Byron Burgers, Covent Garden, doesn't understand what a burger is.

I'd heard a few rumours of decent burger joints in London. Byron consistently was highly rated so after getting some good news the other day I decided to treat myself to a mid afternoon burger and beer.

Byron is one of those places that both makes you both happy and angry all within 30 minutes.
First things first, they had Brooklyn Lager, a lager I love since I've been to the brewery many times in Williamsburg and used to live a quick L train ride from it in New York. Served in an chilled glass it was perfectly brilliant as I waited for the burger I had ordered.

Fun fact. This logo was designed by the same guy who did I <3 NY.

The burger I had ordered was a straight up cheeseburger with American cheese. I'm a purist when it comes to burgers, components should be tomato, lettuce, cheese, pickle and beef.
One of the things I HATE is when a burger is served in a generic bap which is like eating through leather, so when the burger arrived I took one look at the anemic looking bread and sighed, disheartened.

Flour Power:(

Everyone knows you eat with your eyes first, and that bread is over floured, too white and simply too big. Luckily it squished down enough and tasted ok, but unfortunately I was already on my way to being pissed off with this Britburger.

The beef in the burger itself is a credit to the line chefs slaving away serving up these things to a busy Thursday lunch crowd. A perfect medium, juicy burger although the meat has no real texture of it's own, but that's not the chef's fault, it's whoever is sourcing and directing this shitshow. It may benefit from the smashing technique.

Perfect Medium, note too much bun on top.

I didn't bother with fries, but they looked like standard mcdonalds clone shoestrings.
I was impressed with them having Cholula, an amazing mexican hot sauce I used to smear all over tacos in the US.

Love this stuff, have some in my home at all times for emergency unblanding of food.

The staff were nice, but here's where I'm going to focus a little more on what really pissed me off. In short, a burger is a simple beast, I've made dozens, I know what the raw materials required are and I know a bloody great burger can be made very cost effectively. So when this came I was a little aghast.

Are you taking the piss?

On what planet is a cheeseburger £7.50 !? At time of writing that's $12.10 - for a FUCKING CHEESEBURGER. Even Manhattan's best and most popular burger place, Shakeshack a cheeseburger is $4.25. I'm not a cheapskate, I've paid hundreds of dollars/euros/pounds/whatever for meals in the past, and I understand labour and rent costs, but this is just shameless. The service is pretty non existent anyway because it's so busy at lunch, they're literally throwing the food at you, and they have TWO hosts at the door, so I guess what you're paying for really here is all the staff, I'd rather walk to the counter to get my burger myself, and I'm more than capable of finding an empty table myself too.

Here's a tip they could learn from Shakeshack. You don't need those 20 'cool' hipster waiters running around, get a ticketing system, cut your costs, then cut your god damn prices. Until then I won't be back here.

Shake Shack's cheap waiters.

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A Pizza Odyssey

I love pizza, I fell in love with it in the courtyard of a small pizzeria in Naples when I was 14. It was covered in vines hanging from the wooden beams above and had a wood burning pizza oven in the courtyard itself. I was on a school trip and we got to climb Mt Vesuvius, I still have a bit of rock I brought home from there even though you're not supposed to remove it. I guess I was a bad kid... Anyway! I've been trying to find places to recreate what I had in Naples my whole life, from takeaways, restaurants and even cooking myself.

Living in New York I'm surrounded by the stuff, however it's the NYC kind, it has a completely different style and taste to the Italian style, while I also chow down on it regularly it doesn't invoke memories like the Neapolitan does for me.

So with this in mind I set out to make myself a perfect Margherita. Now the Italians take their pizza very seriously. So much so they even have 'Vera Pizza Napoletana' to certify places that make it.

I decided to borrow as much as possible from that and try to make my own version at home.

I have a book called 'In search of perfection' by Heston Blumenthal.
In it he travels to Naples to sample San Marzano tomatoes and laments that he thinks that the rise in their use is probably more to do with the fact that the canning industry rose to prominence around the same time as the rise of pizza and san marzano's shape made them perfect for canning and shipping to pizzarias around the world. (Pizza had been brought back to the United States by GIs that had been stationed in Naples in WWII).

The Napolitana will have you believe that they're perfect for pizza because of the acidity levels due to the volcanic ashes in the soil there. For me, this was about creating what I had when I was 14 so went with the wisdom of the Italians and got myself some certified San Marzano Tomatoes for the sauce.

For the base i used refined white flour 1kg, 750g for the initial dough (most people will say use 00 flour for this but I think that's more likely because places that used to make pizza also made pasta and 00 flour is used for this purpose)

Pizza Week Monday: Irish Fatty's Neapolitan Margherita fail.

The cheese was a no brainer, buffalo mozzarella. Other ingredients for my Margherita included:

• pint water
• salt
• pepper
• yeast
• fresh basil
• Parmesan
• olive oil
• garlic

Lets get this baby started.

I started out by making the dough. to do this mix a pint of warm water with a sachet 7g yeast, teaspoon of salt and teaspoon of olive oil. let it rest until the yeast starts fermenting, you should see foam at the top.

Dump 750g flour out and make a well.


well well well...

Slowly mix in the yeast water gick until a dough starts to come together, your hands will get messy but warm tap water should clean them off.


Sir Mixalot.

knead for about 15-20 mins, its important to do this to get plenty of air into the dough.
Let rise for about an hour in a warm place, it should double in size. You can also let it rise overnight in the fridge.


I like my dough to reference what I'm making.


Michelangelo's bulging eyes mean lots of air pockets.

Punch the dough down and you should hear air leaving the dough like a fart.
Let it rise again until it's increased it's size by half again.
Your dough is now ready to fridge or freeze. I was using mine exclusively for pizza bases so I cut in 5 and froze.


pizza dough!

Now I was ready to make the pizza sauce.
Take the tomatoes put them in a pot, add salt and pepper to taste, i added 2 cloves garlic and some chopped fresh basil. Simmer on a low heat for a few minutes and mash the shit out of them with potato masher. You can also blend them but I don't have a blender here.


Smashy smashy.

Ok genius, now time to roll the dough, remember I used 750g of the 1kg bag of flour?
The other 250g is just enough for dusting with you take a rolling pin to the dough (or wine bottle in my case).


half way there, I was aiming for about 11" diameter.

Now, assemble and voila! I added a lot of shaved Parmesan and slices of buffalo mozzarella because everything tastes better with cheese.


Little did I know this would be the last time I would see this beautiful sight.

Now let me tell you about the oven. The VPN says that pizza should be cooked in ovens at a temperature of 370C+ 700F+. Mine only goes to 500F so I had to figure out a way to apply more direct heat to the pizza from the top and bottom. After reading more of Heston's science and a few pages on line I decided I would use my 23cm blue steel crepe pan to cook the pizza on and cook the pizza as high in the oven as possible.

Firstly heat rises to the top. So that's where your oven is the hottest unless it's a fan oven. secondly the top of the oven is going to be metal which will retain heat well and lastly, the direct contact heat from the pan will act like a pizza stone and crisp the base.

So I let the oven heat up and then tried to move the pizza to the.... oh shit, wtf, how am I going to do this? I don't have a pizza peel/shovel and my spatula is tiny. The only thing for it was to try quickly move the pizza to the pan with spatula and hands combo...and bake for 15-20 mins.


FAIL.

Moving the dough had created a faultline down the dough and ruined my perfect pizza. I ate it anyway and figured out how I could attack it again following next day.
The new plan was assemble the pizza in the pan (slighly greased with olive oil). I also rubbed olive oil along perimeter of the dough base to get it to char a little more...

Pizza Week Tuesday: Irish Fatty's Neapolitan Margherita.


Success!

All your crispy base.

Now by success I mean I accomplished making what i consider to be a delicious pizza at home. It was however no match for the pizza I had 14 years ago in Naples.
This raised an interesting question. I still have 3 dough balls left... That's where things got a bit strange...

Pizza Week Wednesday: Irish Fatty's Mexican taco pizza!

I bought Dave's Ultimate Insanity Hot sauce a few weeks ago and I have been looking for an excuse to put it in something. I also had chilli in a can in the kitchen. Could I make pizza that would blow my head off using what I had learned the previous day?

Why, yes... Yes I could.
If I was going to melt my face off with the hot sauce why not add Tabasco, and some chilli flakes, and peppers, and cheddar cheese! For science!



If you can't stand the heat.

The result?


That doesn't look very Mexican...

That's better!

To say this thing was fantastic is an understatement, it was honestly one of the best pizza's I've ever had. Anyone who knows me knows I'm sucker for mexican and for pizza, but any I had tried always came up short, this however, Mind Blown.


Pizza Week Thursday: Irish Fatty's Irish Fryup.

Next up I decided to experiment with some traditional Irish foods.
Superquinn sausages smuggled into the US at Christmas, Irish bacon stolen from the good people in my local Irish pub, black and white pudding, and a fried egg.


Come to Fatty.

This doesn't look like pizza.

Oh dear god.

This one was actually pretty weak, not that I don't love all the components on it, it just doesn't work and the tomato sauce base kinda overtook the flavours of everything else. I still love my Fried breakfasts, just probably best to keep them off a pizza!

Pizza Week Friday: Irish Fatty's wtf special.

When I had the idea for this it was because I was sick of eating pizza.
I'll just let the pictures do that talking on this one.


No!

Please!

What are you doing?

This is so wrong.

Is that ketchup?!

Wow. Just wow.

Fatty Pac-Man

One slice was enough, the rest went in the bin, and I went to the pub for a well earned pint.

Bill's Bar and Burger, Best Burger in NYC?

I have seen so many places labelled as the best burger in New York City I was understandably trepidatious when Citysearch's resident Burgerholic Josh Ozersky named Bill's Bar and Burger as the best burger in NYC. I'd read a lot about the different methods used in making burgers in the US. Bill's was using Pat LaFrieda beef mix, the same stuff my previous favourite NYC burger place uses, Shake Shack:

Shack Burger, picture by A Hamburger Today.

In addition to that, they were using the smash technique for cooking the burgers that Smashburger and In-n-Out burger. Smash technique basically means you slap the fresh mince/ground beef down with a spatula, making as much surface area hit the pan creating a thin burger with a nice charred crust but it also means you have to be very careful not to overcook the mince.

So on to the review, Bill's took us a while to find as it had only opened the night before and I don't think they had a sign up. Once inside we were greeted by very friendly staff who informed us there would be a thirty minute wait. No problem we said and and so we hit the bar.

After about 5 minutes the host said that someone had not turned up for their table and it was the best table in the house, at the corner, by the big windows, great for people watching.

On to the menu, it's VERY simple, and as was explained later, they were going for that approach deliberately. I had no problem with this, so for the review I figured I'd need a control, and since In-n-Out and shake shack both use lettuce and tomato with a special sauce I figured it made sense to try the Sunset and Vine which is a clear reference to the West Coast chain In-n-Out (which I always make a trip to when on the west coast).

Sunset and Vine.

After tasting the burger I felt that something was missing and half way through I realized what it was, pickles! So after adding the pickles I tried to be blown away and I simply wasn't, I'm not saying that this is a bad burger, but best in New York? No. Better than shake shack? No. Better than In-n-Out? definately not. The patty was too thin, not juicy enough, and I got a chunk of gristle in mine.
The burger also looks like grey brain matter as you can see in the autopsy shot below, I like my burgers to show a little pink:

Where's the beef?

I know it's a thin burger but to me it felt overcooked with not enough flavour. It was also quite messy and had me wondering since both The Feedbag and AHT had raved about it, maybe those advance tastings meant the chefs were under less pressure and could season and cook the meat better, also, there is no way the burger was 1/3lb of beef.

My friends ordered the Bill's classic with cheese and The Bill's classic with Cheese and Bacon. They said it was one of the best burgers they had eaten but they havn't had shake shack or smashburger.

Bill's Classic with cheese.

Bill's Classic with bacon and cheese.

The sides were the real star for me, I ordered the deep fried vegetables which we all said were delicious, and the french fries were skin on thin cut which were also delicious. Both well seasoned and the former a great way to get some greens into your diet, albeit battered and deep fried!




Overall it's a fine attempt at a burger, the atmosphere is great and the waiting staff are very friendly and put you at ease instantly, but it's going to need a bit more refinement before they can produce well cooked and seasoned burger and deliver it consistantly. Until then, I'll be queuing at the Shake Shack when I want New York's finest.

22 9 Ave, New York, NY 10014
(212) 604-0092


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