Instead of having to stand in an annoyingly busy market or festival or street food collective, Burger & Beyond have settled in to a residency in a nice, warm pub, even if it is in one run by craft beer sell-outs Camden. A bit of cover and a seat, a sampling of some of Anheuser-Busch InBev's more niche offerings, and a chance to see how the Beyond crew take to having a proper kitchen. Lovely.
We have sung the praises of this cheeseburger before: It is a simple, savoury amalgam - letting the great flavour of the nicely-charred beef marry with a good amount of creamy, smokey mayo and onions. The 'American' cheese is a very familiar one, used by pretty much all of the more decent vendors, which brilliantly melts into a salty, tacky squish and the demi brioche helps makes the whole mouthful soft but keeps everything in tact.
The Hot Mess is less successful. The patty was slightly overcooked and it didn't help that the chipotle mayo was in short supply. The sliced chilis were crunchy and gave heat, but the rawness added an overwhelming lack of flavour which wasn't dampened by the underwhelming pepperjack cheese.
The Da Beer Burg special that was on is fucking great though.
The two nicely crusted smashed patties layered with cheese are brilliantly soft and juicy, the blackened butter mayo is outrageously rich and combined with the sweet piquant Camden beer braised onions creates the kind of umami savoury flavour you get from a really good slider (and we mean a proper fucking slider, not a mini-burger that someone has mislabelled a slider).
Tater tots are really hard to come by over here, and we fucking love them, so we'd be lying if we didn't tell you that the Beyond Crew's tot offering wasn't one of the main reasons to trek up to Kentish Town. And the crunchy coated, fluffy innards did not disappoint. Nor did the chunks of burger and cheese sauce drizzled on top. It is a splendid side dish.
These guys continue to provide some of London's better burgers. Both Da Beer Burg and the tots are apparently limited specials, they should definitely make them both permanent.