National Burger Day

Oh Happy Day!

Battersea Power Station - 27 August 2014

Record shops. Hugging.  Libraries. Talking like a pirate. Bacon. Gin. Pancakes. Dogs. Every thing has its day. And thanks to the good people of Mr Hyde, burgers have finally been elevated into such illustrious company, with a day of their own. A celebration of all things ground beef and bunned, National Burger Day sees restaurants all over the country offering a 20% discount on burgers (natch). And most importantly for the purposes of this post, it sees Mr Hyde teaming up with Tweat Up to throw a patty party.

This year it took place at the Street Feast's Riverside Feast site right in the shadow of the iconic Battersea Power Station. This has been my favourite Street Feast location yet, and it’s been an awesome summer of street foods down there. It'll be missed, with the power station about to become another beacon to over-priced London property. Impressively shiny, no doubt. But I doubt it'll have a fraction of the vibes.

Anyway, back to the burgers: 12 of London's finest were in attendance, cooking up one-off specials. Most of these being smaller than your average burger, as with all the best will in the world you'd never to be able to try more than a couple...

We managed 5, of which the first was the stand out – Slider Bar’s short rib slider: an aged beef patty (anything else just won’t cut it these days), 10-hour roast chipotle short rib, bone marrow & habanero salsa, American cheese and chipotle ketchup. The patty was excellently cooked, the short rib was rich and tender, and the whole thing had a real chilli kick to it, with the gf feeling the burn. I didn't think it was that spicy, but would happily have gone back for a second if there wasn't so much more to try.

Second was Club Gascon's foie gras burger. I would struggle to call it a burger, however – it was a slab of fried foie gras on truffle cream and crispy gem lettuce, in a brioche roll. A sweet, rich and delicious sandwich. But not a burger…

Similarly, Le Bun's ‘Le Royale with Cheese’ slider wasn't a burger, but was similarly satisfying – a thick chunk of is-the-night-tender short rib, doused in smokey, meaty hickory jus, topped off with fried goats cheese (which wasn't quite cooked enough in our opinion – not really gooey), and crunchy salad. Tres bien.

The next two efforts came from two of the biggest queues – HotBox & Mother Flipper. HotBox's looked beautiful on paper: short rib (a recurring theme), Monterey Jack cheese, chipotle slaw, bbq dripping and chimichurri. Lush. And when cooked it still made for an attractive burger, but sadly, beyond a beautifully cooked course-ground patty, it lacked a little flavour. Pickled chillis added punch (and gave me a dose of hiccups - how the tables turned), but the short-rib wasn't as good as the previous two examples.

And our final savoury burger - Mother Flipper's ‘Smoked BBQ Belly Flipper’ - was our pre-event favourite, a black angus patty topped with cherry BBQ glazed, smoked pork belly, gouda and crispy shallots. But sadly, it didn’t really deliver – our burger seemed a bit too densely packed, and was over-cooked with no pink left. The flavours were there, but the execution was a little off. A shame, because usually I love a Mother-Flipping burger…

After that, I did weigh up one more, having been smitten by the gravy life promised by Dip & Flip on our last trip to the power park. But by 7:30, the queues were off the meat-rack, so we took a call on mains and had a dessert burger instead…

Yep. Dessert burger. The cake dealers at Crumbs & Doilies had got to slinging burger cupcakes. Here is the Elvis, in all its salted caramel, banana mallow, candied bacon, peanut buttery wonder (I avoided the peanut butter. Ewwww).

The side order of cookie fries and sweet sweet sauces were a very clever touch. Expensive for a cupcake, but as a work of craft and imagination, I was very impressed.

All in all, that was a great way to say goodbye to Battersea – burgers, chillibacks, vibes and beats. Burger-y big ups to everyone involved. A fitting send-off to fine times spent down the Power Park.