Pitt Cue Co, Soho

One of the problems with being an aspiring food and drink writer is that you devote so much of your time to food and drink. Of course, this sounds both hypocritical and contrarian – surely that’s the bloody point, isn’t it? Let me explain. Writer A may know a bit about food. He may have eaten at some great restaurants in his time. He may be able to impress his less gastronomically-inclined friends at dinner parties. His opinion, therefore, on matters culinary may be considered mildly educated, even occasionally fit for consumption by the general public. The problem arises when you realise that you are so into food that you no longer eat at bad restaurants. You read so many blogs, reviews, restaurant guides, and Top Ten/Best Of lists that going out to lunch or dinner on a whim seems, well, very 90s.

So until the time comes when you are respected enough to be invited to review a restaurant – which in my case is likely to be somewhere between a cold day in hell and the end of the world – why would you gamble a sizeable chunk of change on an unknown entity? Partly, this is a by-product of having an obsession with food. Partly, it’s also basic recession economics – we eat out less, so we take more care when we do so. Of course, you can still have a bad experience at what is considered a good restaurant – Burger & Lobster dramatically overcooked my burger, for instance, and in retrospect I am less than enamoured with the downstairs restaurant at Roti Chai. Still, it has become increasingly apparent that my gastro-obsessive nature often unwittingly compromises the vitality of my critical streak. Sorry – ‘Writer A’s’ critical streak.

Why is such a preamble necessary? Because two nights ago I went to Pitt Cue Co and a gushing review is imminent. It was everything I expected, wanted, craved and so much more. BBQ is like crack to me. Though New England is hardly the BBQ capital of the States – that would be Texas, North Carolina, or Kansas depending on who you ask and where they’re from – it’s still full of Americans and where you find Americans you inevitably find a healthy tradition of grilling and smoking various hunks of flesh. So while I’ve never travelled far enough afield to be considered a total guru on matters of the pit, my palate is still trained to detect quality smoked fare – whether it’s at a classic backyard booze-up or on a trip to a delicious dive like the Blue Ribbon BBQ in Arlington, MA.

The Great British Burger Debate

The seemingly small matter of where one finds the best burger in London inspires a disproportionately large amount of deliberation and debate. From bona fide food critics to aspiring hacks like myself, everybody has an opinion - the only thing we seem able to agree on is that if you have it well done, yours doesn’t count. To date, Daniel ‘Young and Foodish’ Young has put together what comes closest to being a definitive list of the capital’s best bits of flattened beef, declaring the best burger in London to emanate from the Goodman kitchens. This is a fairly accurate assertion in so far as it is probably the best I tasted to date, despite a major balls-up with regards to cooking time. I sampled their wares late-December at Burger & Lobster, a Mayfair offshoot devised to satisfy public demand for the more humble end of their menu (and presumably free up tables in their restaurants for people spending vastly superior sums of money).

Even though either the person working the grill or the wait staff seemed to have got something pretty badly wrong – medium-rare arrived completely well-done – it was still a pretty awesome hunk of flesh and not at all dry, a minor miracle given the way it had been cooked. Crucially, the fries were the real deal – thin and overly salted in the disgracefully moreish, McDonald’s tradition, while the lobster dish consumed by my companion was deemed pretty flawless. I certainly deemed it an absolute steal for £20. Added to the fact that the concept was beyond brilliant – a three-item menu, spectacular cocktails, the simplest of price schemes – I was a very happy punter indeed, especially after the management offered me free drinks to compensate for the unsatisfactory greyness of my patty. 

At the other end of the spectrum, many believe that life for London’s burger aficionados began not in a well-heeled steakhouse, but in the car park of a south-east London industrial estate with Yianni Papoutsis and his Meatwagon. Again, there’s a certain amount of truth in this claim. For sure, some of the best burgers I’ve tasted this side of the pond came courtesy of Papoutsis and his #Meateasy tenure above a dilapidated pub in New Cross that just happened to be dangerously close to my university. Yet by the time the rest of my art school comrades caught on, the place hadn’t just become a cesspit of pretentiousness, it had started to churn out inconsistent bordering on average burgers, including one that was, for lack of a more eloquent phrase, burnt to shit. Don’t get me wrong:  I’ve always been one of Papoutsis’ biggest fans and love the new joint, MEATliquor, where the deep-fried pickles elicit a particularly strange type of nostalgia (I used to eat them at the now deceased branch of Hooters in Boston). But that doesn’t mean to say that I’m blind to the occasional failings of his restaurants.

MEATliquor, Marylebone

If Roti Chai has enjoyed its fair share of blogospheric activity in recent weeks, it's nothing compared to that provoked by the burgers of a certain Yianni Papoutsis over the last couple of years. Now, I must admit that I'm a bit biased when it comes to Papoutsis's enterprises and, more specifically, to the food they revolve around. I was expanding my gut to the tune of his carnivorous revolution yonks before pretentious hipsters gave #Meateasy their blessing and have always found him to be an affable character - I'm still grateful for the interview he gave me for an Eastlondonlines article. But more importantly, it's the sort of food that takes me back to my misspent youth in Massachusetts. One bite of a jaw busting Dead Hippie burger or a gob-full of buffalo wings heavily doused with blue cheese sauce and I'm thirteen again, it's Friday night in West Concord, and the waitress at Pub 99 is casting disapproving glances at my table as we empty whisky-filled water bottles into refillable soda cups under the table.

It was extremely unlikely, therefore, that I was ever at risk of disliking his latest venture and first genuine bricks and mortar operation, MEATliquor. The only pertinent critical question was: how much would I like it? Al and I decided to tip up after our dinner in Marble Arch for some nightcaps - always plural in my book - and sample the vibe of the place on a Saturday night.  I'm happy to report that the new joint is as gloriously seedy as ever, though the sleaze factor is perhaps partially mitigated by the fact we were in Marylebone, not New Cross. Still, he is clearly a man who sticks to his principles, and when those principles revolve around burger-fueled debauchery, it's fairly certain to garner approval from the Scavenger Gourmet.