Sometimes if we know the burger in a place is awful we’ll just order wings.
You can never have enough. NEVER.
Viewing entries tagged
Street food
Despite being at the tail end of some gnarly hangovers, you don’t turn down a free shot…
We have to apologise in advance for what is less of a professional breakdown, and more of a vague recollection of Bleecker St Burger’s offerings, as we were fucking blotto by the time we got to Red Market on Saturday night.
It’s getting harder and harder to find a proper boozer-looking boozer in London, but the 3 Compasses is one of them, channelling the character of a sparse Working Man’s club, complete with rudimentary furniture, but run by some very friendly Dalstonites.
“We’ll have the lot, please.”
The Rose & Crown is a big boozer nestled in the heart of the ‘Stow. It’s a classic ‘locals’ pub; the booze ‘n food offers sellotaped to the bar on neon card cut into star shapes, the local vagrant a mere drafty waft away and an eclectic music selection that throws Irish jigs followed by ambient jungle followed by Abba at you.
It’s also a celebrated CAMRA venue. We only know this because of the certificates on the wall. We know absolutely toss-all about real ale, but this pub is definitely on the circuit and they have an impressive array of regularly changing casks on offer, if that’s your thing.
It’s here where Kimchi Cult take over the kitchen for their Korean-style menu every Thursday night. We live in the mighty E17, so when we caught wind that someone was selling sliders at a pub a three minute bus ride away, we were straight down to sample everything we could get our hands on.
So, we ordered one of everything on their menu. It’s what we do.
We’ve come across Kimchi Cult before - a few times on Eat Street (where they pop up regularly) and when they were first getting started at Brick Lane Market. We’d not had their sliders or wings, since the street food tends to be geared towards subs. Being LA street food nerds, we’ve long been hankering after someone beefing up the Korean offerings here in London, Kogi BBQ style. There’s no Korean BBQ / Mexican fusion as you see over there, but we’re gradually heading in the right direction.
First out of the traps were the sliders: Kimchi burger, Kimchi Cheeseburger, Kimchi Cult Special (Bacon Cheeseburger), the Kimchi bacon and the Pulled Pork. Now, we won’t bore you right now, because that is for a longer post, but these are less ‘sliders’ than they are mini-burgers, but they are cute, dinky things indeed.
The stand out factor in most of these is, obviously, the namesake kimchi. You could liken it to the sauerkraut of Asia, with chunks of cabbage amongst a spicy red sauce, it provides a gentle, universal heat with a tiny side-pocket of sweetness to everything it covers.
Our recommendation would be the Kimchi Cheeseburger (surely you’d call it a Kimcheeseburger, right?) as it has the best flavour balance of kimchi, drippingly melted cheese and nicely (if only just slightly over-) cooked patty.
The pulled pork is boosted by a totally inspired fresh, zingy ginger coleslaw that got must-find-this-recipe shout outs instantly. If anything, the buns are a tad large and heavy dough-wise, but they don’t overly mask the taste of their contents.
However, Kimchi Cult really level up with their chicken wings.
They are outstanding - sticky, with a familiar base of chinese take away sweet and sour, but with a thump of hotness and extra lemongrass zip at the end. They taste double-fried.
We’d say the wings are worth braving the top end of the Victoria line for. We think they’re on to a real winner here, and get the inkling they do too.
Luckily you don’t have to travel up to the Walthamstow to check these guys out, as they pop up on Eat.st every now and again, and the wonderfully chatty Sarah told us there is more to come. We do hope so.
- Rob and Simon.
Kimchi Cult
[REVIEW] Fish Tacos / Luardo’s / Brockley Market, London
The only other London burrito slingers to our knowledge that serve a fish taco are Wahaca.
Much as I love Wahaca, they have a tendency of being a bit snooty toward Californian Mexican fare, then putting it on their menu and botching it.
The Luardo’s version is far closer to tacos we’ve had in SoCal. The Coley is nicely cooked but the liberal amount of lime juice, mango, coriander and wonderful creamy guacamole brings a little piece of the west coast to a wet car park in Brockley. Without any local point of comparison then, we can say quite conclusively that these are the best fish tacos in London.
Sadly, the fish taco is only available on Saturday lunchtimes at the moment, and not during their more popular Whitecross Market or Eat Street residencies. This is because it’s nowhere near as popular as their standard meaty burrito options, which is a massive shame.
Fish tacos are a great differentiator for Luardo’s now that the London burrito scene has become so shamelessly identikit. Let’s hope they roll them out more regularly. And that people buy them. Please buy them. Supply and demand and all that.
- Simon.
We’ve finally got proper American cheeseburgers being sold by multiple vendors in the capital at reasonable prices.
It’s Friday night, and we’re lamenting the lack of excitement our last few burgers have delivered. We wanted something fucking good. Little did we know we only had to wait 12 measly hours…
In a car park, at the rather lovely Brockley market, you’ll find three youthful dudes with a grill banging out some pretty buzzworthy burgers.
They look like they’re in their early twenties, wearing obscure hardcore band tees and American Apparel hoodies. And honestly, we were kind of jealous. Why the hell weren’t we this proactive when we were their age?? We ordered all three of the burgers on offer, and then impatiently watched the impressively slick cooking from the grill boss and efficient construction from his buddies.
And, well, the burgers are excellent. Let’s have a closer look at a three course burger lunch:
Starter - The Mother Flipper
Their take on a classic cheeseburger, and our standard ‘control’ burger.
The first bite of the smashed, well-seasoned patty hits with a salty, deep meatiness from the concentrated juices pressed into the crust on the grill. It’s brilliant. The cheese is substantial, two slices thickly melted perfectly over the patty with a rather ingenious homemade cloche. A lattice of ketchup just takes the line over a spiral of French’s in the mix. Finished with some shredded iceberg and a beefy slice of pickle in the middle, it’s a very accomplished take on a classic.
And the brioche bun, from an undisclosed ‘artisan bakery in North London’ (we all need a secret ingredient or two) is impressive - solid, substantial and just soft enough, it contains everything without struggling from all the juice.
Mains: Double Candy Bacon Flipper
Two slightly smaller cheese-covered patties contained in a similiar set up to the Motherflipper, except with sweet, sticky candied bacon (which had a similar smokiness to Oscar Mayer). Nice to see a double patty bacon option here.
Pudding: Chilli Flipper
A really awesome and original take on a chilli burger, the pepper and onion mixture on the patty packs the heat of a kebab shop chilli sauce on one level, with a fragrant chinese-style lemongrass finish. It’s a complex and memorable kick, which lingers nicely.
Boom. Three superb courses.
These are really solid sandwiches prepared with startup, haphazard love: from the grill that occasionally teases hot and cold to the cunningly homemade cloches, by a guy you might bump into at the Turtle.
One final thing to say. It would be very feasible for someone to just order a cheeseburger and write it off as a competent Meatwagon rip-off. We recall this happening to the Lucky Chip guys last year and it saddens us enormously.
To those people we’d just like to say the following:
- Christ guys, it’s OK for there to be more than one Proper American Cheeseburger in London. FFS.
- If they’re similar then that’s because they’ve both Done It Right.
We’ve finally got proper American cheeseburgers being sold by multiple vendors in the capital at reasonable prices. Party times.
So this is a must return for us, and a must venture south for all you lot.1
Get down there. This Saturday. GO ON.
- Rob.
- Simon.
- It would also be great to see these guys join the ranks of the Eat Street collective. Nudge, nudge. ↩
Sometimes an idea comes along that is so simple, and yet so totally ingenious that you just have to stand up and slow clap the dudes that thought it up, ‘Lucas’ style. So we applaud the comfort food genius that is Los Angeles’ Grilled Cheese Truck.
What’s all the more awesome is that these guys take such a staple, classic, comfort food and reinvent it with panache too. It’s testament to how well they do it that I’ve seen queues for this mobile eatery easily stretch 20-plus long. Our first visit attempt was at the fairly legendary Abbot Kinney First Fridays festival in Venice. The trouble was we’d already tried five trucks by the time we spotted them. Dammit.
And those queues are there for good reason; their Cheesy Mac And Rib is hugely satisfying. The barbecue pork was saucy-sweet, soft and worthy of a place all of its own on a menu. The mac ‘n cheese was heavy on the gooey cheese, sticky yet still trying to escape from every opening, and hinted a savouriness that balanced with the pork brilliantly. One hell of a sandwich.
I’m pretty sure I put this away in under ten mouthfuls it was so good, and if we weren’t going on to somewhere else for more food, I would have had another. A bang up job, and a must for anyone In L.A. who has only got time to visit a handful of food trucks.
- Rob.
So the second at. A burger van. They’re pretty hot right now. Should be a slam dunk, right?
“I guess I expected more from something with ‘Kobe’ in the title…”
Sadly, the story of where I had to go to find this truck is *far* more interesting than the food that came from it: I found myself on USC’s Fraternity Row during some mental party night. Not only did I feel like a weird, peckish paedophile - trying not to look at any of the scantily clad sorority girls walking from frat house to frat house. But simultaneously, I felt like I was in some irreverent college film, so familiar did the surroundings feel to my moviephile self. Odd.
The beef sliders were distinctly unimpressive.
Uncondimented.
After adding some ketchup to them they tasted almost identical to McDonald’s cheeseburgers, just with slightly better meat - not necessarily a bad thing, I like the way they taste, but I guess I expected more from something with ‘Kobe’ in the title.
The pork sliders looked great, but the pork was really dry, with no BBQ sauce to accompany it. The slaw, whilst a colourful spectacle, tasted like crunchy-but-watery mayo and failed to moisten the pork.
In their defence, I did catch the place just as it was about to close, so maybe I didn’t get the freshest peak-time fare, but it turned me off going back there, and left me thinking that a good slider is always hard to find, even in the States.
- Rob.
