Food and Drink in London

The money shot

Thursday night, a couple cheeky after-work pints in The Reliance and the inevitable question of food arose. Howard wanted to go to the Rivington; I said I'd been twice in the last month. I was pushing for Tayyabs; Howard had a similar counter argument. We could agree on Hawksmoor but they said they were full. Fiona claimed she wasn't coming at all. Yeah right.

In retrospect, it seems obvious now that the thing to do in these stalemate situations is to knock another contender off the Best Burger in London roster. Having sampled a disappointing effort at the well regarded Hamburger Union a couple of weeks ago (they will get another chance when I will try to be a bit less hungover and actually remember to order my burger rare), I was keen to find somewhere a bit different, somewhere perhaps that could get close to the so-far incomparable Haché. The stupidly named $ Grills and Martinis felt like it might foot the bill.

Dollar (as I shall insist on calling it) is in a converted pub at the end of Exmouth Market and presumably used to be a hang-out for postal workers at the mammoth Mount Pleasant sorting office over the road. They'd struggle to recognise it now. The basic internal geography is still pubbish but - on the ground floor at least - this is clearly eating only territory. Burgers and steaks are the order of the day, which suited us fine.

We started, though, by sampling the second house speciality: martinis. A gin (very possibly a Tanquerey 10) for Howard and some sort of posh vodka for me (Howard doesn't much approve of VMs, but I successfully placated him by letting him choose the vodka). Fiona had decided to join us after all (imagine) and went for an off-list Cosmopolitan. These were all OK, possibly suffering ever so slightly from being made in the cool-looking bar downstairs and warming slightly on their journey up. Howard's also came with a twist of lemon when he'd specifically asked for lime. Not the end of the world.

Burgers were a curates egg. The menu, for a start, steered me away from my benchmark option of rare (cheddar) cheese burger. The closest was made with Jack cheese, which does nothing for me, although Fi offered to take one for the team. I opted instead for something with bacon and mozzarella, while Howard had one of their "Million Dollar" specials. This involved avocado, mozzarella, roasted tomatoes and - bizarrely - a cashew nut sauce. It sounded a deeply odd combination... and so it proved: not actively unpleasant but not certainly not adding anything to the burger universe either. Mine was OK, although decent English-style thick-cut bacon hardly feels like a natural pairing for mozzarella, particularly run-of-the-mill stuff like this.

Fi's cheese burger looked right, despite the nasty plastic cheese, but with less weirdness going on around the edges she was best placed to spot what was in fact a seriously failing in all three burgers: this was obviously good quality beef cooked exactly as ordered, but there was a desperate lack of seasoning. A less timid hand on the salt and pepper would surely have made all the difference. We might even have forgiven some of the more experimental toppings. Maybe.

Other bits and pieces: chips were of the skinny variety. Fi pronounced them indistinguishable from MacDonald's but she was outvoted: they were far better. Presentation was dramatic, if a little silly, with a steak knife thrust down through the burger. The wine list I don't recall but I think it covered the basics. We probably had a Rioja.

Over all, then, a pleasing environment (the bar probably merits a second visit) and a well meaning stab at something a bit different. There are reasons, though, why a simple burger is so delicious and rewarding, and they have little to do with mozzarella or cashews.

Burger: 9/15
Joint: 3/5
Total: 12/20

$ Grills and Martinis, 2 Exmouth Market, ECIR 2PX 020 7278 0077

That's enough Ed

Now I suppose it's possible my memory is playing tricks on me but I am sure Ed's Diner used to worth going to, the ideal antidote to a few too many strong continental lagers Up West. I remember many nights when at least some of the damage was undone by taking on board a decent burger, some good chips and a couple of cheesy classics from the counter-top juke box. This mini chain of retro diners was a welcome addition to a West End hardly overflowing with decent fast food.

Now obviously things have moved on a bit in 2007. A new breed of quality burger joints has emerged, new contenders such as Gourmet Burger Kitchen and Hamburger Union that have, in turn, helped inspire this blog's humble hunt for the Best Burger in London. So has Ed's Diner raised its game to meet the challenge of the new pretenders? Quite the opposite it seems: on the evidence of last Friday it seems to have packed up the game, thrown away a couple of vital components and sold the rest on ebay.

Friday night at 9:45 in a West End burger bar. How long would you expect to have to wait for a table? Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? Longer? Or no time at all... I actually thought the place was closing up early. In the 20 minutes or so I stuck around the only other diner was a member of staff. God knows why: he must have known how bad it would be.

I knew from previous experience there was no point in ordering my burger rare (some line about them not being allowed to - I only went back for the purposes of the BBIL quest) but I was hardly prepared for the overcooked, underseasoned industrial tasting rubbish I was served up with. And as if that wasn't enough it came with grated cheese. Grated cheese on a burger. WTF? The whole point of a cheese burger is to have your meat smothered with an even layer of tangy goo, somewhere between seasoning and sauce. Ed seems to think you'd rather have a lapful of cheesy flakes to go with the ordinary chips and the cheap and nasty ketchup. Dreadful from start to finish, the only saving grace being that start to finish takes only about 20 minutes. And you don't have to queue.

Burger: 1/15 (for the presentation)
Joint: 2/5
Total: 3/20

Ed's Easy Diner, 15 Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JE 020 7836 0271

Joe blog

After a somewhat extended break, during which far too much delicious but expensive grub has  been consumed, it's time to revisit the Best Burger in London survey. This time round, Joe Allen, Covent Garden's well established luvvie-magnet American bar.

It's probably fifteen years since I first went to Joe Allen and in that time almost exactly nothing has changed in this Exeter Street perennial. It's always buzzing, no matter what time you go (long lunchers and theatregoers more than take care of any potential afternoon deadzone), but the helpful front of house team will usually find room for a small table and, with a bar that was probably shipped in straight from New York, there are certainly worse places to wait if they can't. The walls are plastered with movie posters, framed prints of silver screen heroes and, for reasons I have yet to fathom, seventies sports stars. They all add to the timeless charm of the place.

As indeed does the menu. Although properly printed daily it's hard to recall any significant deviations from the familiar fare. Expect Caesar salads, smoked salmon and eggs Benedict to start, steaks, chilli and calves liver to follow. Having said that, kidneys cropped up among the starters on Saturday and the fact that I haven't had them at Joe Allen before surely means I was seeing them on the menu for the first time. Jolly good they were too, in a sporty onion 'diavalo' sauce. Evie plumped for the smoked salmon, which was fine, as was her main, a well filled vegetable pie that at least demonstrated some thought had gone into the vegetarian offering, even if there was very little choice.

There is no burger on the menu at Joe Allen, although why this should be the case is a mystery to me. That they will make you one if you ask them nicely seems to be the worst kept secret in London. Sure enough, there was no "I'll check with the chef" when I asked. Instead, I was offered a cheese and bacon if I wanted it and even asked how I wanted it cooked. Maybe its absence from the menu is down to the fact that the kitchen don't have much of a clue how to present it. The burger arrived slightly forlornly on its own on a small plate with a tiny pile of gherkins and onions for me to add in if I wanted to. Decent handcut chips were ordered and served separately. The burger itself was very good: decent quality beef in a thick patty, a generous smothering of tasty cheddar on top not quite making up for a slight lack of seasoning. The rest was ok, nothing more. Apart from the DIY presentation, the bun was a bit ordinary and there was little if anything in the way of sauce or garnish.

By the time we left, having somehow managed to nudge £50 a head (with booze) the pianist was well into his second bottle and punters had started joining him for duets. The acoustics are such that only those within a few feet can hear what's going on. Maybe not such a bad thing.

People don't really go to Joe Allen for the food - "secret" burgers and the excellent egg dishes aside - but for whatever reason (the chance to spot minor celebs, perhaps, or maybe just the very London buzz of the other happy punters) people certainly do go to Joe Allen. And for as long as it stays so gloriously constant, they probably always will.

Burger: 10/15
Joint: 4/5
Total: 14/20

Joe Allen, 13 Exeter Street, WC2E 7DT 020 7836 0651

The new black

The BBIL search continued on Friday with a last minute decision to try Black & Blue just next to Borough Market. I was in optimum condition for a burger following a few after-work beers and was secretly delighted when Plan A, oysters and more fishiness at the estimable Wright Brothers, was somewhat oversubscribed.

Black & Blue is a mini chain with five restaurants dotted around the capital, Borough being the latest. I can't comment on the other branches but it looks like the menu is the same in each, and the website claims the same attention to style has been applied to each. If the other locations have been chosen as well as this one the future looks rosy.

With no less than four pubs within sixty seconds' stagger, this site was always going to reward anyone who could serve up decent quality fare. On a Friday night at about 9pm it was, as you'd expect, basically full, an informal queueing system in the bar area being operated by the friendly manager. Before long, Mark and I were shown to a table in the corner of a large and buzzing dining room. The decor is modern, stylish and unfussy, with the helpful addition of some large cows with words like "steak" emblazoned across their flanks in case you were in any doubt what you were about to eat.

The menu reinforces this with the words "a steakhouse" under the logo at the top, which is probably just as well, because steaks don't get over-stressed further down. They get their own section, fair enough, but with only five standard cuts to choose from it's not as if they've got out of their way to look after the cow connoisseur. There was also a claim that their beef had been supplied by the same trusted butchers for 30 years, which is a bit odd given how long the place has been open. Maybe the first of the chain opened that long ago? We asked, but got no reply.

No matter, we were there for the burgers. There were six of these on the menu, ranging from "classic" to "bacon and cheese" to "foie gras", curiously leapfrogging my favoured option, just "cheese". I successfully ordered it anyway (Mark ordered the bacon combo) and after sharing some foie gras paté to start (they were out of the mysterious "Flowering Onions") and while tucking into a perfectly sound Brouilly from a varied international list, we looked forward to the main event.

A mixed bag, to be honest. The meat was clearly fantastic quality and was cooked as ordered, in my case rare. But it hadn't any of the colour or crispiness you would expect from a really hot grill, especially not in a restaurant wittily calling itself Black & Blue. Mark specifically ordered his bacon very crispy. It wasn't. Chips were pretty good I thought, but the other accompaniments were no more than ordinary: OK bread, some twists of iceberg lettuce, a slab of beefsteak tomato, a bit of mayo and a single prism of gherkin sitting  rather awkwardly on top of the rest. It's not clear how I was expected to get a taste of that in every mouthful (surely the whole point of a burger) but then again the burger was presented "open" so maybe I wasn't expected to eat it sandwich-style anyway.

Overall, though, the quality of the beef shone through, and was just about enough to make one overlook the quibbles. It's easy to see Black & Blue being a big hit with pub revellers, and this will probably be enough to ensure its success; with a little more attention to detail it might just woo the market foodies too.

Burger: 10/15
Joint: 4/5
Total: 14/20

Black & Blue, 1-2 Rochester Walk, Borough Market, SE1 9AF. 020 7357 9922.

Burger off

A former colleague and now legitimate business contact was in the office yesterday for a meeting and it seemed rude not to pop over the road afterwards to the Reliance, a longstanding favourite watering hole on Old Street. In an area overpopulated with übertrendy bars, a few "real pubs" have managed to hang on in there, albeit with a few nods to the local Hoxtonites: regular DJ slots in most, turf inside the Bricklayer's Arms during festival season, and so on. Most have maintained at least some of their essential pubiness, and The Reliance has been there throughout, a no-nonsense boozer selling decent real ale with just enough edginess and strong continental lager to suit everyone.

I don't know why I don't go there more often, really, because it's rarely failed to please. And it's maybe because I don't go there that often that I can't keep up with the menu. It wasn't so long ago there was a proper restaurant upstairs, complete with linen napkins and a relatively ambitious menu. More recently it's been standard pub fare chosen from a combination of nasty laminated table menus and a reassuring big blackboard. I get the impression there have been quite a few changes of personnel in the kitchen, but an important constant has been very good quality homemade burgers, so as "a couple of pints" lapsed inevitably into a couple more (and with the Tuedsay night quiz hoving dangerously into view) Martyn and I decided we should shore ourselves up with a couple of the latest incarnations.

Disappointing. The burgers came in what looked like squares of a large, flat focaccia, which was fine, but the over-dense, chewy, industrial tasting meat was a real let-down. The chips were no more than OK. A pity after the quality previously turned out here.

Never mind, a gourmet experience was never really the point of our catch-up yesterday. Mind you, neither was entering a pub quiz, and we managed to achieve that. A creditable performance, since you ask: second place in the quiz proper (I have to be back to redeem my £10 beer voucher within the next two weeks) and a £30 bonus for successfully negotiating a complicated series of jackpot questions at the end. Numberwang!

Burger: 5/15
Joint: 4/5
Total: 9/20

The Reliance, 336 Old Street, EC1V 9DR

Let the bun fight begin

And so it begins. Our version of the Best Burger in London hunt is now officially on and
the first place on the list was Haché, tucked away behind Camden Town tube, and proud owner of Time Out's equivalent accolade.

First, though, the ground rules. We've steered well clear of numerical ratings for restaurants in our reviews to date, preferring to rate the overall experience qualitatively, but if we're really going to identify a winning burger we've decided we need to inject a little objectivity into proceedings. So after a protracted, at times heated, discussion we've gone for a simple, two-part rating, with one score (out of 15) for the burger (including bun, default garnishes and cheese) and a smaller rating (maximum five points) based on the venue. The burger is the most imporant consideration, of course, but the environment it's consumed in must play a part. If it was just the burger, I'd enter the competition myself; anyone who's seen the state of my kitchen will understand why the secondary category would rule me out straight off.

Which is all well and good. The trouble is I think we may have peaked too early. Haché was fantastic, the burgers magnificent. it's hard to know where to go from here.

Haché is small and friendly, too small to seat three of us when we arrived but friendly enough to look after us with a bottle of lager while we waited. The menu is a no-nonsense, diving straight into the main event, Aberdeen Angus steak burgers with classic topping combos and a short list of standard extras if you want to make your own. Prices are somewhere between a fiver and a tenner, excluding sides (it's a burger so unless you're in the Boxwood the price doesn't matter much). There are some other options (the veggie burger looks suspiciously good) but to be honest we were salivating by now so it was hard to pay them much heed.

Fi and I ordered standard burgers with mature cheddar, mine "rarish" and hers medium rare. Howard went for the cheese and bacon option. We also ordered a bottle of Rioja from a shortish list that loudly proclaims a single varietal policy. Difficult to see how this really benefits the consumer, to be honest, and in any case the "high percentage of grenache" in the Chateau Neuf du Pape rather suggests it has a low percentage of something else. Whatever, the Rioja was OK and as sensibly priced as the rest of the list.

The burgers arrived after a short, anxious wait... and were awesome. We all confessed afterwards to being doubtful that ciabatta would work as a bun, but we needn't have worried. It was scrupulously fresh, not too chunky and, as you would expect, held itself together perfectly from first bite to last. The meat was juicy, well seasoned and very tasty, the Haché mayonnaise creamy with some welcome citrus notes, the slab of beefsteak tomato fresh, the rocket good and peppery and the red onion sweet and tangy. The cheese came properly melted and the bacon nice and crispy. The sides of frites (they also do chunky chips) and onion rings were spot on. In fact the onion rings were better than that: light batter and doubled-up rings of succulent, translucent flesh. A rare treat.

It really was hard to fault, but we can't go giving top marks to the first place we try so I'm going to have to be a little picky. Fiona's meat was definitely a little rarer than medium rare... The wine wasn't as silky as the menu promised... There are no starters on offer (OK, it's first and foremost a burger joint but if you're going to serve bottles of wine and puddings, aren't you encouraging people to settle down for a "proper" meal?)... But I'm already scraping the bottom of an empty fault barrel. This place will be hard to beat.

Burger: 14/15
Joint: 4/5
Total: 18/20

Haché, 24 Inverness Street, NW1 7HJ. 020 7485 9100

Burger meisters

Never one to shirk a challenge – unless, of course, it involves physical exertion – I have indeed decided to dedicate myself to finding the best burger in London. It promises to be a long and arduous quest, but I am confident of success. At least we know where the second best can be found.

First, a few to rule out. McDonald's and Burger King can go for a start. Sorry chaps. You have been loyal playmates these many years, soaking up many a flagon of strong continental with your magic sponges, but let's not kid ourselves: you're not going trouble the scorers in the gourmet test. And I'm afraid the silly bugger expensive options that make the news from time to time (I seem to remember an £85 job at Selfridges, something similar at Zuma) are also out of the picture, not just because it's a little early in the life of this blog for us to have a generous sponsor to fund the necessary research, but also because they're not what burgers are all about. Of course it's going to taste amazing if you use the best Kobe beef (I tried one in Vegas this year after winning a few quid – very tasty and everything but the main thing I noticed was it was so juicy it was basically impossible to eat without spraying yourself with grease) and of course it's going to cost a bomb if you start introducing foie gras and truffles, but you will not be making a burger. A burger should be something anyone can make at home: simple ground beef, a bit of seasoning, cooked quickly over high heat, charred outside, pink within, some sympathetic sauces and other bits and bobs to garnish and you're there. It's hardly rocket science. So why is so hard for restaurants to get it right?

So, we're talking about standard burgers. Beef, bread and bits. Cheese is the limit of sophistication here, included in this experiment because it is the most consistently used and abused variable.

The search has begun, then, and it has started on the office's Hoxton doorstep, where there is a frankly disproportionate amount of choice. Just about every building round here contains a bar and just about every bar makes its own burgers. Quite right too. Few things work better of a Friday lunchtime than a burger and a bloody Mary or a pint (the choice depending very much on the preceding Thursday).

The official BBIL quest has yet to begin, so it seem a little unfair to start highlighting any contenders, but life's nothing if not unfair, so the results of the unofficial research to date are as follows:

Hoxton Bar & Kitchen – How I wish this was a winner. It is, after all, in the very building. People rave about having a gym on the premises, but imagine having a decent bar. Unfortunately, both the bar and the burgers are rubbish. Very nice to look at (the burgers) but utterly devoid of taste (the burgers and the bar). A waste.

Bluu – Controversially pleasant Hoxton staff have slowly worn me down. Bluu has gradually moved from being a convenient but cold after work pint shop to a warm lunch and evening favourite. We're here for the burgers, though, today, and these are fine if unexceptional. Too easy to get distracted by the creative range of other non-burger sandwiches, and the big Jenga chips are always a disappointment. There's a PhD subject here on the ratio of carb to surface area... another time, perhaps.

Zigfrid – Probably the best of the Hoxton Square bunch burger wise. Big, juicy, well seasoned, cooked to order, crispy chips and good sauces. Hard to fault. Shame about the haphazard service (aren't they a bit old for teenage angst?) and the general Hoxton shit-clowniness that pervades. Still, it's an image they cultivate and revel in so it's not as if you haven't been warned.

Over the road, The Reliance needs sampling again (it's on the list). It's been through a phase of reinventing itself foodwise every other week (mercifully not, as far as I know with an upstairs Thai restaurant yet). If it comes to it, though, I am happy to sample it that often: burgers have been consistently tasty throughout its many incarnations. The beer's usually pretty good too. The quirky Strongroom is also worth seeking out, especially in the summer. Fond memories of an excellent juicy burger in front of an Ashes session last year.

The winner, though, in this unofficial BBIL primary is the Hoxton Diner on Curtain Road. No frills here, but as a stop-off point on the way home it's hard to beat. Great beers and friendly staff: that's two points scored over Burger King already, and the best is yet to come. The burger's really are top notch, great beef, well seasoned, and unlike at Ed's Easy Diner (of which more when the official research begins) they will even cook them rare for you. Fantastic. I understand the milkshakes, while a little on the spendy side, are worth every penny. Vincent Vega would no doubt approve. I will stick with the beer.

Ben