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.

I liked the burgers at Meat Liquor, I didn’t like the hour wait for my burger on the otherhand. I’m still reeling over that one. Thankfully I only went once and never got to experience the queues as everyone else has. The first time put me off.

So when I read the words MEATmarket on Instagram, my instincts went into over drive, a bit of internet checking and voila, it seems the burgers of Meat Wagon and Meat Liquor have become a whole lot easier to get hold of.

So Yianni and company have gone back to basics, opening a fast food joint, in a more permanent location. Is this the beginning of a funky new burger chain in London. Have Byron got a competitor.

So MEATmarket has opened upstairs at Jubilee Market, above the touristy tacky stalls, this kinda befits a fast food burger joint.

There are only a few burgers on the menu, all are double patties, with cheese and either grilled or minced onions. Oh the Dead Hippy has the Dead Hippy Sauce, the others have mustard and ketchup.

We both opted for the Black Palace with its grilled white onions and some fries and a can of Vedett’s. The Black Palace apparently paying homage to the White Castle Burgers.

Name given, seat taken above the traders packing up for the night. Damn those men make a hell of a racket in the evening. A reminder for next time. Either come before or long after they’ve packed up.

I didn’t know if we were gonna be waiting for another hour here as in Meat Liquor. Still haven’t forgiven them for that.

Well wouldn’t you know it, within 5 minutes both our burgers and fries were waiting for us at the pick up counter with my name being yelled out across the restaurant.

Burgers were nicely wrapped up and waiting to be devoured. It had been a few weeks since my last burger and I was anticipating this one a lot.

Unwrapping the Black Palace and marvelling at something so simple. Some bread, a little bit of meat, some cheese, grilled onions and ketchup. Heaven.

OK where to start. The fries were pretty good, we should have ordered one each, but there was more or less enough for 2. Well not quite but I’m dieting these days, so I’ll make do. They were thin and crispy, and with mayo and ketchup on the table lots of sauces to dunk them into.

I’ve been debating how to describe the burger and its taste. The over riding taste I got was from the delicious greasy grilled onions. Two washes and several hours later my fingers still smelt of them. Not that’s a bad thing, but I couldn’t actually taste the meat itself. So I cannot tell you how the burger itself actually tasted. But what I did manage to taste through those lovely onions was pretty good. Oddly the cheese actually stood out a little.

With all that greasy oniony goodness the bun actually held together very well till the penultimate bite, which is surprising as I was expecting it to fall apart at the beginning.

I like this new joint a lot, well maybe this is because there weren’t any queues, the food came out cooked splendidly and all within about 5 minutes.

I wonder how long before the queues begin, the waits for the food get longer and more importantly the quality of the burgers themselves drop. I hope not, but I’m a born pessimist. I really hope none of this will happen, but unless several of these joints open up soon then I can see it happening, as burger mania will be sweeping through London very soon again this year.

I’m definitely gonna return before I start work again next week, as hopefully this will be before word gets around to the masses and then the Q’s begin.

What will I have next time. Maybe the Dead Hippy or the Philly Steak or even the Dog. We’ll see when I get there, and hopefully no bloody Q.