Hamburgers, or why I hate Iceland

Just to clarify the title, I hate the shop. And the country.

Hamburgers are a joy. They are a portal to your childhood. A good burger is a marvel of juicy, innocent happiness. They are reminders of a time when your mum used to make hamburger patties and then put them inbetween two slices of bread, like some kind of culinary tie-fighter. Of a time when you first went to McDonald's and went absolutely batshit on the near-fatal dose of bright colours and high-fructose corn syrup. Or when you first discovered that cheese could actually have the consistency of play-doh (and sometimes the same taste).

Fast-food burgers can be pretty depressing.
The ciggie packet is there for scale.

So it is a continual source of agony that this country, for the longest time, absolutely sucked at making burgers. I remember when I was little, going to my nanny's house one time and being served a 'burger'. Imagine my utter bloody contempt (hey, I started young) when she handed me a plate with a completely flat, blackened land-mine looking thing that had just come out of an Iceland packet. Without knowing why I was being punished, I bit into the suspicious so-called meat product and genuinely wondered what the hell they had done to that poor cow to make it taste so goddamn tragic.

Since then, I have widely held the view that frozen burgers are a sin. Hey, call me old fashioned, they can sod right off. The problem is, the prevalence of frozen burgers in this country (and the lack of anything more than a fast-food interest in the things) has meant that by and large people didn't give a shit about making burgers good. Deep fry it, incinerate it, microwave it, do whatever the hell you want and then put it in a bun and drown the poor thing in ketchup. Hell, you can still go to an English barbecue (another name for food immolation) and watch people utterly destroy a perfectly good piece of meat. That's how bad the situation got for the english burger.

Deep frying can make a lot of things better, even pickles.

Now, before I get into the situation at home, let me be honest. The best burgers you can get are in the US. There's no point disputing it, because frankly, it makes you look silly. They do burgers over there like we do binge drinking - there's no contest. I have had burgers all over the world, and noone does it with the same talent and raw awesomeness as the yanks (well, mexicans if we're being really pedantic). From Thomas Keller's mini-burgers at Per Se in New York to the trashy throng of In-n-Out on the west coast, hamburgers enjoy greatness across the whole spectrum of establishments. They get the blend of meat right, they get the doneness right, and my god they get the bread right. The bread is so, so important and yet so often neglected. The patties crumble exactly as they should, just like Heston Blumenthal discovered in his In Search for Perfection recipe (which you can easily make at home with your liquid nitrogen and DIY kiln in the garden), because of the density and grind of the different cuts of meat. They are more than the sum of their parts because they all work in harmony.

I will come back for you, Ultimate Bacon....

The best burger I have had to date, was at a small diner called Jack's Prime near Foster City, just outside of San Francisco. I was there with work colleagues, and everyone was just hungover enough to get that animalistic craving for something's flesh, so this was a good place to be. Before I could have any questions about the place's credibility, when we walked in there in the corner was James Hetfield, sat alone in a booth, telling people to fuck off with his eyes. We had to wait for a table, and the smell coming off the grill was enough to make a grown man cry.

The menu was pretty upfront about what you were there to do. And being a traditionalist, there was really no option other than to go straight for the jugular so I ordered a Big Jack and a Black & White milkshake. My knowledgeable colleague said that a trip to Jack's Prime wasn't complete without a side order of Deep Fried Pickles, so we gladly obliged.

When the food finally arrived, it may as well have had a halo around it. I swear to god, there was an audible sigh of joy around the table as plates landed like a fleet of motherships, come to rescue you from the cruel plight of english hamburgers. Behold, my children.....

Your salvation has arrived. Don't forget to tip your waitress.

At this stage, words are almost pointless in trying to convey the sheer perfection of this beast. As Jodie Foster once pointed out, they should have sent a poet. Your eyes will do most of the work here, so I will only add that the single greatest thing about the whole meal was the bun - a lightly toasted Brioche bun with a slightly crispy exterior and gloriously fluffy, chewy interior. You're probably looking at the picture on the right and thinking "Jesus", and you know what, that's exactly what I was thinking too. If Jesus turned up on Earth, this is what he'd look like.

I should probably add that it nearly killed me, and it basically put me into a food coma for the next six hours. But it was worth it.

Returning home, I make peace with the fact that basically you are never going to get a burger that good here in London. However you can get pretty damn close. When the whole Gourmet Burger Kitchen fad kicked off several years ago, it seemed like people were finally determined to take a crack at delivering a proper burger. It was most definitely a fad, and the meteoric rise in the number of spin-off joints was staggering: Ultimate Burger Kitchen, Gourmet Express Burger, Organic Guilt Burger Company, you name it. And just as quickly as they sprung up, so surely did they shrivel up and die when people discovered that basically, most of them were overpriced shit. Charging £9 for a charred, burnt pattie in a faux ciabatta does not a good burger make, you morons. GBK is still around, but its burgers are a whimpering pale shade of their former size, and now the patented skewer holding it all together is effectively pointless.

The one ray of light is a more recent entry into the ring, namely Byron. They do the best burger I have found in town, and nearly all of my American friends still brave enough to try a burger on this blighted isle agree. Their chips are great, the milkshakes are ok (The Diner off Carnaby Street still does the best chocolate peanut butter milkshake) and the prices reasonable. The patties are soft, juicy and charcoal grilled to a perfect medium. The buns are squidgy and not overly filling. My girlfriend and I still argue over whether the skin-on chips are better than the fries, but the best approach is to get one of each and go to town. They have branches all over the city, so there's a good chance you've probably walked past one and it was filled with happy looking people inhaling burgers. If you've not been into one before, pay it a visit. It's a damn sight better than going to Iceland.