An Honest Burger, as the name suggests ...

I like what Honest Burgers are bringing to the London burger scene, good honest burgers, no thrills, no gimmicks like over sauced paddys, just plain goodness of a burger that delivers on taste...

Burger time @ Bukowski Grill

I’ve just realised how inactive I’ve been recently, this is in part because I’m a lazy so and so, and mostly because I’ve been for the last few months writing copy like a mad man for a tour operator I’m now working for.

Southern Cooking @ Joe's

Joe’s Southern Kitchen and Bar opened last month, aptly on the 4^th July, pure marketing genius in my opinion.

Previously known as Navajo Joe, which I never got to eat at, Joe’s Southern Kitchen and Bar is brining the authentic taste of the American Deep South to Covent Garden.

Lobzilla is here again

I’ve always had fun at Belgo’a, from team nights out where the generous Mike Gooley would regard us with a few hundred pounds to go and get drunk and have fun after a few months of happy selling.

Belgo’s became a popular night out spot at Trailfinders, not only because we ate well, but we were all and they probably still are lovers of great beer.

Invitation for some French Food

I don’t need to tell you about Café Rouge, the French Style Brassiere chain serving up Gallic fare to us Brits, I think we all know about this chain.

Too Hot To Handle @ Bi Bim Bap

Bi Bim Bap is a bright, colourful and fun Korean restaurant in Soho that specialises in, as the name suggests Bi Bim Bap.

Sunday Roast and Beer @ The North Pole

Renovated and reopened last year and renamed the North Pole, this craft beer pub with over 22 beers and ciders on draught and more again in bottles behind the bar, this is slowly becoming my new hangout.

Dirty Burger

I am a big fan of short menus, but Dirty Burger’s has to be the shortest I’ve ever seen in London.

With one item on the menu, cheeseburger and 2 sides, it could be the shortest menu ever. Gonna be hard to beat.

Posh Chicken and Chips

Mark Hix, some would say is a man with his finger on the pulse, knowing exactly what the paying punters want and gladly gives it to them at a price, especially the suited and booted.

Good Food @ Canli Balik

I’m beginning to appreciate much more the different Turkish restaurants down my stretch of Green Lanes than ever before.

Burgers @ The Corner Bistro

I cannot remember who told me about the Corner Bistro, but whoever it was, I thank you.

The pub or bar looks nothing special on the outside but inside it is a tad dingy, and I like that, I have a thing for lived in places, I find them much more interesting than sanitised restaurants that sadly are becoming the norm these days.

Pitt Cue Co.

I’ve finally made it to the permanent base for the Pitt Cue Crew in their new premises in Central London.

I’d eaten at the food truck under Hungerford Bridge a few times last year and was more or else impressed with their food that they managed to deliver.

London is not known as an epicentre for good barbecued food. An Englishman’s knowledge of food cooked on a charcoal grill is normally undercooked burnt sausages on a cold, wet, windy Sunday afternoon.

The locals from the American South and Mid West would wage war on what we call barbecue. But we are a slow nation and new things like this take their time to come to us. But how many people would want to wait 24 hours to grill a brisket or 6 hours to slowly smoke some ribs in their back garden. Not many.

Burger Heaven @ MEATmarket

Having spent a week in New York sampling the city’s finest burgers at several of its better outlets. The Shake Shack, the Burger Joint and the interesting Corner Bistro, I’ve come to realise that sometimes less is more.

New York Tales : John's Pizzeria

New Yorkers claim they have the best pizza or pie (as they call it) in the world. Well they have quite a long tradition of it, with a gentleman called Gennaro Lombardo opening the first Pizzeria in Little Italy in 1905.

We were tempted to sample the pizza’s at Lombardo’s, but for some reason we just never got round to it. As is.

As we were staying quite close to West Village, John’s Pizzeria’s name crept up when we asked the hotel staff where we could get some good pizza close by.

Foto Friday # 66

One of the best meals you could ever have. Spiced roast pork, washed down with a cold refreshing beer. Awesome.

G is for Germany @ The Zeitgeist

My forays into German food have been few and far between, apart from a recent visit to Kurz and Lang in Farringdon and a seemingly odd German restaurant in the countryside outside of Medellin in Colombia, that served awesome ham hocks and sauerkraut. It’s been pretty miserable to say the least.

Well there was that one night many years ago in Munich at the Oktober Fest, where I guzzled down litres and litres of fine German beer in those mighty stein glasses, and consumed so many sausages and hocks it defies belief.

So when G came up there really wasn’t too much competition. Well Greece was a front runner, but since one of us is off a sailing holiday around the Greek islands in a few days it made more sense to go with other options. A Ghanaian pub in south London was blown out of the water by our Polish musical loving cartoonist, as he had heard there was a Polish chef there and couldn’t see the point of eating Ghanaian food cooked badly by a fellow countryman.

So looking around it seemed Zeitgeist was getting all the accolades as the best place in London to sample some fine German beer and food.

The menu is amazing, there are 9 different schnitzel dishes on it. I was so sold, and therefore I sold it to everyone else as well. It’s a good job to be the chooser.

Zeitgeist used to be what looks like an old time boozer. With its large open room with a horseshoe bar in the middle. I bet the regulars were a tad miffed when their beloved watering hole became a German beer house. Although I am sure they changed their mind, especially with the impressive array of German beers on tap, which may even put a bar in Germany to shame.

But we were here for one thing and one thing only. Schnitzel. Yes, a simple piece of meat breaded and then fried. Yes, sometimes life is about the simplest things done well.

Damn I love this dish, from the chicken escalope, to the milanesas of Argentina, and those schnitzels from my days on the kibbutz in Israel.

What could be more heavenly than taking a piece of meat, pounding the hell out of it, dripping it in egg and then breadcrumbs and then frying them. Heaven.

There is only one schnitzel to have and that is the Weiner Schnitzel. A large thin piece of veal (or baby tortured cow as Cartman calls it), fried to crispy paradise.

They also do a schnitzel coasted in black pudding, then breaded and fried. It’s good, damn good, so good I only got one solitary bite of it. Damn.

They claim to have the best schnitzels in London, while technically I’ve only had a schnitzel here, but for other versions of the breaded meat, then Garuffa wins hands down. Theirs are the best. It’s a shame they only do them for lunch though.

The food at Zeitgeist is good and hearty, but it is the beers that make this place worth the visit, plus the pronunciation of them from the staff is spot on.

Burger Monday @ The Draft House

My first burger Monday, and it will not be my last. I missed out on the last Burger Monday by a few hours. By the time I saw the email all the places had sold out. I was gutted and didn’t want to miss out again.

When the email came though at work, I was in pure panic for 30 minutes after I saw the email for the latest Burger Monday, which was going to be at the Draught House close to London Bridge.

I almost booked the 9pm sitting before the wife told me over skype to go for the 6.45pm sitting, by the time I read this it was on waitlist.  Noooooooooo.

Amazingly after much fretting and sweating the earlier sitting came available. Forget work, forget those clients who wanted to give me their credit card number and book a holiday. I didn’t care. I wanted to goto Burger Monday, and Burger Monday I was a going.

The first thing that hits you as you walk in to the draft House is the mammoth amount of beers on draft that they have on offer. Truly impressive. This was going to be a very good night. I pre ordered some of the house beers to get the night going.

This evening we were in for a real treat. 3 different burgers with 3 one third pints of beer from the Windsor and Eaton Brewery all matched to the different burgers.

We were introduced to the brewer by Daniel Young, the organiser and writer of the Young and Foodish, who amazingly along with the chef at the Draft House, Simon Noumar devised the burger menu for tonight.

OK let’s get straight down to business. First off was the Yolk Burger with the Conqueror Black IPA.

This was a perfect combination. The burger was juicy pink and the trimmed egg and runny yolk topped with a slightly burnt hollandaise, which almost gave you the impression it was cheese was sublime. Who says you cannot eat a juicy burger and live to tell the tale.

The Conqueror Black IPA looked heavy with its dark dark colour, but was surprisingly light but big on taste.

Next was the Smoke Burger (smoked cheddar and smoked streaky bacon) with the Guardsman Best Bitter.

The cheese and bacon were really good and had a wonderful but light smoky flavour to them. The burger was slightly more cooked than the first, and was slightly over powered by the cheese, but a damn fine burger it was.

The copper coloured Guardsman Best Bitter was a good match to this burger, as it allowed the smoked cheese and bacon to come through and take the glory, but still match them step by step.

And finally the Foie Burger, topped with a slab of foie gras and cherry lambic jelly with the Windsor Knot royal wedding Ale.

To be honest I was really quite disappointed by this. I think after two powerful burgers and beers, this one never really shone at all. Maybe it we’d had it at the beginning I would have been more able to taste all its nuances, but after what I’d just eaten, a battleship would have been hard to spot. Again the burger was slightly more cooked than the one before. The jelly was great on its own, but kinda got lost in with everything else, the foie gras, again never was able to shine as my taste buds were still reeling from the smoked cheese. I would like to try this again on its own, and then I’m sure I would appreciate it more.

The Windsor Knot, again paled in comparison by its predecessors. It was light and fresh and a really great beer to round off a fab night, but being a light beer it failed to shine at the finishing post.

We also had a plate of stringy fries per table and sauces to dunk into. I think everyone felt the same as we would normally just dunk the fries into the sauces, but as this was a communal table we really couldn’t do that. I wish we could though. We also had a lonely salad on the table, which no one except the girl next to me felt obliged to give it a try, as otherwise it would have felt neglected. She said it was a nice salad, and had a lovely mustardy vinaigrette dressing.

All in all it was a great night, ate some great food, drank some fantastic beers, met some nice people and found another good beer pub. Life is good.

My best burger was the first, somehow fried eggs make everything taste better, but combining the first juicy burger with the smoked cheese and bacon with a fried egg on top would have been heaven on earth. Then we could have called it the “Smoky Yokey.” I have now copyrighted this name by the way.

For the beers, I am a lover of real ales, and loved every single beer, but the Conqueror Black IPA tipped it for me over the Guardsman Best Bitter. I was expecting it to be really heavy with its dark colour, but thankfully it was pretty light and would be a great match for any burger or even a steak or roast on a tranquil Sunday afternoon in a country pub. Well that was just me day dreaming there, need to get out of the city.

I think Daniel with the al the folks of the Draft House, and the guys at the Windsor and Eaton Brewery put on a great night, one of the best I’ve had in a long while.

Daniel is doing some more events in September and October, so sign up for the emails, and I’ll see you there.

Sunday Roast and other meals and drinks @ The Jolly Butchers

The Jolly Butchers is a really cool, funky pub on Kingsland High Street. It follows the normal gastro pub rules. Wooden floors, wooden tables, mismatched wooden chairs, menu written on a blackboard. But this is a special place, a special place indeed.

It is really the Londesborough and the Shakespeare all rolled into one. It has the social vibe and the beers of the latter and the food of the former. It’s basically pub heaven.

We’ve been here several times now, and it just gets better and better with each passing.

But the real reason I come is for the mad selection of beers they have. I reckon the selection is worth about 3 normal pubs. A lot of them are London brewed, but there are many that are imported and on draught. A very happy man I am.

The Hell’s Lager made by the Camden Town Brewery seems to be my beer of choice at the mo. It has a slight yellow haze about it, and the flavour comes across as slightly flowery. A perfect summer beer.

The food is bloody good as well. The portions are a little on the generous side, but the taste is great. A recent visit on a Sunday afternoon proved that this is one of the best roasts in Stokie. Damn am I calling it that already. Shit.

Both the beef and pork were both really good. Although it’s not quite in the same league as the Londesborough when it comes to a roast, but the vibe in the place makes up for any shortcomings on the food.

It does seem to be a thing of Stoke Newington that the pubs all seem to serve a burger on a wooden board with a knife stuck in the top or is this a general trend I am missing. I’m not complaining but I’ve only encountered it here, or am I not eating enough burgers in pubs these days. Could be.

The only criticism I have of the place is that on a Friday or Saturday night there are not enough chairs to go around, as everyone wants to sit outside, leaving a lack of chairs inside. That’s it. Nothing more.

If you are in north London and seem to find yourself in Dalston or Stoke Newington and are in need of some liquid refreshment and a bit of grub, or a lot of it as it tends to be. Then head to the Jolly Butchers. You cannot miss it, it’s the crowded place on the corner, with the happy smiley people outside with the tattoos.

We Are Moving ....

We are are finally moving. Phew. So no internet for an age until BT get their sorry butts round to connect us.
So in the mean time have a beer on us. A small one. 

Foto Friday # 43

Three classic bottles of Quilmes. Argentina's most iconic beer.