HEY BYRON: get over yourself. No? OK, I'LL get over YOU, then.
Ha! Wasn't that clever? No, it was not. But neither is your ploy of serving a very nice decent wellspoken cleanshaven mannerminding bacon cheeseburger for THAT MUCH DAMN MONEY. I have never had a $14.8/£9.25 bacon cheeseburger before, but I have had many a more memorable one. Oh, example? Sure! Like, uh, The Cherry Cricket in Denver. $7/£4.4 for essentials, $11/£6.9 for a gloriously happy ending (no no not that way, I mean in your mouth).
Man. For serious. In London: a person can take £7.5 to The Wild Game Co. in King's Cross or wherever they're set up and get "Venison burger served on a toasted brioche with caramelised onion, melted cheese, smoked crispy bacon, cherry tomato, red currant jelly and Dijon mustard". Catch that? "Venison burger served on a toasted brioche with caramelised onion, melted cheese, smoked crispy bacon, cherry tomato, red currant jelly and Dijon mustard". Mmkay. (source: facebook, 07/12/12)
Sorry, detour. Just, like...yeah. Byron. What's your deal?
You got that cool sleek nouveau-diner pro-tradition anti-nostalgia decor: "Tunnel vision to pure burgertime MMM!!" it screams. i.e. Your aesthetic suggestion is that I will be presented with a burger of note, pared down to a celebration of fundamentals: the meat will be ultra-beefy or indulgently cooked in a masterful black-and-blue fashion or sooo attractively seasoned, the bacon will be lovemade all the way (cf. my review on a certain 'Goose the Market'), the bun will cradle its contents with JUST the right texture and real-bread depth of flavour; SOMETHING, for my £9.25-no-fries-with-that order, will be profound.
Well. To/at your table I came/didn't come, y'know? It was nice and tasty. It was cooked well (i.e. medium). The bacon was not pathetic or anything. There was cheese of some sort. It was in no way profound. £9.25. Meh.
The "pared down" motif showed strongest in the form of the Great White Sea of Plate, a lonely pickle canoe solipsistically suspended between outer shore and central Burger Island.
The pickle did taste quite good. But look: austerity, with no particular in-mouth justification. I mean, if you're gonna be expensive and not sensorily singular, at least be calorically indulgent! Throw that burger in a basket under a heaping American-fries pile and leave me too sated to analyse. Dirty and remorseful over prim and anticlimactic. Otherwise I might leave you a 2 star Yelp review and THEN what'll you say, huh??!! read more