LOCATION: RAW and Elliot’s burger and wine pop up, Borough Market [map]
PRICE: £9.50 for a burger with chips.
BREAD: Linseeded burger bun
FILLING: Beef burger,caramelised onions, Comté cheese, dill butter
PROS: People, especially food people, specifically London food people, have very fixed ideas about what does and does not make a good burger. It must have slappy processed cheese, it must have a light brioche bun etc etc bore bore bore off snooze snore sleepy time. I am of the opinion that there is room in the world for many different styles of burger and yet I was a little worried about trying this one. Comte? Really? Dill butter? Really? Am I allowed to like this? Really?
Well here’s the shocker: this was one of the most delicious burgers I’ve eaten in yonks. Really. The beef is from the Ginger Pig; it’s 40 day aged rib eye cap, which is nice and fatty and therefore tastes of awesome. It’s cooked properly medium rare too. Bollocks to this health and safety rubbish that some places are genuinely, actually taking on board and ruining everyone’s fun in the process. The Comté is, naturally, delicious. It’s salty and really works staggeringly well in a burger. The real stroke of genius however, is the dill butter. ‘Acidulated dill butter’ I am told. So it’s got lemon juice in it. No it doesn’t I’ve just been told it has dill pickling liquor, which they make themselves. Acidulated is a great word however. I rank it up there with other great words like ‘rotisserie’ and ‘blimp’. The bun is brushed with this butter before toasting. Like, really heavily brushed. I could see the butter line on the bun, almost a centimetre deep, like a BBQ smoke ring on meat. It’s a juice bomb. I had trouble containing the juiciness, actually, which reminds me to give special mention to the bun which did not fall apart despite being up against so much tasty. Pickles come on the side. Obviously they went straight into my burger. They’re quick pickled (like, 2 hours), perfectly crisp slices of skinless cucumber, rather than the trad gherkin. They rocked. Basically, I loved everything about this burger. Well, almost…
CONS: The pickles were a touch too salty. I don’t get the point of the linseeds on the bun.
SCORE: 8/10
So I ate this burger at the RAW and Elliot’s pop up which is running until 12th August but the burger is available at Elliot’s permanent site just across the road. The pop up however is awesome. Go, drink some natural wine with your burger. Pop in for a glass and then leave at 11pm having sunk a further 3 bottles like I did. Ahem.
Hi Helen – fabulous review as always. However – biodynamic wine? Really? It usually tastes of cider. If I wanted cider, I wouldn’t order white wine! This ruined two recent meals I’ve had – one at Duck Soup and one at Elliots, where I wanted a crisp dry white and got something that tasted of scrumpy. I even sent a carafe back at Duck Soup, and I’m English and thus should be so embarrassed that such behaviour would be impossible…
Hi Andy, just a quick clarification, biodynamics in itself doesn’t affect the flavour of wine in the way that you dislike. Biodynamics is mostly just relevant to the grape growing. The wines that you’ve disliked will have been made with zero Sulphur ‘natural’ (or in some cases, very minimal Sulphur).
My suggestion would be in places that are focusing on ‘natural’ wines, if you’re after something crisp and clean tasting to let them know this, then go for a fresh young red instead….
linseeds? On a burger bun? Burgh. But the rest sounds delicious. Not sure about these burger rules. It’s meat in a bun, GIMME!
Totally! We embrace all kinds of BOIGER!
ps. what are those chips? Are they… discs? They look tasty.
Yeah they were seriously crispy. They are chips. Round ones. Yum.
Now, while I completely agree about burger bores and live-and-let-live in that area, I’m less tolerant about people fucking about with chips. Thin or fat, crinkle or straight are acceptable variations, but if you call something chips I want one of the above, not fancy-pants skin-on DISCS and certainly not WEDGES. Grinds my bloody gears. Burger sounds ace but then everything at Elliot’s is, love the place.
Ha ha! Awesome. Also, I understand. The worst is when wedges come STACKED. STACKED, HUGH.
Acidulated Butter sounds like a stroke of genius! I love pickles, especially on hamburgers and working more of that flavor into the bun sounds very tasty!