Patty and Bun, London

On a recent visit to the capital I found my self near Bond Street and decided to visit Patty & Bun to see what all the fuss was about.

I’d like to take this moment to talk about a recent point made on Chris Pople’s blog (cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.co.uk) about his trip to the Electric Diner on Portobello Road. Chris pointed out that although many of you bloggers and critics etc in the Big City are getting a bit fed up of the whole sloppy burger craze, “this thing is still a relative novelty to most people”.

Now I know you’re all sick of sloppy American diner experiences and queuing for an hour to eat a burger! But in the North of England there is virtually no where to get a decent burger and the few places that do exist have “mostly” only sprung up in the last 12 months or so.

Rant aside, this leads me back to my excitement at being down “south” and popping in to the much talked about Patty & Bun.

The venue in question has fairly plain “wipe clean” Décor, but was nice enough all the same and the staff were pleasant and punctual. I ordered the Ari Gold burger, which was about £8-9 for the burger alone.

Anyway there it is, she’s beautiful isn’t she. Sadly that’s about as far as I got to the bedroom with this burger. It had all the right ingredients; good quality beef (so I’m told), oozy cheese, sexy bun, burger sauce mmmmm. But what it left in my mouth was a watery mouthful of blandness. The beef was under seasoned, fairly tasteless and the whole thing underwhelming. The Ari Gold has got all the right components, it should be great... but its not.

This is starting to feel like an overly negative post, especially as it’s my first review. So I’ll try and place said burger into context. Out of every burger I’ve ever eaten in my beleaguered culinary existence in the North East of England and Yorkshire, this ranks in the top 10%. The problem with Patty & Bun is the “hype” I was expecting Nirvana but it didn’t happen. My advice is go somewhere else, Dirty burger is cheap if your in Kentish Town, Almost Famous in Manchester is good (love that place) or if you like a burger beautiful on the outside and plain in the middle, go here. I know plenty of men that would settle for that in a woman.

6/10

54 James St,

London W1U 1EU 

www.pattyandbun.co.uk