Patty Smith's serves out of a white-tiled hatch in a cosy and eclectically furnished space, adorned with neon signage and posters, skirting trendy bar whilst bleeding the essence of a gig venue. The Smith's flank the bar on one side while pizza tossers the Dough Boys occupy the other, a proper street food ambience à la Street Feast in London. Pizza, burgers and booze - this place has vibes on lockdown.
We grabbed their classic cheeseburger, the Dirty Burger. It has similarities with the wares of the eponymous London chain that it shares a name with, especially the bun which is shiny and sweaty from the beefy-grease sauna of the grill plate. It has that similar pliable softness and chewy pull-apart texture too, the facets of our favourite style of brioche.
The rest of the set up is pretty standard - tart American mustard swims with a tangy-sweet chipotle mayo, blending into a tasty sauce ocean below a flotilla of crisp chopped baby gem lettuce.
Thick crinkle bricks of pickle crank up the crunchy piquant, smoothed out by the mellow meat flavour of the savoury patty: It is plump, loosely packed with a largely pink core and the meat errs the right side of deliquescence in the chew. All it lacks is a bosh of seasoning. There also isn't enough of the melted-to-liquid cheddar, an absence notable by the translucence atop the patty. A bit more of it to amp up the tanginess and this would have been top notch. Regardless it is a very decent burger at a reasonable price.
Top notch are the session fries. The genius idea of a plastic serving tray size sharable platter of fries with toppings (which reminds us of L.A. street food legend Frysmith). Not only are the fries a crisp deep brown from their double frying, but they come topped with large chunks of pancetta, chopped kebab shop chilis, grated pecorino and fried rosemary - a forceful mixture of hot and matured savoury cuddled by an outstanding Sriracha chilli mayo which had both heat and creaminess and a deep sweetness. This was only really meant to be a snack stop but so good were these guys that we filled up our greedy faces finishing them.
It'd be lovely if we knew of somewhere in London that was like this - a multi-faceted gig space that you could also go drinking at and had some fucking solid food in it to boot - but we don't*. See, the North can be alright sometimes.
- Rob
*If you know one, let us know.