BurgerWeek Day 7: Homemade

We concluded BurgerWeek by cooking at home. The prep is very simple: high quality, grass-fed, dry-aged, freshly minced beef from the butcher (Ginger Pig is my local), with a minimum of handling. I split the meat into portions, shape roughly into spheres, handling as little as possible. I use my largest cast-iron pan over highest heat on the largest burner. Bit of butter in the pan after it's hot, just before the burgers go in.

Shape them in the pan thusly: drop the meatballs into the pan and let them sizzle for a couple seconds. With spatula, squash halfway down, then flip, then squash to final thickness. That is the last time they will be squashed -- gentle handling from there on out. That's it. (This method is inspired by the technique we used when I did a stint as a cook at a diner/burger joint long ago. Those were thinner, shaped with spatulas that were more like scrapers -- sharp wide blades that were very short. The result would be a thinnish pattie that was thickest in the middle but tapered to a thin crispy lattice at the edges. Not everyone's cup of tea but really tasty if you like the diner style, and they stacked well for double cheeseburgers.)

Tonight ours were 200g each. Salt after they go in the pan, then salt again after flipping. Have the broiler fired up. When the patties are just about done, move them onto a baking sheet, cover with cheese, and pop under the broiler until melted.

We went with cheddar, our usual cheese.  No brioche rolls, though, good buns are hard to find. We had to settle for floury baps, which were ok. Buttered and toasted them under the broiler. Also cooked a heap of grilled onions. Assembled burger from bottom to top: toasted bottom bun, bit of ketchup, shredded iceberg lettuce, burger with melted cheese, fried onions, toasted top bun. Straightforward and really tasty. Quality beef is the key. It should not require a huge amount of extra flavor added in or around it, just a couple complimentary ingredients and that's it.

I wasn't about to make chips, so we rounded out the plate with some decent crisps and called it a meal.

So that's it. A relaxing and tasty end to an epic week.

BurgerWeek Day 6: Restaurant Wrap-Up

Today was the 6th and final restaurant visit of BurgerWeek 2012. Tomorrow is DIY day to conclude the week. Just like mon-wed, this would be my only meal of the day. For the restaurant finale, a feast at Hawksmoor Guildhall.

don't drink the one on the left

The dining hall at this venue is large but comfortable. Nicely done. Staff friendly and efficient. I'd been to the original Hawksmoor shortly after it opened, years ago. The starters, service, chips, and dessert were all great, but they get their beef the same place I do, and I think I do at least as good a job cooking them as they do, so not worth the markup for me. But tonight was a special treat so no worries about the price, full speed ahead.

I started with the crab and samphire salad. Samphire's a bright green coastal plant that would look good in an aquarium and added a crisp, salty crunch to the sweet shredded crab meat. Simple and savoury.

It was dark, which means I need a new camera with a full-frame sensor and a new lens.

Then the burgers. Oh my! Hawksmoor wins BurgerWeek. The youngster got his with ogleshield (the only service mistake: the waitress wrongly described this as "cheddar", it was ogleshield, which is basically raclette cheese made in Somerset instead of the Alps), and I got mine with stilton. In terms of raging beefiness, this was right up there with the Bread Street Kitchen shortrib burger. The Hawksmoor version was even more succulent. While the bun was really good and acquitted itself well, this does take skill to eat. My recommendend technique: cut it in half first. The thick patty was cooked flawlessly. A bit messy but no complaints. Spectacular.

The chips were also excellent. We tried both the "triple cooked chips" and the "beef drippings chips". The former are what I would considered standard chips and the latter are the very-thick variety. I prefer the former but execution on both sets was simply flawless. Even the oversized ones were crispy on the outside, fluffy and on the inside.

we serve both kinds of chips, country and western

I couldn't resist ordering creamed spinach, which was tender, sweet, and spiced just right. After all that, somehow the youngster managed a dessert of bitter chocolate mousse with orange compote. Kudos all around. A worthy and fitting end to the restaurant series.


So the final overall rankings, not a dud in the bunch, all recommended 

Hawksmoor
Lucky Chip
MEATmarket
Bread Street Kitchen
Byron
Rivington Grill

Our rankings were nearly identical, except the youngster puts MEATmarket ahead of Lucky Chip.

Interesting variation on cheeses, with Lucky Chip, MEATmarket, and Byron opting for american-style, Rivington surprisingly the lone cheddar, BSK monterey jack (would likely sell well in stores if people knew what to do with it, but is very hard to find here), and Hawksmoor offering ogleshield or stilton.



Accolades
beef zealots award: Hawksmoor, Bread Street Kitchen
best chips: Hawksmoor, runner up Rivington Grill
best overly thick chips: Hawksmoor, Bread Street Kitchen
best bun: Bread Street Kitchen, honourable mention Hawksmoor, Rivington Grill
best special occasion, no holds barred treat: Hawksmoor
most likely to return soon, and often: Lucky Chip, MEATmarket
most likely to return with rest of family: Byron
most comfortable chairs: Hawksmoor
best music: Rivington Grill
best way to prepare lettuce for a burger: shredded

plus a special nod to burgerapp, for providing inspiration and spot-on recommendations


Recap
Lucky Chip: yay! likely to be a regular stop on saturday market day
MEATmarket: great fun, charming place, will look for excuses to end up near covent garden
Rivington Grill: really nice, but not exactly our style of burger, likely to go back but to get something else
Bread Street Kitchen: as good as it should be, will be hard to get anything other than the burger upon return, even though the rest of the menu looked good
Byron: don't have to settle for GBK if a Byron is nearby; great stop for the whole family
Hawksmoor: living up to the highbrow standard

BurgerWeek Day 5

Byron! We visited the Cheapside location of this bustling chain, one of now 21 locations in London.

it is important to stay hydrated during BurgerWeek

I got a limited edition jubilee special -- the Chilli Queen, while the youngster got the Byron, a bacon cheeseburger. The Chilli Queen is a green chile cheeseburger: fresh chopped green chiles under melted american cheese on top of a burger which rests on shredded iceberg lettuce and chipotle mayo. A decade ago the green chile cheeseburger at [now long gone] Santa Fe on Upper Street was the only burger in London I could order without trepidation. It was fantastic. I didn't expect the Byron burger to live up to it so was not disappointed. Yes, I missed the grilled tortilla wrapper and the monterey jack (which goes better with fresh green chiles) of the Sante Fe version, but the Byron special was really enjoyable on its own merits. The beef was good, and cooked nicely to order (not overcooked!). The stack of ingredients worked really well together. Ostensibly it ends its run on June 5th, but I would be happy to see it reappear on the menu at some point.

it is also important to order burgers during BurgerWeek

The chips were hand-cut, skin on. They were fine. Bit stubby and not as good as double-dipped, but good enough. They also offer thin "fries". Service was welcoming and relaxed (in a good way). Drinks included Byron Pale Ale, brewed for them by Camden Town Brewery. Generous milkshakes completed the meal.

chips love doing depth of field demonstrations at f1.8

So overall? This doesn't quite make it to the very top tier but we both really liked it. This is less a special-occasion burger and more a nice reliable place to stop by. It is the same market as GBK but a big cut above. Recommended, and will go back.

BurgerWeek Day 4

Tonight's venue: Gordon Ramsay's Bread Street Kitchen. It's a large and impressive interior. Service was welcoming and attentive. I started with salmon ceviche as I'm a sucker for the mix of citrus and coriander and fresh green chiles. Then onto the "short rib" burgers.

short rib burger @ Bread Street Kitchen

They are not lying. The depth of flavor of these was amazing. Best and fullest beef flavor so far. These burgers were very thick. Fantastic. Topped with monterey jack, some slices of pickle and a sweet homemade ketchup, all sitting on top of a crisp shredded iceberg slaw. The de rigueur brioche bun deserves special mention as it was eggier than average -- soft and sweet but substantial enough to handle a burger of this gravitas. A perfect wrapper.

large and mighty chips

The chips were of the very thick variety, which is not my preference (bad volume to surface area or something), but they were cooked perfectly. Normally chips this size are undercooked but these were dialled in just right. Absolutely worth getting.

Recommended!

BurgerWeek Day 3

What time is it? It's BURGER TIME!!

Tonight we headed to the controversial Rivington Grill. Nice place and a lovely warm sunny evening. I started with a crisp fresh spring salad of peas, cress, spinach, beets, carrot, radish, parsnip, goat cheese, asparagus, red cos (maybe? I lost track). Really, that was just to build anticipation for the burger.

WTF??!? That's not a burger....

Another winner. The Rivington does a mildly spiced/herbed burger with a generous layer of melted cheddar. The youngster added bacon as well. Very good toasted sesame bun. I'll admit that although I enjoy a well thought out herbed burger, my preference is for the beef to speak for itself. But this made for a really great change of pace. Definitely a cut above. Highly recommended for non-purists.

The chips were the best so far. Excellent execution. Friendly and attentive service. And a rich, luxurious, not too sweet chocolate tart with sour cream for dessert.

classy presentation at Rivington Grill

P.S. A Note On Eating
Saturday neither of us ate breakfast. We had a big lunch then a late meal while watching Eurovision. Sunday neither of us ate breakfast. I wasn't hungry. I went for a 5-mile run then, eventually, we got lunch. Sunday night we had a small late dinner. [Small for me: some celery, half a head of lettuce, some roquefort, and a handful of blueberries. Small for a teenage boy: half a head of lettuce, tortilla chips covered with melted cheddar, an entire can of refried beans, and a large package of fresh blueberries.] Today I didn't eat at all until dinner, so about 22 hours since my last meal. If you're not hungry, don't eat. You don't need to eat 3 meals a day. You don't need to eat 2 meals a day. Or even 1 sometimes.

BurgerWeek Day 2

Today we headed over to Covent Garden to try MEATmarket, tucked up on the loft on the south wall above the stalls inside Jubilee Market Hall. Another winner. Great burgers! We got the Dead Hippy and the Black Palace -- double-cheeseburgers that varied slightly on toppings, the latter having grilled onions, for example. The patties were smaller than at Lucky Chip, and conducive to doubling up as a result. Still thick enough on their own. They were cooked perfectly. We got them with sides of fastfoodish (mcdonald's-style) fries, which I would give a miss to next time but the youngster was more than happy to wolf down.

Dead Hippy @ MEATmarket

Staff was friendly and welcoming (must be something about good burgers). The space was fun and relaxed, overlooking the buzzing market. In the nice touches category: free cold water, and soft drinks served in small cups but with free refills. The rest of the menu looked good. As hot as it was today, unfortunately due to mechanical problems there were no milkshakes on offer.

Overall, kind of like what you'd dream a fast food burger joint would turn into when it grows up, but never does. Heartily recommended, would definitely go back.


P.S. We did do mini-burgers during Eurovision last night. I gently pressed some beef mince into a shallow nonstick pan greased lightly with some olive oil (hamburger meat should be worked as little as possible, unlike when you're making, say, breakfast sausage patties), then slicked up a round cookie cutter with a bit of olive oil and cut a bunch of small burgers. They were maybe 5cm diameter each. Relatively thick, they griddled up nicely. About 3 bites each. I ate mine each with a bit of cream cheese and wrapped in a leaf of iceberg lettuce. Really nice.

BurgerWeek Day 1: BurgerVision

Since the teenager and myself are on our own this week we've decided to launch BurgerWeek: seven straight days of cheeseburgers. Each day will include a different burger source. London is a great place to get terrible burgers, so this required careful research and planning. We made heavy use of BurgerApp for iphone, a fun little local guide of where to find edible burgers here.

Bacon Cheeseburger from Lucky Chip*

Today is a special day. Not only is it day 1 of BurgerWeek, it is also the day of the Eurovision final, which we love, because it is bonkers. As an excellent bonus, our favorite TV writer Stu Heritage will be liveblogging it in the Guardian as well. Really, it's almost too much excitement for one day.

Tonight for the Eurovision song contest marathon viewing we will be sticking with the theme and having home-made micro burgers. There's some scheme being floated to use philadelphia as the cheese and tortilla chips for buns. We'll work it all out brilliantly when the time comes I'm sure. Not long now.

To kickoff BurgerWeek proper, our first stop was lunch at the Lucky Chip food truck at Netil Market. (A little runner from the Broadway Market roots must have tunneled under the school and sprouted this some time ago.) The Lucky Chip is normally serving at the Sebright Arms but also does Netil Market on Saturdays. As with all of our planned BurgerWeek restaurants, we'd never been there before.

Lucky Chip at Netil Market

Well, it was great. Easily the best burger I've had in London that I didn't cook myself. We both got bacon cheeseburgers. There was nothing to fault about the burger at all. Good meat, cooked perfectly, topped with melty cheese and nice bacon, sitting on top of shredded lettuce with a tangy blended condiment, sandwiched in a soft but just-substantial-enough-to-handle-the-burger bun. Wow. Exceeded expectations.

The folks running the show were really friendly as well. It helped, I'm sure, to have a properly warm and sunny and breezy market day. Everyone in a good mood. Our food was cooked to order and brought to us at a little table in the courtyard of the market. The chips were tasty but too salty, even for me (I love salt in heroic doses), and a bit soft and greasy. They were similar to my own efforts to make chips in a pan. Not to say they were bad. They were actually quite good, head and shoulders above the tasteless pale starch sticks most places try to pass off as chips here. Clearly homemade and flavorful. Just needed possibly a higher temp finish and a bit less salt. Would definitely get them again, but they weren't at the same level of excellence as the burger.

Will we be back? Oh yes. If you haven't been, you should probably go immediately.


*click on photos for larger version/instant hunger

P.S. on Facebook IPO

Following on from the previous post, a few more comments on the Facebook IPO. Bloomberg published a bit of a mixed-bag article titled "Facebook Investor Spending Month's Salary Exposes Hype".

First, just to be perfectly clear, the whole point of articles like this one is to make people such as me feel all smug, superior, and intelligent. They tend to be effective. Ha, what rubes! Good thing I'm too smart to get suckered like that. Let me pause while I pat myself on the back. Give the article a quick read so you, too, can feel good about yourself before we continue.

Here's some excerpts, with my comments.

Ryan Cefalu, who lives with his wife and two kids in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, saw in Facebook Inc. (FB)'s much-anticipated initial public offering a chance to buffer his retirement fund. His expectations fizzled along with the stock within the first minutes of trading. “It’s disheartening to know that things get over-hyped,” Cefalu, a 34-year-old data-systems manager who spent about $4,000 on the stock, said in an interview. “That’s about a 12th of my annual income -- so a month’s salary. I’m trying to do an on-my-own retirement kind of thing.”

So right away we get to feel smart. Here's a guy who puts on just stonkingly large amount of risk for himself into a single stock based on what, we're not sure.  But later we find out:

For Cefalu, whose children are age 12 and 1, the first-day glitches meant more than a bad day of trading: they made him buy twice as many shares as he intended after an order he canceled went through hours later, he said. 

That's bad. Really bad. Should not happen. Can I go back to feeling smart again?

“I thought it would be fun to get in on the initial frenzy,” said Linda Lantz, an online marketer in Granite Bay, California, who bought 100 shares. “Now it makes me think ‘Oh god, should I bail or is it going to come back?’”

Phew! Yes, I can! Thanks, article writers, for this meaningless example carefully included to make me feel better about myself. "Fun" aside, if that wasn't a rhetorical question, the way to answer that is: if you had exactly the amount of cash you'd get from selling right now, would you invest it by buying facebook stock? If the answer is yes, hold it. If the answer is no, sell it and do something else with the money. If the answer is "I don't know", you shouldn't buy anything until you understood risk and stop losses. That said, stop losses don't help if the basic functionality of your order system isn't even working.

Michael McClafferty, a freshman finance major at Michigan State University, saw his “first big investment” turn into a $3,000 loss when he sold the shares at $35.
“I didn’t want to lose more,” McClafferty said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
The 19 year-old student estimates he spent $8,000 more than he wanted to while repeating orders that wouldn’t go through on the first day, and failing to cancel them because of the technical problems.

More technical problems. More detail on exactly what happened here would be really instructive. This is not supposed to happen in an order entry system.

“There’s a lot of questioning about the IPO process in general and a sentiment that the real investor is getting taken by the larger Wall Street,” said Phil Pearlman, executive editor of StockTwits.

That sentiment is solid. Stick with it.

That Facebook IPO

I really don't know exactly how IPOs work, but at least I know I don't know. You may have heard that Facebook had their IPO recently. It didn't go well.

What does that mean? In this case, it means a few specific things. But first, the stupid version of a successful IPO is one in which the price has a massive jump on the first day of trading. Stupid because this would really mean it was mispriced so badly that a lot of money was left on the table for the private owners of the company. If the price falls, is that all bad? Well, it means they raised more capital for the company than they should have, wahey, but is generally viewed as "bad" nonetheless. Seems like you want the stock to go up enough to generate some positive (possibly stupid) press, but not so much that the original shareholders are all enraged at the underwriters for pricing too low.

Anyway, in Facebook's case the IPO was a complete shitshow, for 2 completely distinct reasons.

First, there was not a level playing field. There never is in IPOs, but in this case it may have been even worse than usual. It looks like there was a significant discrepancy between information in the hands of the underwriters (investment banks managing the deal) and their institutional clients, and everyone else.

Second, the mechanics and technology of filling the orders on day one were completely screwed up. This by itself was enough to completely botch the IPO.

These two issues combined to create a debacle of historic proportion.

Here's an article by Henry Blodget describing the first problem. It's really worth a full read -- I very strongly recommend it. And it has a picture of Beeker. The short version is that facebook execs guided their inside investment bankers on reduced earnings forecast. This material was not published but was, however, passed on to institutional investors. The retail rabble had no clue. Leading to this:

Institutional investors, having digested the news of the underwriter estimate cut, were comfortable buying Facebook stock at $32 a share.

Retail investors, meanwhile, who were presumably unaware of the estimate cut, were comfortable buying Facebook at $40 a share.

Knowing that a big percentage of the IPO stock could be sold to retail investors instead of institutional investors, Facebook and Morgan Stanley decided to price the IPO at $38.

(If you didn't follow it, it spent much of day one around or just above 40, but came back down and had to be defended at the IPO price of 38 before close. Then in subsequent days it broke through that quickly and went down to under 31 before finishing the week at just under 32).

There's more to it, and Blodget does a good job getting into it. Clearly that by itself is pretty awful, no?

The second problem had nothing to do with the investment banks. Essentially there was chaos and lack of information in the order system. NASDAQ screwed the pooch. Lots of people were getting no feedback on their orders -- were they filled? Did the cancel go through? Flying blind makes people rightly nervous. If you put in orders and don't know if they've been filled or at what price, what do you think you'd do? All the initial demand turned sour.

Here is a really good short post explaining the mechanics a bit, and describing clearly the problems this caused. Again, well worth a full read but some choice bits:

The stock opened at $42, and quickly started to move higher until we, and others in the same boat as us, realized that we were unsure if our opening orders were in fact executed. When traders like us have that kind of uncertainty, our instincts are to flatten out in order to mitigate risk. This is exactly what happened as we and other market participants reacted to the NASDAQ-induced uncertainty, and the stock cratered towards the issue price of $38. 
 
 The uncertainty surrounding whether  our orders were executed correctly at the opening print weighed on us most of the day – until around 2pm for us, and as late as 3pm for other firms. From what I can piece together, anyone who tried to make any changes to orders after 11:05am, those orders were not filled – and that is what you can attribute that second down-leg to. After the stock slowly worked its way back to $42, as traders realized that the orders they had on the open weren’t filled, they just dumped everything – bringing the stock once again back to the $38 issue price.

So two "inside" stories, each a recipe for disaster on its own. Can we say at least the technical screw-up was less unfair? Maybe.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter is interesting. It's a source of funding but not a vehicle for investing. Where it works, it seems brilliant: patronage and product development. It allows for distributed micro-patronage of art, which is great. It allows for new product development via consumption -- put in money, (probably) get the product.

Projects I don't understand are ones that fall into neither category. For example, I've seen some funding requests for people wanting to startup food truck businesses. In one case, the initial offer was, in return for funding, a t-shirt. A t-shirt? This makes no sense to me. Folks are basically asking for hand-outs. I totally get why I might want to fund an arts project even if I get maybe nothing in return, but I don't understand why I'd want to make a donation to a food truck business. I might make a partial loan to a food truck business, if micro-finance ever figures out how to be an investment instead of a charity. Or if it were local I might "fund" it in the same way I would product development, i.e. pre-sales of meals in this case. But donations for a business venture? Exploiting good will.

Banks charge interest. VCs get equity. You get a t-shirt.

Fortunately, most people don't seem to be suckers. Am not seeing many of these types meeting their funding goals.

Cluizel Chocolate Bars

I've been looking for milk chocolate bars with less sugar and more cocoa. Just tried some Michel Cluizel bars and they are fantastic. They do single plantation dark chocolate varieties. These are really good, most in the 67% range, although I'd like to see some higher-cocoa versions (my usual dark chocolate bar is the 85% lindt or the surprisingly good 82% tesco own-brand). The Cluizel I'm most fond of though is the 50% cocoa milk-chocolate. Lindt milk chocolate is 30-31%, G&B 34%, crappier stuff much lower. Slitti does a 70% cocoa milk chocolate but I've not yet got my hands on one. At 50%, the Cluizel Mangaro Lait has a  smooth, caramel creaminess of a milk chocolate but lashings of deep cocoa richness. Highly recommended.

Cowboys & Aliens & Bears

Recently saw Cowboys & Aliens and it was quite surprising all around. I really liked it. It was not a comedy. It was not what I expected. It was pretty serious. It would have been a really [perhaps more] enjoyable straight-up western, except it then had aliens added to it. But really it's just a bonkers version of Wizard of Oz.

Harrison Ford needs a heart. Daniel Craig has lost his mind. Sam Rockwell finds courage. Olivia Wilde is the girl "not from around here". And there's even a plucky dog.

There are no bears. Sorry.

Not a movie still. Also not a man in a bear suit.