Feeding Tube

Maybe one of the reasons I've been so slack at this blogposting lark lately is that I have an imperial tonne of interests besides food and drink.

Folk music, for example. And philosophy. And cartography and comedy and travel and psephology and poker and football and building my own computers.

Oh, and railway systems. Particularly the London Underground. When I was 13 I visited every station in one day in an attempt to get into the Guinness Book of Records, don't you know.

Planning my route took a fair bit of poring over the iconic diagrammatic map, and since my childhood it's been one of my single favourite visual things.

As colleagues of mine well know, sometimes in meetings I doodle incessantly. And quite often I'm doodling railway maps, with ticks for stations and circles for interchanges. I don't even know I'm doing it half the time!

There have been a raft of 'alternative' tube maps over the last few years, some interesting, some stupid, and some that would make Harry Beck turn in his grave. At a perfect 45 degree angle.

But back on the subject of food, I'm rather tickled by this recent effort from the Cheese and Biscuits blog - a tube map that purportedly shows the best places to eat in London. Well, in Zones 1 and 2 anyway.

The B-V popularity contest

If I gave you three guesses as to what the most read post has been, since I started this little bloglet 18 months or so ago, you'd almost certainly fail.

Perhaps one of my insightful reviews of a top eatery such as Gaucho, or maybe a bold, experimental recipe like the Full English Breakfast Linguine?

Nope. Not even close.

So, what can people actually be arsed to read around here? How about the recent Cattle of Waterloo? Surely that deserves immeasurable popularity just for having such a brilliant title?

Apparently not. I hope you like surprises.

The winners

In fact, the most popular post according to Google Analytics (who, like the man in the pub, are never wrong about these things) consisted of a bit of faux-reactionary right-wing ranting and an indifferent review of a tiny, obscure hummus and falafel stand in Canary Wharf which might not even be there any more.

Organic Chickpeas. What. The. Fuck?

They'll be as surprised as I am!

Are you all fucking sandal-wearing hippies?

What's more, it's over 50% ahead of it's nearest rival. Astonishing.

While I had no idea that organic chickpeas were the single most important thing in the world to my readers, the second place is rather less surprising though.

My open letter to James Watt built on a piece I'd written in the London Drinker magazine, and given that Brewdog have been in the news an awful lot over the last couple of years, it's not that unlikely to imagine people stumbling upon my views thereon.

Indeed, I've blogged on subsequent occasions about them as my relationship with the company deteriorated before your very eyes, and that unrequited letter, written over a year ago, now seems eerily prophetic.

And bad news for drinkers is clearly something we're all interested in, as the third most-read article was last week's report on the tragic closure of St Jude's, proving that news does indeed travel fast in the Blogosphere. It's still gaining on the top two, not that this will bring any comfort to Frank or any of his ex-customers.

But a thrashing for Gaucho and the breakfast linguine, nonetheless, both of which are nowhere near the top three.

The losers

So, which posts have been read the least? What have you bastards been callously eschewing in favour of watching paint dry, or the One Show?

Well, there's this year's Shrove Tuesday blog about pancakes. Obviously nobody gives a fuck about them these days.

And my review of the food at last year's Lambeth Country Show which, ironically, featured chickpea dishes that were a lot tastier than the falafel and hummus from that wretchedly noteworthy place. Surely that deserved better?

But the least-read post of all was what I hope is actually a rather intelligent and considered opinion piece questioning why the government lowered duty on beers below 2.8% ABV when there were hardly any such beers available.

Obviously if the Organic Chickpeas stall did a low-alcohol Hummus Ale, people would be clamouring for a piece of that blog action like flies unto a turd...

None of this really means very much, of course, and all the posts that I've mentioned today will now benefit from the trackback links and will disproportionately gain, so we'll see Organic Chickpeas extend its lead and the bottom-feeders edge up slightly to be replaced by some other post that no cunt can be bothered to read.

Meanwhile, I'll send the falafel hippies a telegram of congratulation. On ethically-sourced recycled paper, obviously. Smug wankers.

Silver linings

My time working in Canary Wharf is fast drawing to a close. As of now I’m dividing my working hours between the familiar Wharven territory and our new Holborn Circus office, and during this period of transition my tastebuds will get to say goodbye to some old friends and make some new acquaintances.

It’s not all bad news – I’ve discovered there’s a Birley, a Paul and a Byron all within about half a mile of the new office, which is reassurance enough that I won’t have to resort to lunch from Sainsbury’s every day. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with Sainsbury’s.

But the immediacy and choice proffered by the Lady of the Wharf will be gone, and I might have to actually start planning where I’m going to get lunch from instead of descending a lift into a world of utter spoiled-for-choiceness.

One choice I would no longer have even if we stayed here is the top-floor food court at Cabot Place West. Comprising just a Burger King and Singapore Sam, about which I've previously blogged, it was one of the few places one could reliably find space to sit and eat ones lunch.

The entire floor has now become 'Pure Sports Medicine'. I don't know what that is, and I don't want to know. I suspect it doesn't taste any worse than BK or Singapore Sam though...

‘On the Wharf’ no more

Leaving New York wasn’t easy for REM, and Sheryl crow was indifferent to leaving Las Vegas. Now it’s my turn to muse on an imminent departure. And beer. And pubs named after Prime Ministers. Oh, and hotdogs. 'Gourmet' hotdogs. Hmm...

I can’t pretend I’m ecstatic about the fact that I’ll be leaving Canary Wharf in October when the organisation for whom I work relocates to Holborn. 

Longer, more expensive, more crowded commutes unarguably suck, and the move will have significant ramifications for this little blog. It still feels like I’ve barely licked the outer crust of the myriad food outlets around this place, and I’m always finding new places to eat.

Like the Gourmet Hotdog Company stand that just opened up. Of which more, presently.

At least the after-work drinking opportunities will be better in Holborn. I'll need beer to fortify myself for a long journey home surrounded by suited cocks... and interchanging at Bank. Ugh.

Adios, Diccionario Mexicana!

It might be a widely-propagated myth that the Eskimos have 83 different words for snow, but Mexicans definitely have at least a dozen different words for Mexican food.

Tacos, burritos, taquitos, fajitas, tortillas, enchiladas, tamales, chimichangas, hongos, rellenos – who knows what it really all means when you see it on a menu in a Mexican restaurant?

We've all spent time handing plates around the table, trying to figure out which one of the near-identical dishes is which, before saying 'fuck it, it's all good'.

You know that no matter what you order, you’ll always get either a soft thing or a crispy thing, it will be filled with some combination of meat, rice, cheese, beans, salad, salsa, sour cream and guacamole, and it will normally be pretty damn delicious.

Yes, ‘tostada’ implies that it will be one of the crispy ones, and ‘quesadillas’ and ‘carnitas’ will contain cheese and meat respectively, but then so could any of the other items on the menu. I like it. I like going to Mexican restaurants and I liked the food in Mexico itself when I briefly found myself there a few years ago - but let's not kid ourselves that it's not all the same kind of stuff.

I’ve no idea why Mexican restaurants have such a bewildering array of menu items – just list the components and let folks choose exactly what configuration they chose for fucks sake.

Utter Crepe! (Well, actually quite good....)

The glut of visitors descending upon The Wharf this week for the Motor Expo has driven an already crowded area to the point of combustion. Possibly literally.

Motor Expo

It’s not just all the extra people, but the vehicles parked incongruously on every thoroughfare taking up space where people would normally be free to roam. Just not right, it isn't.

And I'm probably being as thick as a 4x4, or, worse, somebody who drives one, but I still haven’t figured out the fuck did they get all those Morgans and Lotuses and whathaveyou into the reception area of the tower. Do they remove all the people-doors and drive them in from the street one by one? Do they assemble the cars inside the building?

I’m not against motor shows – I actually find them quite interesting – but as with football and beer festivals, I find being in a large crowd a bloody nuisance rather than some kind of life-affirming sense of solidarity and togetherness. (And, yes, I still experience crowds at football, despite supporting a very unsuccessful and unpopular team).

Anyway, with thousands of Fiesta drivers excitedly taking lots of pictures of supercars they’ll never be able to afford (as well as the resident BMW 3-Series suitcunts who could buy something more interesting but won’t), the places where I usually pick up my lunch have all been doing very good business. 

The A-Z of BLTs

The annoying thing about 'little-known facts' is that they tend to do the rounds until everybody knows them, which seems to defeat the object really.

A surprising number of people know that Mike Nesmith’s mum invented Tipp-Ex, but fewer know that my father invented the BLT.

That might be because he didn’t actually invent it, obviously, but as a hungry child I believed he had invented the BLT, and in many ways that’s more important.

Back in the 1980s and early 90s, we often drove out into the countryside – or at least as far as Mitcham Common which almost felt like the countryside in them days - to catch pond life, walk disused railway trackbeds and extinguish forest fires.

Spartan by name...

We’d sing folk songs as we jauntily sped along in his Spartan Roadster or whatever eccentric vehicle he happened to be driving that month, armed with a picnic hamper full of apples, fruitcake, beer nuts, those little stubby bottles of Ruddles County they used to do back when it was still good, and, of course, BLT sandwiches.

(Another little-known fact, and one that's actually true this time: Dad sold his Spartan to one of the puppeteers from Spitting Image!)

It's commonplace these days, of course - the BLT, not the Spartan Roadster - and quite possibly the most popular sandwich filling in the world, but to a growing and excitable lad back then, they were a revelation.

Bacon had hitherto been something eaten hot for breakfast or cooked with liver in a thick sauce. Sandwiches contained ham, jam or peanut butter and that was that. But cold bacon? In a sandwich with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise?!? This bold new invention blew my mind and instantly became my favourite sandwich.

The Father Christmas moment

It was at least a couple of years before I realised that Dad hadn’t invented it at all – not that he’d ever actually claimed as much, mind – and that people all over the world were enjoying BLTs and had been doing so long before I existed.

Maybe it was watching Trading Places a lot that did it – eventually I’d have realised that the scene where the old boys explain pork belly trading to Billy-Ray refers to a bacon, lettuce and to-may-to sandwich, and as such, it probably wasn’t confined to my father’s picnic hamper.

Randolph and Mortimer didn’t quell my enjoyment of the BLT too much though and I’ve continued to eat them regularly for the last 20-odd years, which has been singularly unchallenging because availability is, to put it mildly, widespread verging on ubiquitous.

And whoever actually invented it, the little-known fact I want to establish is where to get the best BLT within five minutes of 1 Canada Square. With plenty of options to choose from the only thing for it was to try and eat my way through every BLT available on The Wharf – not in one sitting, mind – and see if any of them can hold a candle to those I consumed eagerly as a boy.

The ambrosia of nostalgia means that they invariably won’t, but there’s no such thing as a really bad BLT, though some are quite a bit better than others - and I should know as I've eaten BLT for lunch every day for the last week…

  

B to the L to the T

Pret Beech Smoked BLT, £2.89 (or £3.45 eat in!)

First up, we have the most widely-available BLT on the Wharf, due to the sheer number of Pret outlets. Their reputation ain’t what it was a decade ago, and the BLT demonstrates just why this is the case!

The Pret BLT looks the part but fails to deliver on taste. The granary bread is sliced too thin, making the sandwich dry on the outside but fall-aparty in the middle due to a surplus of tomato juice.

There is lots of smoky bacon, but it’s a bit greasy, and the Romaine lettuce isn’t a good choice to cut through this.

It could also have done with a good, sharp mayo, but instead the whole thing lacks flavour, and it’s very poor value compared to most of the competition.

Rating: Disappointing

Tesco BLT. £1.80 (or cheaper as part of meal deal)

The mainstream supermarket option boasts a decent amount of filling and ticks all the boxes for a classic BLT.

The bacon is sweet rather than smoky, the ratios are right, and while it’s not exceptional, it’s good value and does the job.

Rating: Acceptable

Tesco ‘Light Choices’ BLT, £1.50

At only 290 calories and with over 30% less fat than Tesco’s standard BLT, this is an appealing option that could do well in the Satiety Index.

The ‘formed’ bacon has a processed feel to it, is unsmoked, and there’s not much of it. Suprisingly for a low-fat offering there’s not much salad either, but the malted granary bread doesn’t taste like a cut-down option.

The low-fat dressing in lieu of mayonnaise tastes of very little, and to add a little something, the sandwich contains a lot of black pepper.

The whole thing is a bit weedy, but then it’s meant to be a healthy option.

Rating: Disappointing (but OK in a low-calorie context)

EAT Handmade BLT, £2.89 (£3.45 eat in)

EAT are the new, smaller, Pret and appear to have copied their business model almost to the letter, not to mention their prices.

The difference is that EAT’s BLT is far better.

The sandwich is well-filled with a good balance between the perfectly char-grilled and very meaty back bacon and the salad components. A mix of lollo rosso and frisee (I think!) lettuce adds interest to the texture, and the tomato comes through nicely.

The bread is again malted grain, which seems to be the standard BLT holder, and my only criticism is that there could have been a smidgen more mayo.

Rating: Tasty

Waitrose/Boots British BLT. £2.45 (or cheaper as part of meal deal)

Branded as ‘Waitrose’ but on sale in Boots next door, this is a visually appealing sandwich, with a lighter bread, crisp iceberg lettuce and plenty of tomato and mayonnaise giving it a fresh and colourful appearance.

The bacon is smoked and fairly salty, and I like a little more gravity to my bread, but this is a very strong contender and would be particularly enjoyable outdoors in the height of Summer.

Rating: Pleasant

Kruger ‘Really Fresh’ American crispy bacon with tomatoes, lettuce & mayo, £2.40

Kruger’s speciality is fresh juices and smoothies, but their entry into the BLT fray is an interesting one.

There’s plenty of filling and the bread is a decent, fresh granary with lots of bits.

The salad is fine but the bacon is strange - unsmoked, dry and brown and broken up into little bits, almost like the soya-based ‘bacon flavour’ topping you put on salads. They have a tendency to fall out and make the sandwich less satisfying to eat.

It might be ‘Really Fresh’ but it’s also ‘Really Salty’ – way too much sodium and not enough mayo. It’s a shame because if they kept the bacon in whole slices and added more mayo to cut through the salt, they’d have a good sandwich. 

Or maybe I've just overdosed?

Rating: Frustrating

Birley hand-made BLT, £3.85

The plan was to save the best until last, and this is the only place on The Wharf (of which I’m aware) where there’ll assemble the sandwich in front of you. Fresh is good, and the freshness is evident immediately, particularly in the crunchy lettuce and juicy tomato.

They offer a choice of white or brown bread and various options, but to ensure a fair comparison with the other sandwiches in the test, all of which are served on granary, I went for brown and mayo only. It’s very nice brown bread too, full of nutty grains.

It’s the most expensive BLT by some distance, but it’s a big doorstep fucker, with loads of filling and therefore the most substantial. The bacon is of the streaky variety, and I usually prefer back, but it’s tasty and there’s lots of it, while the mayo has the right balance between creaminess and sharpness.

Even after several days of lunching on BLTs, this went down a treat and it’s the only one that really took me back to the golden age. Next time I want a BLT at lunchtime (which probably won't be for another couple of weeks) I'm coming back to Birley.

Rating: BriLlianT

Seared tongue and snapper

Frying the brunchtime bacon last Saturday, as I frequently do at around brunchtime on a Saturday, I allowed myself the luxury of eating a little piece that had stuck to the (non-stick) pan. Big mistake.

Extra crispy and sizzly, I scraped it off with the spatula and popped it straight into my mouth to enjoy the smoky, salty goodness before I whacked the tomatoes to the pan to cook them in the bacon juices, as one does on Saturday brunchtimes.

At the time it didn’t seem like a big deal. Having glued itself to the pan at a high temperature, it scalded my mouth, and I should have fucking learned my lesson by now I know, but I thought nothing more of it, and it certainly didn’t stop me cooking, eating, and enjoying my Saturday brunch. Or watching the FA Cup final. Or Eurovision later that evening.

But fast-forward a couple of days to when the brunchtime payload reached it's zenith, and my mouth is suffering horrendously. What’s more, I can’t really taste anything but the strongest, most pungent flavours.

 

The antiseptic effect of cask-strength Ardbeg last night may or may not have healed my blistered tongue and palate a little, but my failure to appreciate light, delicate, subtle flavours extended, unfortunately, to today’s business lunch at Curve.

Which is a fish restaurant - possibly not what your remaining tastebuds would choose when most of their brethren have been burned away by a tiny morsel of hot pig!

How to damn organic chickpeas with faint praise

‘You should review’, said a colleague of mine some weeks ago, ‘that new hummus and falafel place that just opened up on the plaza.’

I’m not sure if this was a deliberate challenge designed to cunningly wrongfoot me and my blogpipe, but if it was, I failed at the first couple of attempts. You see, to get to ‘that new hummus and falafel place’ I have to walk out the tower and right past Birley Salt Beef.

Not an easy thing to do of a lunchtime, that. I’m only human.

I mean, what sane person could possibly eschew a sandwich full of hot roast beef or crackling pork belly and walk on by, merely in order to munch on some tasteless chickpea nonsense?!?

Steak Out?

I've seen a lot of people on the tube lately wearing Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. They look like twats.

In fact, they looked a bit like fringe Star Wars character Lobot, and he looked like a twat.

I've stopped telling people that though, because the first couple of people I mentioned it to said 'nah, they look cool. Big headphones are back in. Big headphones look cool'. 

If I'd let them carry on, they'd probably have told me Lobot was cool.

Cool?

OK, I suppose it's a change from the tiny white iEarphones which have become the height of ubiquity, and an oblique homage to the Rebel Alliance, but they still look like twats. Twats.

Anyway, I realised a long time ago that I'm not the arbiter of what is cool and what isn't and that 'fashion' is a cock I don't particularly wish to suck.

But, like it or not, the prevailing perceptions of coolness impact on all of our lives, no matter now little we want to play along. It affects how easy it is to dine in certain types of restaurants for a start.

Where are all the steakhouses gone?

When I were a lad, this whole town used to be steakhouses. 'Twere all you could see for miles around, so it were.

Well, not quite, but back in the 1980s (and for a long time before that by all accounts), going out for a steak was pretty much the height of gastronomic cool. It was where you took somebody you wanted to impress. It was what you ate when you were doing well, or had something to celebrate.

The predominant meme was a fundamental belief that 'steak' was the king of foods, and it had a cachet about it that set it apart from just plain, ordinary beef.

By the 1990s, we were all more sophisticated - food had to be more Ms. International Vegetarian Sophisticate, and less alpha man meat. 

London's once-thriving network of traditional English steakhouses has now dwindled to a handful of fairly naff places in the West End whose target market seems to be tourists, hungry after a long day's sightseeing and shopping for union flag t-shirts. The only places selling steaks in any great quantity are Wetherspoon pubs on Tuesday Grill Nights, and even they offer non-steak options

Steak became the plain, ordinary beef that it used to look down upon, and after more than 20 years, it still hasn't really ever come back into fashion.

Cool?

Sirloin, Rump, T-bone, Fillet - whatever cut you preferred, and whether you had it rare, medium or (shudder) 'well-done', you weren't eating coolness personified, and even a peppercorn or bernaise sauce wasn't going to give it the credibility of sushi or shaved Parmesan.

My skills with music and writing'n'shit have earned me a bit of a cult following myself - or possibly a cunt following, I'm not sure - but I'm under no illusions that I'm ever going to be the epitome of cool, and maybe steak doesn't either. 

But enough people fundamentally enjoy the flavour and cavemanny experience steak to make it a possibility.

Gaucho - the big beef comeback?

Steak needed a new angle and, frankly, to taste a bit better than it did 25 years ago, if it was ever going to make a return to the echelons of coolness.

Cool?

The Argentinian outfit Gaucho might just be the chain to do this. Their outlet on the wharf - one of half a dozen or so in London - and I approached with an open mind when taken there for lunch this week. It's steak. With a bit of a cult following. Just like me.

Gaucho Canary is different from the slightly tacky Gaucho restaurants found in the States where skewers of meat are theatrically cut at your table, but these guys are clearly out to impress, and that's reflected perhaps in the prices (£50-75 a head for a good meal with wine).

The seats are upholstered with real cow hides, the kitchen is open and buzzing, and the various cuts of meat are brought to your table so you can make an informed choice as to which steak you'd like, and how big you'd like it.

All the cuts are there, albeit with South American names like Lomo (fillet) and Cuadril (rump), and some are available Churrasco-style, marinated to perfection. 

They do all the sauces you'd expect (not that you'll really need them with a Churrasco Cuadril), and you can choose your side orders from an exciting range, including sweet potato with chorizo, wild field mushrooms and spicy roast potatoes.

The wine list is extensive, perhaps too extensive even, and a spicy Argentinian Shiraz was just the ticket; one of many which would I'm sure have been a more than acceptable accompaniment.

Dessert of the day was a well-executed Tiramisu, accompanied by a generous portion of pistachio butter, which didn't really go with it, but which tasted like a dessert in its own right. Two sweets for the price of one can't be bad. And at Gaucho prices probably affords much-needed fiscal relief!

Premium pricing aside, I do have a couple of criticisms - they don't offer steak knives ('because their beef is so soft a regular knife will just cut through it') and I found this a little arrogant, not to mention unhelpful. Yes, a well-done fillet might fall to bits on the plate, but if you're eating rump, cooked blue, it's going to need a little assistance on the way from plate to mouth.

And they insist on using metric weights, which just seems wrong when ordering steak. Give it to me in ounces, man, ounces.

But these are trivialities really - Gaucho has reinvented the high-end steakhouse for the age of Beats by Dr. Dre, and done so pretty convincingly.

Maybe steak will never become the ultimate food again. Maybe we're all too diverse and worldly now, but if anyone can make it cool, Gaucho probably can.

On The Wharf...

Gaucho Canary
29 Westferry Circus
Canary Wharf
E14 8RR
*********

Sandwich Course

They say that a man in Canary Wharf can live a hundred lives and eat a hundred different lunches every day.

Actually, nobody has ever said that as far as I'm aware, since I just made it up, but it's true that there are so many places to grab lunch around here, the choice is almost too much.

With the weather turning colder, salads and sushi are becoming less appealing, and hearty steaming soups rather more so, but what of that evergreen favourite, the humble sandwich?

At a conservative estimate, there are probably some 50 different sandwich outlets on The Wharf, with each offering maybe 20-30 different sandwiches - that's at least a thousand to choose from, without taking into account individual customisations ('extra mayo, hold the butter... Because it's actually margarine and I don't like it, fuckwit, that's why.')

Burger Me!

I recently returned from my latest trip to the USA (the ‘Four Corners’ area around the rocky mountains and Monument Valley as it happens) and as usual, I drank plenty of uber-hoppy microbrews and polished off a few big, meaty burgers.

Now back in The Wharf, with a shiny new food’n’drink blog to pen, I’m left to reflect on what is ultimately a bittersweet experience, because trips to the US tend to remind me that, with scant few exceptions, our beers are generally nowhere near as uncomprising as I’d like, and most hamburger products available in this country are crap too.

You can get crap burgers in the States too, of course. They pretty much invented fast food and have sustained a passionate love affair therewith for decades. But you don’t have to look too far to find something much better; much beefier; much more flavoursome. Pretty much any bar will grill you up a thick injection of beefy goodness, topped with whatever you like. It’ll taste damn good, it’ll fill you up good and proper, and it won’t cost the earth either.

And, unfortunately, it’s an experience that seems so difficult for British restaurants to recreate.

It’s not all about the toppings either, or we’d have it sussed by now. Yes, it’s great to have your half-pounder bursting with chilli, avocado and sour cream, or (my personal favourite) Canadian Cheddar, bacon and BBQ sauce, or whatever. But so the fuck what? Any donkey can whack stuff on top and sell the burger off the back of the other ingredients, but it should be the bovine slab of delight underneath that matters.

A few years ago the Gourmet Burger Kitchen exploded onto the London restaurant chain scene, giving hope to burger aficionados everywhere. Run originally by exiled New Zealanders, they've expanded across the country, specialising in some inventive topping combinations – try mango and ginger on ‘The Jamaican’, or aubergine and tahini on ‘The Babaganoush’.

GBK’s chunky fries and aioli and polenta chips and coleslaw are all pretty good but none of these tasty things are burgers. And their actual burgers are, compared to their transatlantic brethren, pretty average (though, it has to be said, half-decent compared to most of their local competition).

One thing that has always really annoyed me about GBK is how the lack of table service completely detracts from the 'restaurantness' of the experience. It's all so 'fast-foody', deciding what one wants rather hurriedly whilst queuing to pay for it upfront, then returning to the counter to pay again if you want something else. The last thing you want to do when stuffed with Kiwiburger is to struggle to your feet and sift through your loose change just to get a coffee

Over the last few years Wetherspoons and similar pub chains have leaped onto the bandwagon to promote their own ‘gourmet’ burgers, as if it’s the toppings that somehow make them good, but it doesn’t fucking work. Try the regular and gourmet burger in our local Spoons, The Ledger Building – you’ll see it’s exactly the same burger, and there’s nothing much gourmet about it.



'Gourmet' Wetherburger, now with plate-corners



I read on Wetherspoons Facebook page this week that they've now upgraded their gourmet burger... to be served on a rectangular plate! Great. That'll make it taste so much more awesome!!!111one1

Thing is, you could put the finest foie grois and truffle oil on the sort of tasteless, gristly lipid-lumped patties that routinely pass for burgers in this country, and succeed only in ruining your foie grois and truffle oil.

But Why, I ask you, Why?

So, one has to ask the question. Why are so many British burgers uninspiring and bland when just across the Atlantic, a similar type of outlet can sell a similarly-named product at a similar price point that tastes like proper cow.

The quality of the beef cattle probably has a lot to do with it. I’m guessing here, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the meat that goes into hamburger mince in the US would have remained intact and become rump steak or perhaps a roasting joint of some sort, had it come from the flesh of an English cow.

It also wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if our burgers were made from the lowest-grade meat available, but from the next level up over there – their decent burgers get made from ‘premium economy’ beef, or maybe even business class, because all the economy stuff gets used by the low-end fast food outlets, with which we’re unconcerned, and whose burgers taste the same all over the world.

I think I've hit on something here: Wetherspoons burgers, say, aren't really much better than those from Burger King or a van outside a football ground, because they probably come from the same off-cuts and offal silos, if that isn't some sort of culinary libel. (If it is, I didn't say it, obviously). 

Here’s a little tip: one pretty good indicator of a good burger is that the taste holds up (and, as far as I’m concerned improves) when cooked on the rarer side of medium and eaten without extraneous toppings.

Burgers in outlets where there is no option other than the house ‘medium-well’ tend to be less good than those in places where they’re happy to give the customer the choice, knowing that it won’t disappoint, however it’s cooked. It’s all about the quality of the beef.

This rule holds true for haemophobes too – even if you’re always going to ask for your burger bien cuit, a burger that tastes good when rare will taste better when well done than a burger that tastes strange and falls apart when rare will taste when well done, if that makes sense, which it probably doesn’t, but I don’t fucking care because I’m lost in burger fantasy right now anyway.

New kids on the meat block Byron opened their Canary Wharf outlet a few weeks ago so I was naturally keen to see if their self-proclaimed ‘Proper Hamburgers’ could hold a candle to those I’ve eaten in the US - and the good news is that they can. Pretty much.
 
Get past the deliberately quirky branding, and toilet facilities eerily wallpapered with comics and the fundamentals are all there.



Byron, Canary Wharf



They’ll ask you how you’d like your burger cooked, and actually listen to you and act on it, which is a great start! The menu includes a few suggested topping combinations (the signature ‘Byron Burger’ comes with cheddar and bacon, and their tangy house sauce), but doesn’t make too big a meal out of toppingness and lets you choose your own, or indeed none at all.

(i've no idea who the Byron in question actually is, but it's reassuring that their slogan is 'Proper Hamburgers' rather than something convoluted around 'lording it over the competition' or 'club foot sandwich' or somesuch!)

The burger itself is more flavoursome than any I’ve previously sampled in a country with taps and pavements; the meatiness wafting through the toppings and working with them rather than hiding behind sauce like some frightened, beefy bastard.

Maybe they fly their cattle over from Montana first class and slaughter them en route to The Wharf from City Airport? It certainly tastes like it.

There are proper bottles of various sauces on the table, including Tabasco, which adds to the American diner-type feel, and which is no bad thing.

You can mix and match and share your sides (crispy courgette fries are a particular highlight) rather than be shoe-horned into a meal combo you might not want which is great, especially at lunchtime, and there’s Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Brooklyn Lager on the drinks list for an authentically modern American experience (or you could go for an old-fashioned milkshake served in the frozen bucket it was made in!)

Another reliable marker for the quality of a burger is to ask yourself if you could happily drink wine with it. Byron offer a succinct list, 'helpfully' self-rated from 'Good' (Pinotage) to 'Best' (a Californian Pinot Noir) via 'Better' and 'Great', though I'd suggest that in this context it's pretty much of a muchness and the scale goes from 'Alright' to 'Alright'.


They have a similarly-rated quartet of Whites, but who on God's fat earth would consider drinking white wine with a burger?!?.Come on.

There are myriad places to eat on The Wharf, but even with the presence of GBK, there was a burger-shaped gap in the market which has now been filled admirably.

OK, they ain’t quite perfect. The dessert menu is safe and bland (though GBK doesn't even have one). There’s no choice in the bread department, and the standard bun isn’t very inspiring, and I’ve been told the vegetarian and healthy salady options are disappointing and come across as an afterthought.

But then who seeks out the best burger joint in town only to eat something that isn’t a burger? Possibly the same people who are drinking Chardonnay when they eat something that is?

Anyway, a substantial meal for two with a couple of beers or a bottle of wine will set you back £35-50, which is about comparable with GBK (and 3-4 times the price of Wetherspoons but fuck 'em).

Bottom line is that I might have been to a dozen or so places that are better than Byron Burger, but they are all a lengthy plane ride away. So go to Byron for your burgers, dickwad.

On The Wharf...

The Ledger Building (JD Wetherpoons)
4, Hertsmere Road,
West India Quay
E14 4AL
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Gourmet Burger Kitchen
Unit 24, Jubilee Place,
Canary Wharf,
E14 5NY 
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Byron Hamburgers
Second Floor, Cabot Place East
Canary Wharf
E14 4QT
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(Other branches of all three chains are plentiful across London