[REVIEW] Kimchi Cult x Rose & Crown / Walthamstow, London
“We’ll have the lot, please.”
The Rose & Crown is a big boozer nestled in the heart of the ‘Stow. It’s a classic ‘locals’ pub; the booze ‘n food offers sellotaped to the bar on neon card cut into star shapes, the local vagrant a mere drafty waft away and an eclectic music selection that throws Irish jigs followed by ambient jungle followed by Abba at you.
It’s also a celebrated CAMRA venue. We only know this because of the certificates on the wall. We know absolutely toss-all about real ale, but this pub is definitely on the circuit and they have an impressive array of regularly changing casks on offer, if that’s your thing.
It’s here where Kimchi Cult take over the kitchen for their Korean-style menu every Thursday night. We live in the mighty E17, so when we caught wind that someone was selling sliders at a pub a three minute bus ride away, we were straight down to sample everything we could get our hands on.
So, we ordered one of everything on their menu. It’s what we do.
We’ve come across Kimchi Cult before - a few times on Eat Street (where they pop up regularly) and when they were first getting started at Brick Lane Market. We’d not had their sliders or wings, since the street food tends to be geared towards subs. Being LA street food nerds, we’ve long been hankering after someone beefing up the Korean offerings here in London, Kogi BBQ style. There’s no Korean BBQ / Mexican fusion as you see over there, but we’re gradually heading in the right direction.
First out of the traps were the sliders: Kimchi burger, Kimchi Cheeseburger, Kimchi Cult Special (Bacon Cheeseburger), the Kimchi bacon and the Pulled Pork. Now, we won’t bore you right now, because that is for a longer post, but these are less ‘sliders’ than they are mini-burgers, but they are cute, dinky things indeed.
The stand out factor in most of these is, obviously, the namesake kimchi. You could liken it to the sauerkraut of Asia, with chunks of cabbage amongst a spicy red sauce, it provides a gentle, universal heat with a tiny side-pocket of sweetness to everything it covers.
Our recommendation would be the Kimchi Cheeseburger (surely you’d call it a Kimcheeseburger, right?) as it has the best flavour balance of kimchi, drippingly melted cheese and nicely (if only just slightly over-) cooked patty.
The pulled pork is boosted by a totally inspired fresh, zingy ginger coleslaw that got must-find-this-recipe shout outs instantly. If anything, the buns are a tad large and heavy dough-wise, but they don’t overly mask the taste of their contents.
However, Kimchi Cult really level up with their chicken wings.
They are outstanding - sticky, with a familiar base of chinese take away sweet and sour, but with a thump of hotness and extra lemongrass zip at the end. They taste double-fried.
We’d say the wings are worth braving the top end of the Victoria line for. We think they’re on to a real winner here, and get the inkling they do too.
Luckily you don’t have to travel up to the Walthamstow to check these guys out, as they pop up on Eat.st every now and again, and the wonderfully chatty Sarah told us there is more to come. We do hope so.
- Rob and Simon.
Kimchi Cult
[REVIEW] Fish Tacos / Luardo’s / Brockley Market, London
The only other London burrito slingers to our knowledge that serve a fish taco are Wahaca.
Much as I love Wahaca, they have a tendency of being a bit snooty toward Californian Mexican fare, then putting it on their menu and botching it.
The Luardo’s version is far closer to tacos we’ve had in SoCal. The Coley is nicely cooked but the liberal amount of lime juice, mango, coriander and wonderful creamy guacamole brings a little piece of the west coast to a wet car park in Brockley. Without any local point of comparison then, we can say quite conclusively that these are the best fish tacos in London.
Sadly, the fish taco is only available on Saturday lunchtimes at the moment, and not during their more popular Whitecross Market or Eat Street residencies. This is because it’s nowhere near as popular as their standard meaty burrito options, which is a massive shame.
Fish tacos are a great differentiator for Luardo’s now that the London burrito scene has become so shamelessly identikit. Let’s hope they roll them out more regularly. And that people buy them. Please buy them. Supply and demand and all that.
- Simon.
★[REVIEW] All Three Burgers / Mother Flipper / Brockley, London
We’ve finally got proper American cheeseburgers being sold by multiple vendors in the capital at reasonable prices.
It’s Friday night, and we’re lamenting the lack of excitement our last few burgers have delivered. We wanted something fucking good. Little did we know we only had to wait 12 measly hours…
In a car park, at the rather lovely Brockley market, you’ll find three youthful dudes with a grill banging out some pretty buzzworthy burgers.
They look like they’re in their early twenties, wearing obscure hardcore band tees and American Apparel hoodies. And honestly, we were kind of jealous. Why the hell weren’t we this proactive when we were their age?? We ordered all three of the burgers on offer, and then impatiently watched the impressively slick cooking from the grill boss and efficient construction from his buddies.
And, well, the burgers are excellent. Let’s have a closer look at a three course burger lunch:
Starter - The Mother Flipper
Their take on a classic cheeseburger, and our standard ‘control’ burger.
The first bite of the smashed, well-seasoned patty hits with a salty, deep meatiness from the concentrated juices pressed into the crust on the grill. It’s brilliant. The cheese is substantial, two slices thickly melted perfectly over the patty with a rather ingenious homemade cloche. A lattice of ketchup just takes the line over a spiral of French’s in the mix. Finished with some shredded iceberg and a beefy slice of pickle in the middle, it’s a very accomplished take on a classic.
And the brioche bun, from an undisclosed ‘artisan bakery in North London’ (we all need a secret ingredient or two) is impressive - solid, substantial and just soft enough, it contains everything without struggling from all the juice.
Mains: Double Candy Bacon Flipper
Two slightly smaller cheese-covered patties contained in a similiar set up to the Motherflipper, except with sweet, sticky candied bacon (which had a similar smokiness to Oscar Mayer). Nice to see a double patty bacon option here.
Pudding: Chilli Flipper
A really awesome and original take on a chilli burger, the pepper and onion mixture on the patty packs the heat of a kebab shop chilli sauce on one level, with a fragrant chinese-style lemongrass finish. It’s a complex and memorable kick, which lingers nicely.
Boom. Three superb courses.
These are really solid sandwiches prepared with startup, haphazard love: from the grill that occasionally teases hot and cold to the cunningly homemade cloches, by a guy you might bump into at the Turtle.
One final thing to say. It would be very feasible for someone to just order a cheeseburger and write it off as a competent Meatwagon rip-off. We recall this happening to the Lucky Chip guys last year and it saddens us enormously.
To those people we’d just like to say the following:
- Christ guys, it’s OK for there to be more than one Proper American Cheeseburger in London. FFS.
- If they’re similar then that’s because they’ve both Done It Right.
We’ve finally got proper American cheeseburgers being sold by multiple vendors in the capital at reasonable prices. Party times.
So this is a must return for us, and a must venture south for all you lot.1
Get down there. This Saturday. GO ON.
- Rob.
- Simon.
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It would also be great to see these guys join the ranks of the Eat Street collective. Nudge, nudge. ↩
[FOODTRUCK REVIEW] Cheesy Mac and Rib / Grilled Cheese Truck / Los Angeles, CA
Sometimes an idea comes along that is so simple, and yet so totally ingenious that you just have to stand up and slow clap the dudes that thought it up, ‘Lucas’ style. So we applaud the comfort food genius that is Los Angeles’ Grilled Cheese Truck.
What’s all the more awesome is that these guys take such a staple, classic, comfort food and reinvent it with panache too. It’s testament to how well they do it that I’ve seen queues for this mobile eatery easily stretch 20-plus long. Our first visit attempt was at the fairly legendary Abbot Kinney First Fridays festival in Venice. The trouble was we’d already tried five trucks by the time we spotted them. Dammit.
And those queues are there for good reason; their Cheesy Mac And Rib is hugely satisfying. The barbecue pork was saucy-sweet, soft and worthy of a place all of its own on a menu. The mac ‘n cheese was heavy on the gooey cheese, sticky yet still trying to escape from every opening, and hinted a savouriness that balanced with the pork brilliantly. One hell of a sandwich.
I’m pretty sure I put this away in under ten mouthfuls it was so good, and if we weren’t going on to somewhere else for more food, I would have had another. A bang up job, and a must for anyone In L.A. who has only got time to visit a handful of food trucks.
- Rob.
★[FOODTRUCK] Fast Fresh Burger Company / London / The Difficult Second Album
So the second thing. A burger van. They’re pretty hot right now. Should be a slam dunk, right?
It’s not immediately clear that FFBCo is a new venture by the lovely Joel of Daddy Donkey fame.
But it is. It’s his burger van, and it’s about thirty yards away from DD on Leather Lane in Clerkenwell.
We continue to be big fans of the Double D. I still think they sling the most consistent, generously portioned, fastidiously put together burritos in London. They were here long before any of the bricks ‘n mortar chains like Chilango and Tortilla started aggressively commercialising it, and they’ve matured tastefully.
There hasn’t been the same rabid board-room driven expansion (let’s forget the brief foray into Brick Lane) and there’s been a series of upgrades to the DD truck. It’s got bigger, more colourful, the menu has widened a bit (totopos looks like a direct response to Chilango) and it’s still as popular as ever, despite the ever-increasing competition.
And DD is still very, very good. It holds a special place in the hearts of lunch-seeking Holborners everywhere.
So the second at. A burger van. They’re pretty hot right now. Should be a slam dunk, right?
Joel’s already proven that he can do good branding, great customer service and most importantly good consistent food with Daddy Donkey. What could possibly go wrong?
Well let’s start with the name. Fast and Fresh. It’s neither. Logistically it’s very hard to take the production line experience of a burrito truck and transfer it to burgers. Burgers need to be cooked to order. So the burgers aren’t fast, because they’re reheated on a flat-top while the (sesame shop-bought) buns toast a bit. So that means they’re pre-cooked. So they’re far from fresh.
You can always tell a pre-cooked and reheated burger. They retain a sickly grey pallor on the inside, and the reheating makes it dry and overly crisp on the outside. It also changes the flavour of the beef significantly, a bit like letting a cup of coffee go cold and then desperately microwaving it. It’s not the same.
So the burgers are neither fast, nor fresh. The other oddity is how they’re packaged. There is no cheeseburger option without going custom. Since that’s my default choice that’s what I went for. I was mildly horrified when the dude started ladeling lukewarm liquid nacho cheese all over the crispy reheated patty. I love nacho cheese. On nachos. This yellow goo should be part of the DD offering, not being slopped all over burgers.
Having settled down to sink into my saucy option, the cheese sauce actually did the burger a favour by masking all the flavour of the dry patty with thick, gelatinous, salty, fake cheese. I kinda liked it, but won’t be going back. I can’t support reheating. The glory days of the Meatwagon queue were all about the wait and watching it being cooked from scratch. I don’t think these guys have twigged that yet, and as a lunchtime market offering, this is just a bit too poorly conceived and ‘me too-ist’.
We expect more the daddy of the donkey, and looking at the sparse queue on any given lunchtime compared to the burrito, this could do with going back to the drawing board.
Stick with what you know. Get a burrito.
- Simon.
★[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.
