[REVIEW] Ribs, Pulled Pork Sliders and Burgers / Duke’s Brew and Que / Haggerston, London
We wanted a huge bowl of the pulled pork
From the outside, Dukes Brew and Que wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Jeeves & Wooster, squeezed between a building wrapped in scaffolding and a council estate in Hackney-but-still-the-rough-bit Haggerston. The juxtaposition is evident inside as a throng of well dressed 9-to-5ers mob the bar, leaving the local drunk looking bewildered. Poor bloke, he only wants a pint of fucking bitter. Later, when he bowls up to bar for another scoop, the front of house will try and give his tiny table by the window away to a trendy young couple, and he will not be best pleased.
That’s the thing - it is a boozer, with most of the crowd queuing at the bar for one of the impressive selection of beers here solely for that reason (our pale ale loving compadre was ecstatic). But it’s also a restaurant. An arguably good balance. And yet, we are still a bit disconcerted since the FOH lady chooses to ignore us and we find our pre-booked table on our own and wait a good ten minutes before the waitress decides to give us the time of day. In short, it looks like a pub, but it’s definitely a restaurant. Not much space for those just there for the sauce.
The menu is a bit odd for somewhere touting itself as a barbecue place - there is a lot of steak going on, and a burger. And the only pulled pork available is housed within in ‘sliders’. They’ve also committed the cardinal “mission statement” sin as you can see from the picture above.
We ordered everything vaguely barbecue, and a burger.
Let’s start with that burger. The patty was thick, moist and packed a distinctly barbecue flavour, almost as if it had been smoked itself, which was quite novel. The sauce with it was fresh and spicy sweet, and the bun did a stand up job housing the lot. Yep, it was a barbecue burger, of sorts, and whilst not mind-blowing, it wasn’t bad. It did taste a bit like a frankfurter though, which some of you might find some disconcerting.
On to the ribs. The pork were pleasingly big, pink and chewy. The beef ribs were heavier on the gristle and didn’t quite have enough fat to keep them as palatable, or enough sauce to keep them moist.
Both of them however were criminally sweet, and we have a theory about it. Duke’s clearly have some kind of Memphis-style house rub they’re applying to all their ribs, be they cow or pig. We think that once they’ve been smoked, they’re re-dunked into the rub and flash-grilled so the sugar caramelises just before they’re sent out. Now, this is a problem. The dark sugary bark does indeed look really good, but there is an overwhelming caramel taste and smell to both types of rib.
Worse than that, the flash-nature of that grilling means you get the odd grain of sugar stuck between your teeth, which gives it that shuddering granulated sugar crunch that is far from pleasant. We’re fine with sweetness in ‘cue, but the sugar itself should not be identifiable by texture.
Gross.
All is not lost though. The best thing by a country fried mile were the pulled pork sliders - dinky little gems of moist pulled pork topped with a zingy slaw, served in a brilliant dinky brioche bun. We all agreed a big daddy version of one of these would have been epic. Unfortunately, the fact that you only get three of them in a mains serving is ultimately too stingy.
We wanted a huge bowl of the pulled pork and it’s just not an option on the menu.
The sides were fine, the only disappointment being the mac ‘n cheese. The pasta was topped with lots of rubbery grilled cheese without any real evidence of a proper cheese sauce. Macaroni with cheese if you will. Amateurish.
They’ve clearly done their USA BBQ research too, they’ve got the rolls of greaseproof paper right, but the menu feels focus-grouped to death (steak, steak, steak). Duke’s guys - do what you know you can do.
Duke’s is going to draw inevitable comparisons with Pitt Cue Co (which we will be reviewing soon): everything is served similarly, on similar trays, with a similar slaw side, with that familiar New/Old Filament Lightbulb Aesthetic.
But we’re not going to bother - the subtlety and complexity of Pitt Cue’s flavours, crossed with its significantly lower cost and more convenient location really doesn’t warrant one.
- Rob & Simon.
[REVIEW] Fattrilogy / Fattburger / Dalston, London
“It’s got two dart boards. TWO fucking dart boards!”
The self conscious nerve centre of Hackditchston (Shoredalney? Dalsneyditch?) is making a name for itself springing up some noteworthy food-based events in the last few months. Well now another one has popped up, the three month burger residency of Fattburger at The 3 Compasses.
It’s getting harder and harder to find a proper boozer-looking boozer in London, but the 3 Compasses is one of them, channelling the character of a sparse Working Man’s club, complete with rudimentary furniture, but run by some very friendly Dalstonites. It’s got two dart boards. TWO fucking dart boards! Do you know how hard it is to find a pub that has one? We’re sold. It’s also got Oranjeboom on tap. Double sold.
We ordered the three meaty offerings at the bar; the Fattburger, the Fatt Pig and the special of the night, the Fatty Korean. Our wait seemed to be a lot longer than others, and when my comrade questioned it at the bar we found out why: someone had taken our order to the wrong table by mistake, and that table (who hadn’t ordered any food) had happily accepted, and preceded to eat it all.
I know, fucking scumbags right? Apologies abound, our order was placed again and arrived quick smart complimentary skinny fries in all their salty goodness.
These are classically American-looking burgers - the cheese is impressively melty and the lettuce and tomato pop out. Apart from one sandwich arriving with a bottom bun on top, first impressions are good.
Ironically, the name of this residency doesn’t describe the offering. The patties aren’t fat(t). In fact, they are actuall anorexic. Or thin(n). This makes the meat hard to taste in the mix, as it’s lost by everything else. It’s palpably overwhelmed by the bun, which is dense, quite hard and crumbly, possibly a tad stale. They are pretty big as well, resulting in the last couple of bites being a salad sandwich.
The composition of the burger is good. The cheese threw out a pleasant après- -tang. It had plenty of tomato, lettuce and onion. And the sauces, whilst not brilliantly distinctive, were abundant. The combination lead to an agreeable, standard burger. The winner of the trio was the Fatty Korean - the kimchi added a mild kick, warm flavour and crazy amounts of saucy moisture that soaked into the dry bun and made it more-satisfyingly sloppy.
The ethos of Fattburger, and enthusiasm of the chef that serves up his wares, housed in such no-nonsense surroundings is cool as hell; all it needs is for the burgers to improve a bit and it’ll be a surefire East London go-to.
It’s early days, and we’ve got a feeling a return visit is on the cards.
- Rob.
★[FIELD REPORT] The Long Table / Dalston / Passive Aggressive Street Food
“Give that man a hot plate, some ingredients and a table, he’ll bang out scores of perfect cheeseburgers.”
A few words about The Long Table. The Dalston pop up market to end all pop ups. And possibly Dalston.
Rob
It seemed everybody except the organisers knew this was going to be crazy busy. So for those lucky enough to be able to get there early, it was a very cool and novel experience, like a bonfire night where the stuff coming off of the obligatory barbecue actually tasted good. Great stalls selling amazing food.
They definitely had a long table, but not long enough to cope with the overwhelming turn out, causing classic Brit passive-aggressive seat-hawk mentality to rear its ugly head.
You know the types - the people peering over your shoulder whilst you consume your food and looking to see where the next viable perching spot will be, asking if you’ll be moving any time soon - sucking some of the enjoyment out of the experience for the patron who arrived on time. No offence buddy, but I’ll sit here for as long as I fucking like, thanks.
Simon
Carnage. It was utter carnage.
But before we talk about that, let’s discuss the food. True to form, I had two burgers. The first was the fabled Hawksmoor burger, which was accompanied by some kind of Ginger brew cocktail Manhattan thing by booze-pert Shaky Pete. I was more curious to see whether Hawksmoor could relocate their care and attention to detail en plein air.
The short answer is no, not quite.
Having held off the five or six H-moor superfans, who were crowding their spot a good thirty minutes before they were ready to serve, the pace seemed a little too frantic. My burger did indeed look identical to what you get in the restaurant, but consisted of two top bun halves and a patty that had been viciously burned on one side. They had also given up toasting buns and melting cheese properly due to the rush: an understandable restraint but one that dramatically altered the end result compared to the bricks and mortar equivalent.
Having your customers right in front of you might not be what these guys are used to.
Which brings us to the matter of the cheese. Ogleshield. It’s hefty. Unsubtle. Arguably not suited to a burger, unless you’ve got the wherewithal to melt it sufficiently. When bonded with meat, it can be a magical thing. But here, it was floating above the patty, jeering at the rest of the ingredients. And it utterly dominated the flavour of the whole burger. Friend of B/A, Dan said it tasted cheap.
Cheap! But he was right! It reduced the entire ensemble to a glorified cheese sandwich.
Now, I think we were a bit unlucky overall, since I was a recipient of one the first few burgers off the grill, and I’m sure things got better throughout the course of the evening. We heard murmurings from nearby Hawksmoorers that it was the ‘best burger they’d had’, so I’m sure things got better later on.
Still, it was £3 cheaper than what you’d pay in the restaurant.
Next up was Lucky Chip. Ben was there without his van and seemed to be training up a new guy on the grill. He was also the epitome of calm compared to the frantic rush for Hawksmoor. That guy is seriously chilled out.
And sure enough, the cheeseburger that resulted was effortlessly authentic. I don’t think you can find a more perfect plain cheeseburger in all of London. Give that man a hot plate, some ingredients and a table, he’ll bang out scores of perfect cheeseburgers. Really impressive, and we’re lucky to have him.
So after both burgers, we were too full to have anything else.
The Long Table is a great thing; the sheer variety of what’s on offer makes it well worth a visit - but do ensure you’re there on time. The queue when we left reminded me of the queues you used to see for the Astoria back in the day.
And there wasn’t even any music.
Street food seems to be the new rock ‘n roll, and the crowds of hyped-up über-connected Twitterers queuing for hours made some wasteland in Dalston feel a bit like San Francisco for the evening.
Follow @thelongtableAS for details.
[POP UP] Hot and Steamy Shacklewell Nights - Dalston
The chefs wear whites and everything. The big leagues.
It’s funny how it’s only really been nine months or so since I started visiting East London’s supper clubs, and the speed with which they seem to be proliferating and evolving.
We were lucky enough to visit Shacklewell Nights’ first evening of service, run by Claire from Green Onions and Jonathan from a little restaurant you might have heard of called St John. The concept, in their words:
They have joined together to cook the very best of seasonal British food to be enjoyed by diners in the relaxed and informal surroundings of the old clothing factory.
So essentially we have a highly experienced supper clubber teaming up with one of London’s most respected proper-British-type restaurants. And probably more of a focus on the dining room too rather than just the food. Expectations were high.
Shacklewell is divided into about four or five large communal tables in a buzzy, top floor industrial building. Dishes are served per table, with everyone passing them round.
We started with an excellent brown shrimp, samphire and potato starter, dressed to perfection. Just enough bite to the shrimp. Fresh and summery.
Following that was a platter of beautifully cooked duck legs on a bed of white beans and bacon. Both of these dishes were very simple with big, bold flavours. Very St John. Very seasonal. Most enjoyable.
Pudding was a sorbet with vodka shot palate cleanser followed by a blackberry fool with the most perfect shortbread biscuit you ever did taste. A well rounded meal with great like-minded folks, run like a ‘proper’ restaurant.
So Shacklewell certainly isn’t a supper club. It’s way too slick. You’re paying for those top-end ingredients and proper-restaurant service (the room seats fifty I think). The chefs wear whites and everything. The big leagues.
Of course, now I’ve written this, Shacklewell won’t be popping up again for another two months. So keep an eye on the Twitter account, and if you fancy a lovingly prepared British four courser with a friendly, knowledgeable crowd then it’s well worth a visit.
Shacklewell Nights - Dalston E8 Bookings via their website £35 for four courses and some wine + BYO
