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.
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burgers
The Chilli burger is still as good now as it was a year ago.
So many great things have happened since my first post on the Meatwagon early last year.
I’ve visited countless times, and even ran into Yianni at the Verdugo Bar in LA last summer.
I was on holiday. Yianni was doing research.
He’s a guy that has taken a detailed, systematic and yet unendingly passionate approach to this project, and after visiting the #MEATEASY twice, I’m starting to wonder what state his empire will be in this time next year.
Of course the ‘wagon was stolen, which we all know. But out of the darkness comes the light.
At Meateasy there are door guys, and burgerettes, and a full menu and a roof and an amazing bar and decor and one of London’s most mid-Atlantic atmospheres (this place feels like it’s in New York, not New Cross).
There are a few questions to answer and points to make. So without further ado, for those of you considering a visit:
1. The food is still brilliant
Quality hasn’t dropped. Whatsoever. The Chilli burger is still as good now as it was a year ago. They’re not standing still either: the fries and macaroni cheese have improved significantly over the last week.
2. It’s a brilliant space
Music, ambiance, quality of booze. All fantastic.
3. It’s not a restaurant!
You cannot turn up at 8pm and expect to eat in a timely fashion. If at all. The same rules apply now as they did with the ‘wagon itself - turn up on time, or early. For the Meateasy, that means 6pm. Check your expectations with your watch.
With the practicalities out of the way, there are a few thoughts I want to throw out there. I had a brief exchange on Twitter with Daniel (he of BurgerMonday and other FoodWeekdays fame) after he said:
“Still I hope Yianni will inspire others, not intimidate ‘em”
To which I said:
“If this was LA there would be 14 meatwagons by now. Probably more.”
I think this is something that needs further discussion.
As mentioned earlier, it’s now been a full year since Yianni showed up on the food blogger radar. Since then, he has properly crossed over into the mainstream with traditional media coverage, almost universal online admiration and among certain circles, has become a bonafide household name. This isn’t going to stop.
But what of the others? Where are the other street food entrepreneurs? The other guerilla dining obsessives?
Visiting LA last summer, there were dozens of foodtrucks catering to every cuisine and culinary whim you could think of. And they’re still multiplying like rabbits. It’s the same in San Francisco and the East coast is rapidly catching up. They’re all a pretty amiable bunch too, since cultivating an online following is key to foodtruck success. For example, I felt genuinely proud to be Slidin’ Thru’s first customer from the UK.
They even posed for a picture:
(They’re in Vegas, but they illustrate the point I’m trying to make.)
At the time they were nearly all startups. They’d been open for two to three months, maybe. Tops. And there were dozens of them, with an enormous crowd of cash-ready, media-savvy customers following them around the city, wanting a new favourite dish.
Even the old hands, such as Kogi BBQ (five trucks, three locations per day each, five days a week), have turned into full-on empires without relinquishing their values and food quality.
It’s an enviably simple model - find something you can do really well, build a following, then expand.
Yianni has clearly done his stateside homework and is building his empire. Not just with food, but with PR, marketing and customer experience. He’s not even behind the grill anymore. He’s front of house at the Meateasy. He’s doing interviews with the Evening Standard and quality checking.
So having established all of that, it saddens me a bit that there aren’t any other grassroots street food startups generating the same buzz with amazing food. Somebody should be giving Yianni a run for his money, the same way that all the LA foodtrucks compete with each other (and their brick ‘n mortar-based, venture-backed buddies) to earn the crown of being the best. They’ve already had a reality show doing just that.
I will always love what he does and what he has done for bringing proper American food to London after all this time. It underlines our completely British approach to competition when there’s nobody else doing anything remotely similar in the same space.
Where do we go from here?
The other question mark with the Meateasy will be what happens when it shuts down in March. Between now and then, a back-of-fag-packet calculation suggests the MeatEmpire will have served way, way more covers than it ever has done before. With that comes the next difficult sequel.
How do you go from having created such a special place, with a full menu, table service, a bigger kitchen, electronic ordering systems and all the other elements that add up to their slickest project yet, to then shutting it down and going back to a little van again?
And what of the pubs? Surely, Yianni is in the completely unique position of being able to say to any pub in London, from zone 1 to 6, that he can show up with his team and guarantee a horde of big eating, big drinking punters. Most of whom will post about it online. And then bring in even more punters. That surely has to factor in to his long term strategy.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I sincerely hope his amazing burgers will be around for a long time to come. And maybe it’s time for somebody else to be just as obsessive and give him a run for his money. But for now, it’s still very much the best burger joint in Britain. And the odds are it will stay that way for a long time yet.
NB. This post is not addressing all the lovely people that do a sterling job running London’s supperclubs. This is a food truck rant only. Thanks for understanding!
#MEATEASY is running until mid-March above the Goldsmith Tavern in New Cross, SE14.
There’s a movement gaining ground in London at the moment. As Byron Hamburger spreads across the capital with breakneck speed (and eventually capsizing aging Hamburger Unions and weary GBKs in its wake), the joy of finding a decent hamburger in the capital is becoming less of a rarity. I’m a big fan of Byron. They’re mainstreaming and quality-controlling the expansion of a decent burger experience. This is something London is not used to.
At the opposite end of the scale, away from the building sites and the neatly printed menus and expensive agency branding, you’ll find The Meatwagon. Behind a large van in a very typical Zone 2 industrial estate a few minutes walk from Peckham Rye station, sits an unbranded, unassuming little food van. This is the celebrated Meatwagon. I first came across the ‘wagon from a similarly burger-afflicted friend who pointed me in the direction of their Twitter account. It said they weren’t going to be around for a few weeks. Harrumph.
And then, on a Wednesday afternoon, an update. It’s back. Thursday and Friday. From 12pm ‘until we run out’. Ominous. Tempting. Only nine minutes on the train from London Bridge.
A flurry of instant messages between me and another burger critic, and we’re set for Friday.
After stumbling through some leafy Peckham side streets, getting a bit lost, and a quick ‘that can’t be it’ double-take, we’re standing before a beaming Yianni, who gleefully tells us he can do a cheeseburger, bacon cheeseburger or chilli burger. With chips. Triple-cooked. Obvs.
I think the pictures do these justice, but there’s a few points to make here. Yianni uses 100% chuck which he pulls out of a little fridge in big fistfuls and bashes them into patties in front of you. Salt and pepper. The bacon is interesting. He boils up a side of bacon, shreds some off and bashes that into a patty too. It’s thick and chewy, like American crispy bacon without the fat, chemicals and over-saltiness. As for the chilli, it’s half a green chilli fried in butter with a touch of stock. Genius. Both are thrown on top of the patty on the grilling plate before the piece de resistance goes on last. The cheese.
Two slices of it come out of the fridge. It looks like Kraft. We ask if it is Kraft, like a pair of over-excited children. Yianni smiles and says “No, it’s real cheese. It’s taken me ages to source this and it’s my secret. I’ll happily tell you about the rest of the process, but the cheese is my secret weapon”. We don’t push.
The buns are locally sourced white sourdough. Soft. Unseeded. Exceptional. Yianni carefully lattices mustard and ketchup on each side so they have a perfect covering.
And when we get to eating it, the fact we’re standing next to a bin in a glorified car park in Peckham just melts away. The meat is juicy, flawlessly pink and perfectly seasoned. The cheese which has since melted into the patty renders us speechless and is as close as you’ll ever get to a west coast In’n’Out-alike. The meat-to-bun-to-condiment ratio is perfect. We are ecstatic.
If you’ve got anything more than a passing interest in quality burgers, then follow the Meatwagon. Yianni said he’ll be back in a few weeks time. The Meatwagon is his part-time dalliance when he’s not doing proper catering jobs. Get down there. It’s an adventure and it’s London’s best burger. It’s a damn sight better, and 100% more Guerilla, than that other place.
“I could have cleaned my bath with that burger”
Oh dear. We’re not off to a good start.
Guerilla Burgers opened last week, and we popped in for an evening burger on their second night.
You can still smell the paint on the walls and it’s nestled on James St where Tootsie’s used to be: a culinary black hole of touristic medicocrity. So keeping its youth, inexperience and location in mind, let’s see how they did.
Despite a friend being able to order a medium/rare burger earlier in the day (and enjoying it too), I was denied the same patty treatment and proffered the ‘health and safety’ excuse. Irritating.
Of course when they did show up (roughly 25 minutes later), they were hideously, unforgivably overcooked. Literally crunchy on the outside of the patty. Arid in texture despite pouring over all the sauces we had to hand.
This is a heinous crime when your raison d’etre is making burgers, and a hefty proportion of your overlong menu is given over to a poorly written quasi-diatribe on what makes ‘the perfect burger’.
PS: it’s not burning it.
The burger itself is served in a stainless steel dish (the kind you would typically expect to contain a curry) with the condiments on the side. The buns were neatly toasted, but Rob simply stated through dried-out lips “I could have cleaned my bath with that burger”.
It doesn’t stop there, they serve up crinkle cut chips. Like the ones out of the freezer you used to get round your best mate’s house when you were nine years old. And they haven’t changed a bit from how you remember them: spongy, cold in the middle and not abundant enough to justify their £4 price tag. We also made the error of going for the ‘smothered fries’. Smothering consists of three small morsels of cheddar and a large dollop of sickly veggie chilli. Avoid that upsell.
Something fishy…
The fish tacos are also a country mile away from what fish tacos should be. They’re marinaded salmon, with no breadcrumbs and shop-bought tzatziki slathered over the top. And are cold. So it seems Wahaca still remains the only purveyor of a fish taco resembling something similar to its delicious Califonian brethren.
There are some enormous menu issues going on here. It’s too long and unfocused.
Check out the PDF on their website and witness the layout issues and bizarre menu choices (the LA burger has cottage cheese in it, burger sauce is called ‘Russian Tarragon Dressing’, sliders are called skaters for some incomprehensible reason, I could go on).
Saving graces?
Well the staff were very much full of first-week perk, which would have made us feel guilty about complaining about the food. They were trying really hard, and I can’t blame them for what came out of the kitchen, although arguably a quality control process should be implemented to stop overcooked meat going out.
If they sort out the menu and do some proper testing I might give it another go, but when you’ve got Byron within schlepping distance, then I can’t think of a good reason to go here.
The thing is, it won’t really matter if the food doesn’t get any better. James Street serves the post-Selfridges tourist crowd (we had to wade through big yellow bags on our way out), and it will make no difference to them if whingy blogger types like me continue to opine Byron’s simple genius over GB.
This review is a slightly more focused version of the one I originally posted on Qype
