant? Secretly, word of mouth style. As if it really was illegal. Somebody deserves an award for this stuff. It's genius.

Oh, and Burgerac has it on good authority that Illegal Burger has a charcoal burning oven in which they cook their reportedly delicious burgers... I know I shouldn't admit it, but this burger detective wants some Illegal Burger action!

Design: The Metric System

Illustration: Frode Skaren

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Illegal Burger
Møllergata 23
0179 Oslo

Norway

Bar Boulud Frenchie Burger

2011-07-27T08:03:00.000+01:00

£12.25 plus £3.50 for amazing fries. The Frenchie is (French) chef Daniel Boulud's ode to the American cheeseburger. C'est très très bon!

Well, it seemed rude to not give Bar Boulud's Frenchie Burger its own review, seeing as I've written up and rated the Knightsbridge bistro's other two burgers. And you'll never guess what? Just like the Yankee and the Piggie, the Frenchie burger is also a worthy recipient of 5-star Burgerac approval...

The last time I was at Bar Boulud, just last week, I was with a friend who I persuaded to let me order all three burgers. No, not just for me. So we could share them – which is a new one for me, as normally I hate the thought of sharing my food. Actually, the burgers aren't enormous in BB so sharing three between two here isn't as gut-bustingly greedy as it sounds...

Above is a section of our burger platter awaiting our attention. My thoughts on the Yankee and also the Piggie haven't changed since reviewing them. Nor have my views on the fries: they're still excellent. But on this visit to BB I was determined to focus all my attention on the Frenchie, of which I'd only previously sampled just one overpoweringly mustardy bite...

The Frenchie consists of a thick beef patty which is accompanied with slices of confit pork belly, rocket, tomato-onion compote, morbier cheese and served in a peppered brioche bun. Despite the fact that morbier is a favourite cheese of mine (more on that in a mo) the Frenchie, on paper, is the least appealing to me of BB's three 'NY burgers'. Why? Well, because when it comes down to it I'm a purist at heart. I like a burger to be, well, a burger. Hence sampling the Yankee burger on my first visit, the Piggie on my second, and now, on my third, it's finally the turn of what I'd always considered to be "the fancy one".

Like I said, morbier is one of my favourite cheeses. It hails from the Jura mountains on the eastern edge of France, as close as you can get to Switzerland without actually being in Switzerland. For me, its structure and taste is a perfect blend of Swiss and French sensibilites. It's got a bit of a pong, but actually has a really mild and nutty taste. Taking a bite of my Frenchie burger, I was delighted this time to be able to detect and savour its distinctly mellow flavour, which was balanced wonderfully with the sweet tomato-onion compote (rather like a classic onion marmalade) and the peppery twang of the rocket.

The above image shows the patty to be slightly more cooked than I would have liked but note the oozy morbier cheese and also the thin, delicate slices of the pork belly which acts as a kind of wonderful, soft and delicious bacon. Normally I would scoff at the idea of rocket in a burger, but with this particular blend of ingredients, its peppery flavour really works well. A touch of French mustard and the gently buttery brioche bun add to the burger's French-ness, and as I polish off the last morsel, I find myself wondering if I haven't gone and saved the best till last. The Frenchie is a French chef's ode to the New York burger. It's also an absolutely cracking dish. Félicitations!

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Bar Boulud

Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park

66 Knightsbridge

London SW1X 7LA

Call for opening times and bookings: Tel :020 7201 3899

danielnyc.com/barbouludLondon.html

How Do You Want Your Burger Cooked?

2011-07-24T17:24:00.002+01:00

Only a week ago, design company Pentagram posted a little reminder on its blog of the identity work it did for Bobby's Burger Palace back in 2008. It included this delightfully encouraging colour chart which asks How Do You Want Your Burger Cooked? A question, of course, which us burger lovers hope to be asked each time we order one. The trouble is, many Londoners are being told that we can't actually have burgers cooked how we'd ideally like them because of health and safety nonsense about having to cook a burger all the way through...

Chris Pople of the ever brilliant Cheese and Biscuits blog just posted a piece on this very subject the other day, entitled Burgers - The Fight For a Happy Medium, which is well worth a read. In the post Chris questions the supposed wisdom of the Food Standards Agency's beurocracy which suggests (demands) that all beef burgers should be cooked all the way through to avoid a vague possibility of food poisoning – regardless of diners' personal burger cooking preferences.

Also worth a read is Daniel Young's (of Young & Foodish / BurgerMonday) post about his recent experience at the new Bistro du Vin in Soho where he was served a burger made from meat that had been cooked before it was minced to try and get round the bacteria "problems" connected to not cooking burgers all the way through. The episode related would be laughable if this subject wasn't so close to my heart. Read that post here.

Bizarrely MWB Group Holdings, operators of Bistro du Vin, Malmaison and also London's Fox & Anchor pub, whose burgers have received much acclaim in recent years, look ready to relinquish their burgers' reputations and places in various Top Ten burger lists – because of some shitty-arsed health and safety directive. And, by the looks of it, they're not alone, which is all rather depressing. Anyways, have a read of those pieces if you're interested. In the meantime, here's some more images of Pentagram's branding (designed by Michael Beirut and Joe Marianek) for US burger joint chain, Bobby's Burger Palace:

Although I've never been to a branch of Bobby's Burger Palace, I'm a big fan of its branding, and - but of course - of its burger cooked-to-your-preference policy. Bravo!

Further reading:

Burgers - The Fight For a Happy Medium, by Chris Pople

My Confidence Cracked in the Bistro du Vin Burger,
by Daniel Young

Report on the Safe Cooking of Burgers, by the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (commissioned by the Food Standards Agency)

Guerilla Burger Cheeseburger

2011-07-20T09:28:00.005+01:00

£5.60 buys you this seriously uninspiring cheeseburger. Another £3.10 will get you a bowl of cooked-from-frozen Crinkly Fries. Wrongness.

Whilst it is my oh-so-noble mission to sniff out the best burgers London has to offer, it's inevitable that occasionally I stumble upon one that is probably best avoided. The Cheeseburger at Guerilla Burger, near Selfridges, is one such burger. Pancake-like, it's as low in flavour as it is in height...

If I was at a drunken student barbeque, then the above plate of food might be considered "a good effort". However, I'm at a restaurant. A London restaurant dedicated to burgers. And I have no idea why the folks at Guerilla Burgers think the above plate of food might be considered an attractive proposition. Is this cheesy stodge in front of me representative of their vision of burger perfection? I fucking hope not, it looks horrible. I plonk the bog standard tomato, lettuce and some onion on top of the cheese blanket (complete with eye-like bubble) and put the lid on after squeezing on some French's mustard and some Heinz tommy-k. Even with the salad in it, the burger, bun-and-all, stands at an impressively two-dimensional three centimetres tall. It's one of the least appealing burgers I've faced for quite some time. Still, maybe it's a taste sensation...

Er, no. It's not a taste sensation. It's woefully bland. Neither the patty nor the cheese has any redeeming qualities. Actually there is a flavour, but it's neither beefy or cheesy (or redeeming). I can only describe said flavour as both dirty and greasy. I persevere. I take another photo. I try just a bit of the patty on its own. I close my eyes, chew gently and really try to discern something worthy. I give up. I try one of the Crinkly Fries. Yes, they have been fried, but from frozen. I sigh and find that I'm actually shaking my head in dismay...

As I sit there looking at what lies before me I admit to myself that I'm baffled. What the fuck is this all about? It's not of the American school of fast food, and it's definitely not street food. Nor is it (rather obviously) an attempt at a gourmet burger experience. If indeed this style of burger has a name, then it is a lazy-ass school dinner burger. The kind of heated-up-by-dinner-ladies crap that Saint Jamie (Oliver) has crusaded against in recent years. There's a complete lack of joy here.

Despite the fact that the fries were also fucking shit, it has to be said that the staff I encountered at GB were delightful. But cheery efficiency just doesn't make up for bland food. Whoever the brains behind Guerilla Burger is needs to wake up and smell the coffee. London's burger landscape is evolving rapidly. There's a food revolution happening not just in restaurants, gastro pubs and dedicated burger joints all over town, but on the streets too. When you can buy food from a market stall that's served in a paper bag yet looks and tastes a billion times better than what's offered here, then what's the point? Do the people that run GB ever eat out in London? Do they think what they're doing passes muster in today's burger landscape? Fuck, do they even like burgers? I'm sorry to say it but Guerilla Burgers feels like a scam to take money off unsuspecting passers by, rather than a bone fide burger joint.

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Guerilla Burgers

35 St James Street

London

W1U 1EU

Tel: 020 7486 1511

www.guerillaburgers.com

Eat Fast Die Young exhibition at YCN

2011-07-17T11:53:00.000+01:00

London-based design duo, Jiggery Pokery has just unleashed a collection of fast food themed ephemera at London's YCN shop in Shoreditch, London. The collection, entitled Eat Fast Die Young, features such delights as Ronald McDonald and Hamburgler toothburshes, a hamburger shaped vanity case, and even a giant burger cushion complete with frilly lettuce...

"We've hunted far and wide, some bits are from America, some from local sources," says one half of Jiggery Pokery, Anna Lomax of the items on display. "We'll be sad to part with the French Fry phone with its creepy finger-like fries," she adds.

Yes, all the items in the Eat Fast Die Young collection are actually for sale in the YCN shop at 72 Rivington Street until Friday July 29 – although you can also peruse the collection and purchase items you fancy online too here.

Here are some of the show's star exhibits:

Ah, the Mega Burger Cushion. Photographed next to a Big Mac to give you a sense of scale. Yours for £395. Detail below:

Ah, a plastic tomato ketchup bottle. But look closely (see detail below), 'tis a Wimpy branded ketchup bottle, £12. Nice!

And what's this? Only some totally amazeballs McDonalds fabric! Check the detail shot below to get a taste of just how awesome this is... Yours for £50.

And my personal favourite item in the collection, the burger bicycle bell, £25:

More info about the Eat Fast Die Young collection can be found on the YCN website at http://ycnonline.com

To find out more about Jiggery Pokery, visit http://jiggerypokery.biz

NB: If you're thinking of buying any of the items in the Eat Fast Die Young collection, my advice would be to do a quick search for it on eBay first. Being something of a burger fan myself (can you tell?) I have acquired a few similar items to these – for a fraction of the cost these items are priced at.

Shake Shack Cheeseburger (NYC)

2011-07-15T08:22:00.004+01:00

Treat yourself to a moment in the New York sunshine with a juicy burger in the park for around $5. Good times, courtesy of Shake Shack!

No matter the time of day, if skies are sunny over New York you will find a solid line of hungry burger fans wrapped around Shake Shack's Madison Square Park location. The hour-long wait is almost the key ingredient to the burger – which is thankfully worth every minute lost waiting on it. You can't help but wonder if the suspense and hunger-building exercise doesn't actually enhance the overall taste experience. In the end, a Shack burger isn't just a meal, it's also a small accomplishment...

This NYC burger purveyor offers several styles of burger, all with or without cheese, served plain (lettuce, tomato, pickle and onion is all available on request) and wrapped in a wax paper pocket to lock in the goodness (and catch any spillage). There's the classic single patty for the fainthearted, a double burger and then a Shack Burger, which comes with more fixins (namely American cheese, lettuce and tomato) and is smothered with ShackSauce (Russian dressing). Even vegetarians can join in the fun with a deep-fried portabello Shroom Burger. For those with a serious hunger though, try the Shack Stack — a Cheeseburger and Shroom Burger combo topped off with ShackSauce, which comes in at a totally reasonable $8.50.

In case you're wondering, I had the classic single cheeseburger ($4.25), as usual. But I have sampled all of them at some point and they all rule! If you wanted to add something, the double cheeseburger is nice because it doesn't feel too heavy, and if you're not really a fries fan it's a good way to go. Or you could opt for a double Shack Burger, though really that's more just about adding toppings and sauce to a double cheeseburger.

All of the burgers at Shake Shack really hit the spot, a statement made after several years of dilligent taste testing. The meat is consistently juicy, the buns are toasted and lightly buttered, and together it all just melts in your mouth. Washed down with some cheesy fries and one of their delicious frozen custards, called Concretes, or shakes and you've got yourself a serious Shack attack!

For anyone determined to cheat the queue system, Shake Shack's uptown locations are less of a frenzy than Madison Square Park or City Field (the Mets baseball stadium). They also offer a "Shack Cam" desktop widget and call ahead service ― but you better dial while you're having breakfast... It gets busy!

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Shake Shack
Southeast corner of Madison Square Park
near Madison Avenue and East 23rd Street

Opening hours: 11am - 11pm

Visit the Shake Shack website to find other locations and more info: www.shakeshack.com

POSTSCRIPT: Writing for Time Magazine back in March 2010, writer Josh Ozersky suggested that Shake Shack might soon open a branch in London. With no sign of any such opening, I wrote to Shake Shack to see what the word is. I got this reply:

"Many thanks for reaching out. We feel extremely fortunate for the great interest in Shake Shack. As you may be aware, we have openly expressed our intention to bring Shake Shack to compelling sites in great neighborhoods. As such, rumors often circulate about potential openings. We have decided not to comment on any of these rumors until we have something concrete to share. At this time we are focusing our efforts on the operations of our existing Shacks, as well as two new Shacks slated to open in Brooklyn, NY (2011) and Philadelphia (2012)."

Guess us London Shake Shack fans will just have to dream on!

VANS Cheeseburger slip-ons

2011-07-08T08:05:00.002+01:00

Yet another burger-related dream has come true: Vans have just dropped this cheeseburger slip-on sneaker. The only problem is it's only available in boys sizes, rather than adult sizes. Boo! I live in hope that they'll come out in regular sizes for us grown up burger fans too. More pics after the jump...

Yup, love Vans, love cheeseburgers, LOVE THESE SNEAKERS!

While the Cheeseburger ($37 via shop.vans.com) caters for the boys, the girls have got some pretty tasty looking sneakers too. There's a really cute watermelon Authentic lace-up shoe but I'm loving this Banana Split slip-on design the best. Check out the spoon detail on the insole (two pics down). Tasty!

Vans, if you're reading - please release these sneakers in adult sizes. We like junk food just as much as the little ones do! More info at shop.vans.com

Jo'Burger Beef Dube Burger with emmental (IRL)

2011-07-07T08:30:00.001+01:00

€14 for the burger plus another €3.95 for fries but you get what you pay for: A LOT! Look at the size of this thing! Highly recommended

I was over in Dublin for a family wedding the other week and took the opportunity to hook up with two Dublin-based artists who contributed to The Burgermat Show. BrenB suggested we walk from the town centre south to Rathmines to check out Jo'Burger as the place is an independent, burger-centric joint with a great vibe. Sounds good, I said. Let's do the Jo'Burger thing!

Jo'Burger is indeed a pretty chilled out spot and Rathmines, although only a 20 minute walk from St Stephen's Green, seems far from the madding crowd. Long wooden tables and benches make for a sociable vibe and I was delighted to be able to drink a burger (Bitburger) whilst perusing the extensive food menu, inserted into one of a selection of old comic annuals:

OK, the menu. The idea is that you choose what kind of burger patty you want - you can choose from Beef, Lamb, Chicken, Fish, and a couple of veggie options. Then you choose a style for your burger - ie what you want it served with besides a bun. There are 20 styles to choose from, ranging from Pure (simply the burger in a bun with a slice of tomato and Jo'Burger relish) through to Moletsane which comprises Peanut Chilli Sauce and Coriander. Bet that's good with the char-grilled chicken option.

No prizes for guessing which patty I plumped for: it was always going to be the 200g 100% Charolais 28 day dry aged Irish beef patty! Style-wise, I opted for the Dube: three slices of bacon and Jo'Burger relish. €12.50 plus €1.50 to have a slice of emmental cheese added too. Bush Fries (really great chips) were €3.95 but, I can report that they arrived piled high in a silver bucket and were excellent. We bought a trio of dips too for said chips, of which the Hot Curry one was my personal favourite.

As you can see, my beef dube burger was absolutely enormous - it stood a good six inches tall. I removed some of the frilly lettuce to a kind of perfectly essential, not-so-frilly-round-the-edges arrangement and picked the thing up to see if I could squash it down. Almost amazingly I could, despite getting the feeling that the bun was way too big and bready. Please forgive the out of focus bite through shot below - but it shows that the bun actually squashes down to be really thin – meaning it IS possible to eat this beast as a burger should be eaten. Just!

This blurry shot also shows the bun is about an inch wider than it needs to be. Too much bread basically is the verdict, and a bun rethink wouldn't go amiss. Sadly the guys at Jo'Burger claim to be tied to health and safety laws which mean they have to cook the beef patty all the way through so no medium rare for me. Sad face. But, having given me the spiel, they didn't burn it or overcook so I wasn't too grumpy. The good news is that it was a course ground, largely unadulterated beef burger (that might have had a small amount of finely chopped onion in it) with a very straightforward, beefy flavour and texture.

Members of my happy burger group also had the lamb burger and also a veggie burger. A fair bit of bread got left – the burger baps are more like loaves than buns – but everything else disappeared with smiles all round. I should also mention the in-house pickled gherkin which came in a little ramekin. I kinda got to my camera a little late in that they're almost all gone – but they were definitely worthy of a mention. Yum!

Jo'Burger isn't a gourmet burger experience of the kind offered at the likes of London's Bar Boulud. Nor are the burgers of the American fast food tradition. They are, however, hearty and made with a lot of love and served up in a friendly joint I could happily sit in all day long (DJs spin chilled tunes until 2am almost every night). If you're in Dublin's fair city and craving a burger, Jo'Burger is well worth a look.

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Jo'Burger
137 Rathmines Road
Rathmines

Dublin 6

Ireland

Tel: +353 (0) 1 4913731

www.joburger.ie

The Burgermat Print Shop is OPEN!

2011-07-04T08:05:00.002+01:00

I've just about recovered from putting on the Burgermat Show - a collaborative effort with Daniel Young of BurgerMonday fame, with no small contribution from chef Fred Smith. Wow, what a buzz it was - tickets sold out in less than 20 minutes and we ended up adding an extra date due to popular demand. Nice! Huge thanks to the various blogs and sites that thought the event worthy of some column inches - all hugey encouraging. There are some really great photos of the event on Facebook and Flickr...

Of course, the art show side of things wouldn't have been possible without the input of the 24 contributing artists. So a massive Burgerac thank you goes to Andy Rementer, Asbestos, BRENB, Chris Gray, Chrissie Macdonald, Crispin Finn, Emma Kelly, Gemma Shiel of Lazy Oaf, Holly Wales, Ian Stevenson, Intercity, James Joyce, Jen Bilik of Knock Knock, Jon Boam, Linzie Hunter, Malika Favre, Mark Blamire, Nishant Choksi, Peskimo, Ping Zhu, Richard Hart, Richard Hogg, Rob Flowers, and Timba Smits.

A2 Giclée prints are available of each burgermat image, limited to 50 hand stamped and numbered editions. Here are some photos of the first edition of the Rob Flowers print to give you an idea of the print quality. You can browse all the artworks on a new, dedicated Burgermat website via which news of future burgermat events and products will be released as and when.

Check out burgermat.com and follow @burgermatshow on twitter :)

Bar Boulud Piggie Burger

2011-06-27T08:01:00.000+01:00

£12.25. Fries are an additional £3.50, but if you're serious about tasting London's best burgers, you better get down to Bar Boulud

There is no doubt in my mind that Bar Boulud's three "NY Burgers" are among the very best in town. Regular readers may recall I visited the smart bistro on the ground floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge back in February, when I gave the Yankee Burger a glowing five star review. Last week I went back to sample the restaurant's fabled Piggie Burger...

This time I went with friends as a birthday treat and we ordered all three varieties of burger on the menu. Things have changed a little since my first visit in that the burgers no longer come served with fries. Rather, you have to order them separately so a burger and fries costs slightly more now than it did a few months ago. Another thing to note is that Bar Boulud burgers are not huge. They're actually very modestly sized but they are, in my experience, perfectly formed. Here's a cut through of the Piggie burger so you can see how it stacks up:

To be perfectly fair, words cannot describe the gastronomic ecstacy I found myself in on biting into my piggie burger. And when a burger is this mind-bendingly delicious, it's tricky to stay focused and be objective about the experience. So I won't even attempt to explain how exactly the combo of succulent beef patty, melt-in-the-mouth pulled pork (no crispy or stringy bits here), sweet red cabbage slaw, gently spicy chilli mayo and crisp bibb lettuce in a cheesy bun come together to make a grown man weep with joy in a busy restaurant. All I can tell you is that this burger blew my mind. I can categorically say that Bar Boulud's Piggie is my personal favourite burger in London. It is an awesome burger that any self respecting burger fan MUST try.

While I've got your attention, allow me to introduce you to Bar Boulud's Frenchie Burger (£12.25), the beef patty of which is accompanied with confit pork belly, rocket, tomato-onion compote, morbier cheese and served in a peppered brioche bun. This was Anna's favourite burger of the day - although when I tried a few mouthfuls, I could only taste way too much wholegrain mustard which meant none of the subtle qualities of the morbier (possibly my most favourite of cheeses), or indeed anything else in the ensemble, was able to shine through.

But this, my old friend the Yankee (above) is still, I'm delighted to report, a perfectly balanced example of a New York style cheeseburger. Love it. £12.25 with cheese. £11.25 without. My opinion on it and indeed BB's wonderful fries haven't changed since my February visit. It's still five-star awesome!

Now then, in the comments of my last review, someone commented that they simply didn't believe there are as many five-star burgers in London as I seem to be finding. Super ironically, this particular doubting Thomas identified himself as "JC", which tickled me, but rest assured, folks, that there really IS an impressive number of London burgers currently worthy of the golden seal of ultimate Burgerac approval. However, if, like JC, you lack faith, Bar Boulud is probably the perfect place for you to start your five-star London burger adventures. Believe!

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Bar Boulud

Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park

66 Knightsbridge

London SW1X 7LA

Call for opening times and bookings: Tel :020 7201 3899

danielnyc.com/barbouludLondon.html

Travis Cain vs Kidrobot: Chuck & Johnny

2011-06-22T19:40:00.003+01:00

Meet Chuck & Johnny. Chuck is a burger, Johnny is a knife. They love each other really, but guess what? Love hurts! This duo is one of 16 pairs of "frenemies" that go together in a destructive kinda way created by Travis Cain for his second series of Best Friends Forever Kidrobot vinyl figures. They're awesome!

Anyone who's been round my gaff will know I like to collect stuff. I blame cereal packet giveaways when I was a kid for that particular personality trait. ANYhoo, Kidrobot has been collaborating with awesome artists to create blind boxed mini series of vinyl collectible figures - Peskimo's Bamboozoo series was the last one I collected every single one of. And now here's another series I feel I simply must collect!

They're not all food related. Jordan & Spike (above) for example, are a sneaker and a nail respectively. But as this is a food blog mostly, I thought I'd show off my favourite foody love-hate pairings from the series:

Chester & Phillipe

Freddie & Gaston

Sprinkles & Eddie

The interlocking pairs of figures (£7.30 each from the Kidrobot site) stand approx 2-3 inches high and come blind boxed (you don't know what you'll get in each box) BUT Travis Cain is currently offering the chance to choose what you want via his bigcartel shop. You pay $25 for the luxury of choice (it's a little more for the rarer figures) but you do get a free print with each purchase. Nice! Check out artforindustry.bigcartel.com/products if you would like to specify which toy you want to buy (while stocks last).

Corrner Bistro Cheese Burger (NYC)

2011-06-20T18:19:00.000+01:00

$6 for a solid meal sure to fix your late night burger craving. Pair it with a plate of fries for a mere $2.25 extra... Sold!

A simple burger, well known around NYC for its surprisingly great flavor at a low price point, the Corner Bistro Cheese Burger did not fail to deliver on my last visit. However, the bar's legendary burger also didn't completely live up to the often alcohol-fueled occasions either, where I have been known to neck two in a row with the belief it's the best burger in town, a real West Village late night saviour...

You always forget how low budget the Corner Bistro burger is served, a pleasant surprise every time. Iceberg lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, burger and sesame seed bun all spread out on a paper plate, not unlike the way burgers were served up at London's temporary burger mecca #Meateasy, earlier this year. When your burger arrives, you can't help but know what you're really after—a great advantage at 2am. On this sober time around I finally took real note, and the family BBQ form just made me appreciate the burger all the more.

So to get down to the beefy business, the patty is good. It's not amazing, it's nothing fancy with soup-ed up seasonings or the like, but it gets the job done and tastes good enough to make you take a cab across town to indulge in it. And rest assured it's a far, far cry from Taco Bell, where you know it's just gnarly ground beef but you eat it anyway when you're a bit out of sorts because the artificial flavors are too hard to resist. No sirree, the meat at Corner Bistro is seemingly U.S. Select. They just aren't going to take note of your picky requests for this or that, it's simply cheese or no cheese in this joint (you can get bacon too for an additional 75 cents), but that's just the way it is at this NYC institution.

Whether it's a late night feast or for a late lunch, the Corner Bistro burger is pretty darned tasty. Washed down with a cheap mug of Bud and a plate of fries in the company of some damn funny friends and you've got yourself an excellent night out.

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Corner Bistro
331 West 4th Street
New York, NY 10014

+1 212 242 9502

www.cornerbistrony.com

HoHB Blame It On The Burgers T-Shirt

2011-06-18T10:15:00.000+01:00

Is my T-shirt a bit tight? Blame it on the burgers! Of course, since this Blame It On The Burgers T-shirt is available in four sizes, it's possible to buy one that isn't too tight. Yet!

This T-shirt is one of various bits of awesome burger merch available from The House of Hot Breath, which is the name under which husband and wife duo Mike and Jen Gabel produce various burger and fast food related festivities. Regular readers may recall I posted their TOTALLY AWESOME video, shot by Todd Selby, of them performing their Ultimate Cheeseburger dance routine as Duotard. Here's how Jen and Mike like to chill at home:

"Me and my wife have always been a bit obsessed with all things burger," Mike told Burgerac. "We collect all sorts of burger related stuff, including music, that we've found in the UK as well as back home in Canada. We used to hold big BBQ house parties at our place in Dalston back in 2004 where everyone got themed CD compilations, T-shirts, bags, etc. Kinda like goody bags at a kids party.

"We ran a chilli cook-off called Great Bowls Of Fire for three years in a row that was a pretty insane – the last one had over 30 entries! We made bibs for everyone, one of which we got signed by Jerry Leee Lewis when he was in town! Tight!

"After the chilli-themed parties, we switched to burgers and that's where the BIOTB T-shirt design come from. We cooked something like 60 burgers at once in our filing cabinet BBQ [literally a filing cabinet custom converted to a barbeque], it was pretty mad. The parties starting getting too big so we started doing Blame It On The Burgers as a regular night at The Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. We had a hot dog eating contest (won by Sam Bompas of Bompas & Parr!), a Burgetime video game competition (Rob Flowers who's one of your Burgermat Show artists took that trophy!) and special fast food acts created for the night!

"Because of our involvement in Todd Selby's interiors blog (www.theselby.com), we got the chance to sell some of our burger merch at Colette in Paris which was great, they sold really well. We even used our Duotard giant burger dance routine to enter a Walkers crisps video competition for their cheeseburger flavour crisps and won £10,000. A crisp packet indeed!"

Here's the packaging for The House of Hot Breath T-shirts:

Genius! If it isn't obvious, Jen and Mike love fast food, of all varieties - here's another T available from their online store:

For more info on The House of Hot Breath, and to buy a T-shirt (the fast-food themed CD comp that comes free with each is a totally amazeballs in its own right) then visit their online store at www.thehouseofhotbreath.com/hb-shop

The Admiral Codrington 8oz Cheeseburger

2011-06-15T08:39:00.001+01:00

£14 with hand cut chips. The Admiral Codrington is hidden away in the well-to-do shopping streets of Brompton. I suggest you find it!

Folks, feast your eyes on this, the Admiral Codrington's 8oz cheeseburger. It's one of the finest burgers available in London right now, thanks to the Ad Cod's chef Fred Smith's tireless quest for burger perfection. Daniel Young of BurgerMonday recently announced he rates it among his top ten London burgers. Personally, this bad boy is in my top five. It's VERY good...

Before I tell you why I think the Ad Cod burger is worthy of the highest possible golden accolade of Burgerac praise, let me just explain a little about the place. It's a pub in probably the poshest, richest area of London. And when I say pub, it's hardly an old man's boozer. On the contrary, it's pretty plush. But don't hold that against the place. The Ad Cod is garnering a reputation for serving excellent food and, in fact, arriving for late Sunday lunch with some friends, I was pretty impressed to spot top UK chef Clare Smyth dining happily with a veritable bevvy of fellow chefs. The food must be good!

Above is the selection of nibbly starters we had to begin our Sunday afternoon feast. Here you can see Padron Peppers, Mini Sausages in a sticky honey and mustard glaze, a little jar of crispy pork crackling with a pot of apple sauce for dipping – and some Chilli Salt Squid with green chilli and coriander. All was exceptionally good - but the squid really stood out. The batter was light but crisp, and not overly salty. You could actually taste the perfectly cooked squid and the green chilli gave it the perfect amount of heat. Delicious!

Et voila. The Ad Cod burger. Served solo on a plate (the hand cut chips arrive under separate cover) it's quite a sight to behold! Three out of the four of us had ordered the cheeseburger (I fear my enthusiasm might be infectious) and we were all pretty darned excited to taste it...

The cut through reveals – not only a burger cooked confidently on the rare side of medium rare – but also a very carefully constructed burger. Look at the precise thickness of the cheese (a mild but impressively melty cheddar) and note the sliver of gherkin poking out. The gherkin hasn't been sliced into discs but rather sliced lengthways to provide better coverage. Also note the shredded iceberg lettuce at the bottom of the ensemble too. By shredding the lettuce and dressing it lightly in a grain mustard mayo, chef Smith has created a light crisp layer of lettuce that has enormous surface area which means the salad can actually hold any burger juice dripping down. Actually the burger juice becomes the dressing. This idea is a gazillion times better than simply plonking in a sheet of lettuce.

The thin and even layer of redness between cheese and top of the bun is tomato chutney. The bun is a Millers brioche bun, the exact same rich buttery bun used by Hawksmoor for their burgers. But it's the architecture of this burger that is really pushing my buttons. It's close to my own personal burger ideal. But what the heck am I doing? I need to taste it!

OOF, it's rare, it's beefy, it's big but totally biteable, and the thing delivers even flavour with every bite. In short, it's totally amazeballs!. Well worth the trip on a rainy Sunday.

Fred, the chef, is an extremely affable chap. He took the time to tell me a little about his approach to the Admiral Codrington burger patty. "The meat is approximately 50% rib cap trim, 25% chuck and 25% beef fat from the cap," he tells me. "So it's almost a rib burger! We use black Angus and our meat is sourced from Jack O'Shea [brother of Darragh] and dry aged inhouse at the Cod for a minimum of 28 days. However, I often have other trim from sirloins, rumps and hanger steaks, and little bits of this often make it into the mix. I always taste the blend and never stray too far from the basic recipe. I have also been known to source another Angus beef from Ballindalloch through Select meat which is closely connected to the East London Steak Co. There can be a lot of butchery involved in this burger!"

Fred actually makes his burger patties like Heston did in his In Search of Perfection programme a few years ago, devoted to making the perfect hamburger. He lays out all the strands of meat emerging from the mincer so they're all running in the same direction. These strands are wrapped tightly in clingfilm and chilled to form a big sausage of burger mince. This is sliced when cool to form the burger patties.

And what about the tomato chutney in the burger – is that homemade? "Yes, on both inner sides of the bun I add a homemade tomato chutney made with shallots, garlic, vinegar, sugar and lots of tomatoes all cooked down slowly together."

And the choice of bun? "I'm up and down on the Millers brioche bun but haven't found a viable solution that improves the burger. The St. JOHN bun is my favourite and I also like the meatwagon bun... My search is ongoing."

I love Fred's constantly experimenting and tweaking approach to his burger recipe. It means his burger can only improve! Did I mention that Fred is the chef cooking at the forthcoming Burgermat Show? Well he is. And if you think his Admiral Codrington burger looks good, he's actually developing something super special for June 27th. I, for one, can't bloody wait!

In the meantime, I might have to get back down to the Ad Cod for another one of these killer cheeseburgers!

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The Admiral Codrington

17 Mossop Street

London SW3 2LY

Tel: +44 (0)20 7581 0005