And
now the long awaited trip to Patty and Bun. I'd heard great things about this
place on the burger blogosphere from its time as a van establishment to pop-ups
and now more importantly it's permanent residence within spitting distance of
Selfridge's, in the popular St. Christopher's Place locale with its varied
and extensive food outlet choices, a stone's throw, but a million miles from
the aforementioned zombie shopping hordes of Oxford Street.
More
importantly Patty and Bun is at the Western end of the 'North of Oxford St'
Burger triangle with MEATliquor occupying the Eastern tip and Tommi's the
Northern. MEATliquor for instance had a brief appearance in the most recent
edition of Food and Drink on BBC2 (11th March). Whilst there are many great
places to get a quality burger in London at the moment having three exemplary
establishments in literal walking distance has its obvious up- and downsides.
Stephen
and I had been trying in vain for many weeks to coordinate a 'Very Important
Meeting' at lunch in order to discuss 'Very Important' work matters over a nice
burger and fries. Sadly these meetings were always trumped by something more
important, so the only solution for us was to establish an 'Extremely Important
Meeting' one Tuesday after work.
Due
to the extreme importance of this meeting, Stephen and I were hopeful to steal
ourselves away from work in Victoria as early as practically possible (after 5,
but before 6), in order to get a choice position at the end of the inevitable
queue. Sadly this was not to be the case. After offering to help out a couple
of colleagues for a few minutes, these minutes quickly ran over an hour.
Despite Stephen's impressive miming abilities of eating a burger through the
windows separating the North and South wings of the Artillery Row office, I
couldn't finish early enough and it wasn't until 5 past 6 that we left the
office.
I'd
planned numerous potential routes to find the quickest path to the Bond St
tube. Based on this we went for the relative slog to Westminster on foot,
followed by the 2 stop trip on the Jubilee line to Bond Street. We were making
good headway with the surprisingly light foot traffic, and headed easily on to
the Parliament Square traffic island. Upon reaching the opposite corner from
our ingress, and nearest to the Westminster tube entrance we were dismayed to
find a complete lack of pedestrian crossing, no zebras or pelicans in sight.
Being the opportunist’s that we are there was a surprising lack of road traffic
and we went for it crossing the 3 lanes as quickly as possible.
All
was going well until I was startled in the final lane by one of Stephen's and
Joe's brothers in arms, a bloody cyclist careering round the corner from
Westminster Bridge intent on a collision course. Thankfully my blistering turn
of pace aided by adrenaline saw me easily strip clear of Lance Armstrong. From
the look of him and given the speed he was going, if there was a collision he'd
have been much, much worse off. No doubt Stephen, who was seemingly spared this
abuse because of his uniform bike satchel, can comment on the cyclist aspect of
this (bike, wheels, gears, whatever...). A short tube ride and an efficient
avoidance of the horde to reach the St Christopher's Place ginnel, Stephen and
I arrived on James St, heading North to Patty and Bun.
Upon
getting within viewing distance of P&B my heart sank. I was fully expecting
a sizeable queue, but this one efficiently horseshoed its way from the entrance
and was easily as long as any I'd experienced at MEATliquor. This was
compounded by P&B's small size, only 30 covers versus MEATliquor’s 150ish.
I hope I hid my disappointment from Stephen and with the proper British
fortitude set myself at the end of this long but polite queue.
I
pegged the queue at around 45 minutes but it could easily have been an hour.
Despite this the wait was good, the weather was suitably mild, and snatching
fragments of other queuer’s and passer’s by conversations were entertaining,
but unmemorable. Most memorable was when one of the P&B staff emerged from
the small establishment to take down names and numbers to aid future table
placement. Much to Stephen's and my amusement (and no-one else’s) when asked
for a name we answered Ste(v)/(ph)en in unison and we were duly recorded on the
clipboard as Stephen (2).
Upon
entering P&B, I was absolutely parched, a lament of mine that Stephen had
suffered since leaving the office. After sitting down and already knowing what
we wanted to order, the wait to catch the attention of the busy staff was
interminable. Eventually we got one of the hipster serving staff's attention
and ordered a Red Stripe thirst quencher each, and knowing it would go down quickly
an ale who's name now escapes me. The Red Stripe was without a doubt the
greatest Red Stripe I had ever drunk. That said my previous experience of Red
Stripe is very, very poor, and I think the last time I drank it I got pulled
over and breathalysed (only the one can so was well under the limit). Despite
my prior poor experiences with Red Stripe this bottle was Manna from Heaven,
although I'll happily chalk that up to the situation rather than the quality of
the beer.
On
top of the order of liquid lubrication I went for the 'Ari Gold' burger with
bacon, Stephen the 'Smokey Robinson' both accompanied by Rosemary salted triple
cooked skin on ships. After my reading good reviews about them we supplemented
this order with the 'Winger winger chicken dinner' chicken wings.
After
polishing off the first beer the food arrived all at once. I tried a couple of
the chips, they were good, very good in fact and I have no compunctions in
recommending them, although I am more of a fry fan myself. Not sure why, but
I've always had a thing for French fries over proper chips.
Having
sated the initial hunger it was on to the wings. Oh... My... God.... I'm not he
biggest wings fan, but these were the best I have eaten so far. They were
confit chicken wings that takes P&B a day and a half to cook. The skin was
so crisp without being dry and the meat fell off the bone, a quick twist of the
wings allowed me to remove the bones intact and eat the rest of the wing
intact. And there was the reduced BBQ sauce. It was the most rich, thick smoky
with a good source of heat sauce I've tasted. It had a hint of hoi sin about it
as well which couple with the sliced spring onion worked wonderfully. P&B
should produce this sauce mass market, it's the next Reggae Reggae Sauce.
Working
our way systematically through the chips and superb wings it was on to the
burger. I'd order the top of the bill 'Ari Gold' with bacon. This only differed
from Stephen's choice in the onions. His had caramelised onions, mine had
pickled onions (in the Korean style rather than the British style). Both came
on the same Brioche bun with cheese, bacon, smoky P&B Mayo and salad. Ari
Gold for those not familiar with the US TV show Entourage is one of the most
entertaining and memorable TV characters, one that you will vicariously enjoy
watching. Ari Gold was played by Jeremy Piven, who has recently been on screen
playing the part of Mr Selfridge. Coincidence? Absolutely.
After
taking my first bite, I knew I was on to something amazing. I'd heard some bad
things about the bottom part of the brioche bun, but it had held itself up well
and overall it was a great slightly sweet bun. This was wonderfully
counterpointed by the sour of the pickled onion, then the smoky-ness of the
Mayo. The patty itself was superb, well on a par with most of the patty's I've
tasted, but very, very slightly behind the chunky steakiness of Tommi's steak
burger. The cheese at P&B, like at MEAT was steamed inside a metal cloche
on a solid griddle to give it a wonderful all over coating, This was my one
disappointment at Tommi’s as they use a slighted grill to cook the patty and as
such the cheese is melted rather than steamed.
All
in all a resplendent 4.5 out of 5 (sorry I've had to revert to half marks). The
only thing stopping it from getting a 5 is the wait and I'd happily eat those
wings forever, like Homer eating donuts for eternity in Hell.
Burger
Week to be continued - Part 4, Lucky Chip @ the Player Bar, Broadwick St, Soho,
London, Thurs 7th Mar
P.S.
1,475
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