Burger Geeks

Matthew Lee meets the Londoners obsessed with hamburgers, and finds the best new places in the capital to bite into a bun. Who said the British can't do burgers?

Photography by Tim White

There’s tension in the air. Burgerac, London’s foremost hamburger detective, is about to deliver his verdict on a burger at a restaurant called Bar Boulud. He holds his half of the “Piggy Burger” at eye-level and we both admire its dazzling beauty – cheese brioche bun, tender pulled pork (slow cooked mince) and a medium-rare beef patty, brown edges giving way to a reddish-pink centre, a shy blush for a hopelessly enamoured audience.

But there’s a problem. The chilli mayonnaise has made the surface slippery and Burgerac is struggling to get a grip. Red cabbage spills from the seams. I nervously gobble a French fry. “Slicing it in half appears to have affected the burger dynamics,” he reports, tongue only slightly in cheek. But despite concerns regarding structural integrity, Burgerac’s enthusiasm remains undiminished. He declares it a triumph, his favourite burger in London. “For too long we put up with substandard burgers,” says the sleuth, who launched his food blog (www.burgerac.com) at the start of the year. For those who missed it, the name is a play on the 1980s British TV detective series, Bergerac. “Now we’re braver in the kitchen and demanding more. There’s a new generation of ultra-burger and it’s hugely exciting.”

Burgerac, whose identity must not be revealed, is obviously obsessed. But he’s by no means alone. Five years or so ago, London wasn’t the best place for the burger besotted. Now the scene is booming and fast-food junkies are queuing up to reveal their once- taboo passion. An online community of chefs, butchers, writers and kitchen-table enthusiasts alike carnivorously blog and tweet about bun absorbability, cheese gooeyness, lean-to-fat ratios, the optimum way to slice gherkins and the different kinds of burgers they discovered in small American towns on their latest pilgrimage to the burger’s homeland.

It’s understandable. We’ve all grown up with hamburgers. They symbolise America, childhood and, erm, capitalism. And if you’re counting calories, they are forbidden fruit, a calorific treat reserved only for special occasions. You can squeeze them, smell them and wrap your lips around them. They’re the ultimate comfort food. The burger is, in pop culture terms, perhaps the most iconic dish in the world.

This rich hamburger mythology was recently celebrated in London at The Burgermat Show. The event was a special edition of Burger Mondays, a social gathering and burger feast organised by American Daniel Young, a blogger (www.youngandfoodish.com) and former food critic for New York’s Daily News. Young teamed up with Burgerac to produce a celebration of art, design and, of course, hamburgers. Each meal came with a burger-themed placemat designed by a young London artist – a unique souvenir for the discerning fan.

In a similar vein, artists Anna Lomax and Lauren Davies, together known as Jiggery Pokery (www.jiggerypokery.biz), have launched a collection of fast-food memorabilia at the YCN gallery in the east London neighbourhood of Shoreditch. Entitled Eat Fast Die Young, it includes tomato-shaped ketchup dispensers, vanity cases shaped like burgers, and all sorts of tacky giveaways from the golden age of marketing burgers to kids.

“These take us back to our childhood and the things we couldn’t have,” says Lomax, her face lit by the golden arches in the window. “But ultimately it’s just about celebrating the naffness of it all.” One particularly naff item is a comic book starring Mr Wimpy, a Popeye character re-imagined as a Tower of London Beefeater. He was the face of Wimpy restaurants, which first opened in Britain in the mid-1950s, a full two decades before McDonald’s arrived on UK shores.

Once a familiar sight on many a UK high street, today its restaurants are much fewer in number, the closest to central London being in Shadwell, east London. And that’s where I find Daniel Young eating a cheeseburger topped with a flattened pork sausage.

“Burgers are a strong part of New York culture, and New Yorkers have a very strong idea of what burgers should be,” he says, holding the last thing on Earth he thinks a burger should be. He started Burger Mondays to “bring a New Yorker’s sensibility” to the burgeoning London scene.

The events are held in small London cafés, but star accomplished chefs making spectacular burgers. “When you see 40 beautiful burgers and 40 people at shared tables biting into them and dripping onto the plate, the impact is very strong,” he says.

Although a Wimpy burger is a very different beast to some of the ultra-burgers you can order today, I can’t help root for the plucky British underdog that dared take on the American giants. And today there’s a new British burger chain on the scene: Byron. It was founded by Tom Byng, who fell in love with the dish while living in the US.

“What we’re doing here now is what happened in New York five years ago,” Byng says, fresh from opening his 16th branch in just four years. “The hamburger had acquired this grotty, Super Size Me-type reputation. But there was a resurgence and Americans were reminded of just how delicious and comforting hamburgers can be.”

Joining Byron at the start of the revolution was steakhouse Hawksmoor, whose Longhorn beef and bone marrow creation was an instant hit when it was released in 2009, raising the bar for British burger culture. It’s in a branch of Hawksmoor that I meet up with Marcus de Vere, who works in catering and has his own fledgling business, ANP Burgers (www.aintnopicnicburgers.com ). He talks about beef blends, bun suppliers, fat content, cheese, pickles and salt like a man who’s made hundreds of burgers in the past week, which indeed he has. “I was a chef first and then I realised that I loved cutting up animals so I became a butcher,” he says. “If you’re going to have a ridiculous obsession with hamburgers, a butcher’s is a good place to work.”

But it was the arrival of The Meatwagon (www.themeatwagon.co.uk) last year, a van popping up in places like Peckham, south-east London, that really shook up the capital’s burger scene. Yianni Papoutsis makes old- school American-style burgers that people travel for miles to eat. Standing next to his food truck in a London pub garden, Papoutsis has an unlikely confession. “I’ve always had a passion for Big Macs,” he says. “When I was five or six years old my Friday treat was to go to McDonald’s, and I have the strongest early memories of the first time I was allowed to eat a Big Mac. It was a rite of passage.”

But the Meatwagon experience is something different. High-quality burgers are served in a low-key setting, so it’s not quite like the knife-and-fork burger bars of Byron and Hawksmoor, either.

He serves me a Dead Hippie, his marvellously greasy, intensely tasty take on the McDonald’s burger. He tells me about the joys of corn-fed beef, vintage griddles and American diners. He claims he’s not obsessed with burgers. I don’t believe him for a second.

LITTLE BLACK BURGER BOOK

BYRON Branches throughout London www.byronhamburgers.com

HAWKSMOOR Branches in Covent Garden and Spitalfields www.thehawksmoor.co.uk

THE MEATWAGON Locations vary www.themeatwagon.co.uk

BAR BOULUD Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, tel: +44 (0)20 7201 3899 www.barboulud.com

WIMPY London branches include Watney Market, tel: +44 (0)20 7790 5371 www.wimpy.uk.com

MORE GREAT LONDON BURGERS TO TRY

THE GOODMAN BURGER www.goodman.restaurants.com

THE ADMIRAL CODRINGTON CHEESEBURGER www.theadmiral.codrington.co.uk

OPERA TAVERN PORK AND FOIE GRAS BURGER www.operatavern.co.uk

THE LUCKY CHIP BACON BURGER www.facebook.com/luckychip

SPUNTINO SECRET OFF-MENU BURGER www.spuntino.co.uk

Fast facts

GETTING THERE
Gatwick, Luton and Stansted airports are all within easy reach of central London by rail, bus or car. If you are travelling from Stansted to London be sure to buy your Stansted Express tickets onboard at a discounted price. For car hire, Hertz (www.hertz.com ) is Ryanair’s exclusive rental partner, with special rates for passengers when you book your flight.