Here's a review I did back at the end of the summer and had forgotten about. Quite long-winded but you may find it helpful or amusing nonetheless. Plus it fills up some more space on the blog's wall.
After recently becoming aware of the hype surrounding a new burger restaurant in Brixton called Honest Burgers, I was searching for some details as regards to said restaurant whilst idly surfing the internet and came across a foodie website that had listed their choices for the best burgers in the London area.
After trawling through the individual reviews I came across two reputable establishments in the east London area that seemed to have the most glowing references. I decided to put a visit to Brixton on the backburner for another weekend and decided to try and head along to one of the other places to try what they had to offer.
It was nothing against Honest Burgers, their review was excellent and their burgers were one of the most competitively priced, nonetheless I decided for the extra couple of quid and the convenience of only having to travel a short distance from my flat, the restaurants that were based east would be my first port of call.
The Rivington Grill in Shoreditch was the first place that I headed to. A place that specialises in seasonal British foods and ingredients, it seemed right up my street. Coupled with the fact that it was a Monday night and the lack off food in my fridge was rendering me unable to cook anything palatable for myself, a trip to a restaurant seemed infinitely more enticing than aimlessly pushing a trolley through the crowds in Sainsbury's.
I arrived around 7.30 and sat straight at the bar. The restaurant offers a small takeaway menu where you can order a burger or fish and chips to eat outside in the sun on a summers day, but despite it being August the evening was gloomy and the thought of eating a burger outside on the cobblestone street in the chilly air made me shiver. I decided if I'd made the effort to come out for a meal, I was definitely going to be eating it from the comfort of a chair in a warm restaurant.
After sitting at the bar I was quickly seen to by a member of staff and ordered a beer. I was offered a menu but told the waitress that I already knew what I wanted and to order us through a burger at her leisure. The waitress then gave me the option of a standard beefburger or the Rivington special burger for an extra £2. The special came with extra cheese, bacon and a fried egg and I decided to go for this.
The restaurant wasn't particularly busy but I put this down to it being a Monday night rather than anything to do with quality of food on offer at the restaurant. The restaurant is also slightly hidden away down a side street just off Old Street so perhaps this was also a contributing factor.
About five minutes after ordering the waitress brought me out some freshly baked bread and salted butter. The bread was warm and delicious and kept me occupied for a few minutes whilst I made a hash of cutting the bread and messily covering it with the butter. As I was on my own the bar staff and waiters were polite enough to chat away to me while I waited and shrewd enough to leave me be whilst I tucked into my food.
When the food arrived it came on a wooden board as opposed to a plate and had a generous portion of chips housed in what I can only describe as something in-between a bowl and a cup. Looks deceived me as initially I thought the portion of chips may have been a bit on the stingy side but the amount was more than ample. The burger also looked utterly inticing.
Housed in a large bun, that stayed firm and tasty and didn't get soggy despite all the ingredients that had been placed into it, and cooked medium-rare just as I'd asked, I couldn't wait to tuck in. Another nice touch was the Welsh rarebit cheese topping. This basically just constituted your usual slice of mature cheddar but with an additional few droplets of Worcestershire sauce, which I found worked well. The bare-back bacon was cooked just the right side of crispy which meant that you weren't tearing it out of the burger each time you took a bite and the egg was excellent. Just the right amount of runniness so that it wasn't dripping out of the sides and dribbling down your face, which isn't the easiest thing to get right from past experience.
After taking a couple of bites it wasn't long before I was ploughing through the burger like I'd just stolen it and was about to have it snatched out of my grasp by the aggrieved victim that I'd just mugged for their food.
I can't say for sure whether it was the best burger I've ever eaten in London as I still have many others to try over the coming months but it must surely be a contender. The standard burger and chips is £10 but my special burger came to £12 which some people might baulk at but at the end of the day you can go to a generic pub or bar anywhere in the London area and pay £9 for a burger which would most likely be of much inferior quality. Therefore I don't begrudge paying £12 for a top quality burger from a restaurant that I would return to at a later date. I recommend heading down and trying it out for yourself, if the burger is anything to go by then the rest of the food should also be of an agreeable standard.
Now on to the next review. A couple of weeks later and it was the bank holiday weekend. My friends were all out of town at a wedding and being at a loose end I awoke on the saturday morning with an unremitting urge to eat a burger. I decided to head down to Hawksmoor in Spitalfields, a restaurant that specialises in high-end cuts of steak, your typical fillets and chateaubriand etc. Their take on the humble beefburger is only available at lunchtimes so I hotfooted it down to see if their burger was all it was cracked up to be.
I took my obligatory seat at the bar and being mildly hungover I ordered a cola in the faint hope that it may quench my thirst before the inevitable bombardment of salt on my tastebuds. I was given a glass packed to the brim with ice and then the feeblest bottle of cola I think I've ever seen. It was about as large as my little finger and even after pouring out the entire contents of the bottle, my glass still wasn't full. This was finished off in a matter of gulps and deciding that this wasn't a particularly cost effective or sufficient enough drink I quickly ordered a beer.
The beer was pleasant enough, a bottle of lager from the Greenwich brewery Meantime, served in a frosted glass and only a pound more than the cola. I scanned around the room and the layout was pleasant enough, the seating looking comfortable and the other customers seemed to be enjoying their hunks of meat whilst inanely chattering away. I ordered my burger and then quickly scanned through the menu to see what else Hawksmoor had to offer.
According to the menu their burger was made solely from Longhorn beef and contained old-fashioned cuts such as Clod and Sticking, which I'd never heard of and must admit to not finding particularly enticing but always one to be interested in trying something new or different, I decided to let the food do the talking.
My burger duly arrived with a side portion of triple cooked chips. It was a particularly impressive looking beast, needing of a large jaw to allow oneself to really get their teeth into it. The waiter also brought me a bottle of home-made ketchup which was of a particularly tasty standard. I took a bite and the first thing that hit me was the abundance of unnecessarily large gherkins and the standard bland slice of beef tomato. I don't mind gherkins but not half a dozen about 4 inches in length spread across your burger. Don't even get me started on beef tomatoes. Watery, tasteless and offering nothing of note to anything it's added to, I've always been annoyed at having them served to me in a burger when I'm out, all they do is make the burger buns soggy and just offer the taste of water which is utterly uncalled for. I duly removed the slice of tomato and pulled out the gherkins to eat on the side before going back to sample the meat and cheese that was left in the bun.
To be fair the bun was excellent and the burger was also of a good standard, although I really couldn't decipher the difference in the unusual cuts of meat that had been used. The menu had also said that small nuggets of bone marrow were also used in the beef patty but again I was none the wiser as to being able to pick out the creamy flavour that bone marrow usually offers.
As for the chips they were particularly bad, I haven't had triple cooked chips before and I can't say I'd be that disappointed if I didn't eat them again any time soon. Devoid of flavour and overly crunchy they were a chore to get down and needed drowning in the home-made ketchup to make them edible.
I wasn't overly enamoured by the service either. Half way through my meal I decided to order a final beer and was getting absolutely nowhere. Despite being sat a matter of inches from the bartender, getting his attention proved problematic. It was like trying to wave at someone three miles away, through the numerous buildings and parkland that separated the pair of you, impossible. I eventually had to get off my seat and walk around to the bartender so that we were standing face on from each other. The overly glazed look on his face as he still continued to stare past me made me think that he was either extremely rude or just dozing about in his own little world. I'll go with the latter as once he did finally catch my eye, as I stared back at him, he did offer a flustered apology of sorts so I shall let him off.
To be fair he didn't have much in the way of customers coming to his bar to order drinks as most would have them sent to their tables, so he was probably just bored and daydreaming but if you're paying £15 for a burger and chips then you expect superior service to what he was offering.
All in all I don't feel the Hawksmoor burger really justified it's price tag and wasn't anything that I will be recommending to anyone either. Saturday lunch is a prime service time for the restaurant, when it should be running at it's best. If that's the best they have to offer then don't bother wasting your time or money.
I can't comment on the quality of their other foods, the steaks may well be delicious , albeit on the extremely pricey side, but for me first impressions count for a lot and I definitely wont be rushing back.
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