There are some pretty nice places to go eat around Farringdon and Clerkenwell, and more food traffickers are realising this and setting up shop. It is ample pickings. But sometimes it takes us so long to get around to reviewing gaffs that they've closed down and become something else before we get a chance to. Oh, how fickle is City crowd! Guess they didn't need our poxy website rambles to tell them it was shit. Bad restaurant gossip must spread faster here than the rumours about Brandon's chlamydia around High School.
So a residency in a pub kitchen is probably a wise idea in the revolving door of bricks and mortar establishments, and food merchants We Serve Humans have found one in The Gunmakers - A cute, simply designed wee boozer selling craft beer and cocktails that oddly has an rather expensive hairdressers above it, should you desire a chopped barnet with your IPA.
Technically the 'burger' section of the menu only contains one actual burger, named The Chairman (the rest being an array of differing sandwiches*) so we went with it. Upon arrival it most definitely looked disheveled, as if someone had briefly used it in place of their Shake Weight: The pickled red onion jam lay raggedly, discarded purply perm curls across cheese slices that looked barely rattled let alone melted, encased in what looked like a sad unsugared doughnut. So it was shit then...
Nope, it wasn't. It was actually bloody great.
The sad doughnut was a soft cream bun that had a great creamy mild flavour with a durable squish and just-chewy texture. The patty was delightfully soft beef, loosely formed with a pink stripe through the middle, and had stand out meaty well-seasoned flavour.
Despite being unmelted, the American-style cheese slices were the kind that easily acquiesced their salty rubberiness to the heat of the meat. The onion jam added sweetness without being overbearing, mellowed by the creamy custom bun sauce. This is one such example of sandwich thaumaturgy where simple mixtures of ingredients that don't look like much, when forcefully merged together by the crushing of two bits of tasty bread, just work. And work well.
Oh, and you get fuck loads of chips. Tick in the portion size box.
These guys currently have a couple of other pub residencies and a regular Saturday gig at the Signature Brewery in Leyton so if you are East London-centric you'll have no problem catching them. We will be again soon.
- Rob
*Yeah, we're pedants.