Everybody knows Borough Market and it now seems as much as a tourist attraction as it does a market serving the locals. Broadway Market in Hackney, which can trace its history back to 1900, offers an interesting and in many ways more authentic alternative though is open (as far as we're aware), on Saturday's only.

Walking over 'Cat & Mutton Bridge' affords inspiring views of Regent's Canal before leading you in to the market. Reach the end of Broadway Market itself and you arrive at London Fields, a name stamped on the literary scene by Martin Amis, even if his book was set in West London. Turn right and you arrive after a minute's walk at Netil Market, mostly a collection of food outlets supporting hungry market strollers. It is also home to Lucky Chip, one of London's most well regarded burger vendors.

My previous encounters with Lucky Chip have always been in the more centrally located The Player Slider Bar in Soho where Lucky Chip had a residency (which we believe has now ended). I had enjoyed my several meals there (see our blog post) but always with one reservation: I hate the whole slider concept and longed for a proper size Lucky Chip burger. Well, I finally made it to Netil Market and now's my chance.

With Lucky Chip (and the market generally) only open on a Saturday, I had expected enormous queues, but to my surprise, everything was quite orderly and there was no waiting to be done. The burgers are cooked up to order in a trailer and from the moment you see the sizeable burgers topped with cheese steaming under a cloche on the grill at eye level, the four or so minute wait following you placing your order seems interminable. Seating is outdoors in the middle of the small market and you simply take a seat on a somewhat communal long bench; when your order is ready, it is brought to your table (on paper plates of course).

The burger totally looks the part, shaming to hell the limp offerings of Shake Shack and Five Guys. I had gone for the Lucky Burger (Onions, Cheese, Lucky Mayo, Lettuce, Tomato) which seemed the right thing to do at Lucky Chip, while there's also a regular cheeseburger, a Kevin Bacon (cheeseburger with bacon), Woody Harlesden (Mushroom) and a burger of the week, Tom Selleck (includes pineapple, must be a Magnum PI thing).  

You are not asked how you want your burger cooked but it comes in a way that will please burger lovers everywhere: nicely pink. It's chunky, but the right size, you can pick it up and eat it with no need for deconstruction or a knife and fork. Juices dribble on to the plate as you tilt the burger and bite in; when seen elsewhere, this sometimes leads to the remaining patty feeling dry and chewy, not here where everything remains deliciously addictive and the juices simply become another dipping sauce. In all this, the cheese has nicely melted into the burger and the bun retains integrity and is well judged for the burger served.

Put another way, I really loved my Lucky Chip burger. It looked right, felt right, tasted right, was cooked right and, costing £9, was priced right. My friend who accompanied me was shocked that a burger van in a market was serving something so good. It is in some ways a surprising find but feels worth the journey (and Broadway Market offers a nice way to kill a few hours also). If you can't make Saturdays in Hackney, according to Luck Chip's website, you can also enjoy a Lucky Chip burger at the Sebright Arms (pub) seven days a week (selective hours, see website). We will certainly be making that journey also.

Finally, I followed on from my burger with a salted caramel milkshake from Street Shakes (see below) six yards away from Lucky Chip in the same market, that too was fabulous. Admittedly rain can (and nearly did) put a dampener on things, but having finally got to try a full size Lucky Chip burger instead of a silly slider, and despite expectations running high, I nevertheless finished my day at the market a very happy customer.

We are no experts on the Manchester food scene but what is clear is that SoLITA has been making a big impression this past year and firmly making its name not just on the Manchester map but the national map also. We've enjoyed Twitter conversations with larger than life owner Franco while the grill counts trusted bloggers like @HungryHoss and @sped98 as fans. It has already notched up (according to Urbanspoon) a mind bending 51 blog posts and on our recent visit to Manchester we felt compelled to check it out.   

The restaurant at SoLITA is based around their Inka Grill, a British rival to the Josper, and the menu is therefore centred around burgers, steaks, and all the usual accompaniments. But Franco has an eye for making a splash so as well as classic style burgers (Bacon Double Cheese), there's amusingly quirky additions (The Big Manc is a Lancashire Big Mac) and some new, off the wall stuff, such as The Ramen Burger. Throw in on top of that a nod to popular culture, the Breaking Bad was on specials during our visit, and what you have is a place that is a whole heap of fun so long as the food is good enough. The only way then was to try a whole lot of everything.

We start with a small plate of deep fried mac n cheese and while this is popular on many a menu now, here we think they got just about everything right. These little mac and cheese balls were a perfect size to provide the right balance between the crisp outside and mac and cheese inside while striking the right cheese and texture balance inside. Quite frankly I could just visit SoLITA and order a giant plate of these every day and be happy; if that seems an unhealthy idea, wait till you see what's coming.

Rooster scratchings are super salty but moreish and provide a nice alternative to jaw breaking pork scratchings, though a few people have do have issue with eating chicken skin as a snack like this. But yep, tick, ate quite a few of these. Bacon fat popcorn sounds amazing but we don't want to fill up on the snacks but sitting here writing this, I now really wish I had ordered it. A whole fried flowered onion arrived next which is nothing like an onion in a restaurant that I've seen before though it is more familiar to MrsCC as it is seen more often in the US. It is both a visually more stunning treat than onion rings and certainly here, kept more moisture in the onion which again made it a plate you could get deep into before realising there is still a lot of food on the way so you should probably stop.

Next up is the buttermilk fried chicken burger. It's a beautiful thing, coated in a bright golden batter and is very nice indeed but also (by some measure at least) squeaky clean. If you're wondering what measure that could possibly be, our comparison is the Dirty Chicken Burger from MEATliquor which in many ways is properly dirty. Eating the chicken burger here, I don't feel dirty, possibly why I polished it off, arguably foolhardy given what we still have to come.  

The Reuben didn't really work for us with doorstep wedges of bread too dominant, something which Franco himself spotted immediately when he approached our table to ask how we were finding things. But the really big guns are yet to come.

Arriving at the same time we get a Manc-hattan and a Do-burg.  The Manc-hattan is one of only two items on the menu to carry a red 'recommended' sign next to its name and is a burger that is topped with of pastrami, melted Lancashire cheese, panko fried black pudding, Lancashire sauce, Coney Island mustard. It's a big bite, a culinary nod to Manchester and understandably popular. But my eyes are set on the Do-burg and if you are wondering what that is, think Donut meets burger.

Some quick research online tells me that the doughnut burger is also called the Luther Burger in the US (after Luther Vandross) and Health.com ranks it number 11 in their top 50 of the fattiest food in the States. It screams Adam Richman at you and The Sun reports that a Donut-Burger can have up to 2,000 calories. Here however, it's a little different than the traditional variety that generally uses a Krispy Kreme doughnut instead of the bun. Rather, it's a burger with cheese inside that's breadcrumbed and deep fried with cheese then melted on top and sprinkled with candied bacon. Since deep frying anything makes it better and a burger is pretty damned good to start, I actually enjoyed this so much an intervention was staged from across the table to 'save my life'. 

There's a side salad on the menu here but I wonder how much of that they sell for unless you wander in by accident, SoLITA is a place to come while leaving your guilt at home and just enjoy all that's good about what comes off a grill or out of a fryer. Even their mash is called 60-40 mash as it is billed as 40% butter. SoLITA is a guilty pleasure to the power of a googol but that's okay because we like those. It's fun, reasonably priced, offers really quite a lot of options and never takes itself too seriously except in wanting to deliver good food to its customers. What's not to like?

If Five Guys, together with Shake Shack, are supposed to be the best new burger chains the US has to offer, the UK independents, who can only have suffered trepidation ahead of their opening in London, are no doubt sleeping easier in their beds this week than they ever imagined possible. Like Shake Shack, the results at Five Guys are, in our opinion, entirely disappointing, and having tried it, we can't imagine that we would return. 

There are some really great burgers these days in London yet Five Guys feels to us another instance of clever marketing over a decent product. The menu has a section dedicated to media quotes saying how great Five Guys is, the walls are decorated with more quotes (or possibly the same quotes) telling you how great Five Guys is: they clearly don't believe in the old literary rule of 'show don't tell'. The problem is however that after all these quotes pumping up the product, the final outcome seems even more disappointing as a result. Clearly they don't believe in managing expectations either.  More likely though, they actually believe it and we understand that they are rolling out Five Guys across the UK over the course of the year so soon, regardless of where you are, you'll be able to decide for yourself.

The menu here is simpler than Shake Shack, there's not even a milk shake on it, instead, it's just burgers, a couple of veggie sandwiches, fries and drinks. Burgers can be 'little' or 'regular' but even this somewhat fooled us. Expecting the 'little cheeseburger' to be a slider or something similar, it turns out that 'little' is what we would call normal (or a single patty burger) and their regular hamburger is actually a double patty affair. I presume this is a quirk that every Five Guys fan knows and loves, but we felt it was a typical corporate mugging to get the first time customer (currently about 58 million Brits) to spend several quid more than they would if they actually understood what they were actually ordering (nowhere did we see it explained). The result is that while Five Guys appears to be a premium priced burger compared to Shake Shack, it actually costs only a little more. Single Shake Shack cheeseburger, £4.75, Five Guys 'Little cheeseburger' £5.50. Shake Shack double cheeseburger £7.25, Five Guys regular (read double) cheeseburger £8.

When you collect, the burgers wrapped in foil go in the bag, so does a styrofoam cup of fries, and then a second tray of fries is emptied on top, worth knowing when you ravenously tear open the bag at your table. On the subject of the fries, they felt tired though given how busy it is, they couldn't possibly be old, surely, but they lacked crunch and presence and we couldn't have eaten more than ten between us.

When I opened my burger, I was shocked, it looked like five guys had sat on it before they wrapped it and served it to me. This mostly seems the norm though (looking at other bloggers' photos also), meaning that the bun is compact and dense, not airy and fluffy. I'm immediately put off. The patties have something on Shake Shack's however, with texture and flavour so it's overall a better burger. It's still not great however. And look, clearly the double burger is Five Guys signature thing, but it's harder to cook two thin burgers well than a single plump one. With a dense roll also, at the half way stage, it simply felt like hard work rather than something enjoyable. Relief washed over me as I decided not to finish the final third. It felt like just another corporate burger, lacking the love that is so readily apparent in owner driven outlets like Patty & Bun.

There are no desserts here, so that's it. We headed home with a sense of disbelief, is this really what all the fuss is about? Clearly Five Guys is a big thing in America but if the offering here is comparable to there, the UK has bought into a fantasy that the US is some kind of burger utopia when in reality, we're already doing it better right here. As we strolled back, we put the question out there: between Shake Shack, Five Guys and McDonalds, which would you go to (if you had to). The answer: whichever is closest.

Let's jump right in here. Is the food at Shake Shack any good? Not particularly. Is the hype justified? Well, hype is by definition hype, but the answer is again no. If McDonalds weren't in the UK currently and they opened their first branch in Covent Garden, pretty sure the blog-sphere would be going crazy about that too. And we mention the big M because when you eat at Shake Shack, you don't find yourself asking 'is this better or worse than Patty & Bun?', hell, you don't even ask yourself if it is better or worse than Byron, but what you do end up asking yourself is 'is this better than McDonalds?'. To be honest, the answer is not really.

Reaching for a couple of positives here, price wise, it's pitched only slightly above McDonalds, at £5 for a cheeseburger. Byron is £6.75 for theirs, and many places are of course £10+. And it is just a fast food kitchen in the same way that McDonalds is: you go to a counter, order, collect your food on a tray, eat and leave. There's some interesting extras on the menu too like 'Frozen Custard'. The milk shake is not bad and the Concretes (frozen custard - basically ice cream) is okay too and comes with various additions like chocolate, caramel and marshmallow; admittedly, the 'concrete' knocks the spots off a McFlurry, but not I would say Ben & Jerry's.

But this is all about the burgers and here, these £5 cheeseburgers in all their forms are simply bland. They are thin, at times have an almost paste like texture so you never really feel you're biting in to meat, and on my ShackBurger (a cheeseburger with ShackSauce whatever that is), it was only the taste of cheese that came through with bread the only texture; both the burger and the ShackSauce were totally lost. On the classic Cheeseburger, the bun was soggy on the bottom and throughout, seasoning was absent.

We note that the menu says all burgers are cooked medium unless otherwise requested and admittedly we failed to mention that medium rare would be the preference but the patties are so thin that we have to believe that medium rare would be a real challenge for them. The result is that after having the burger, you don't really feel like you've had a burger, hardly a result given that the absence of taste is unlikely to be matched by an absence of calories. 

Every blogger  and non blogger is going to go, because you have to see for yourself, so there's no point telling anyone not to bother. But after that, in our view, the fuss will die down and this will be just another burger chain outlet. We doubt this time next year the London food scene will be paying any attention to it whatsoever. Maybe five years ago you couldn't get a decent burger in London but that's no longer true, and whether it's Patty & Bun, MEATliquor, Honest Burger or Dirty Burger, or indeed many other places (the list being too exhaustive to list them all), we believe that there's much more that's much better out there right now. They've won the PR war for sure, but they certainly haven't won the burger wars. 

While the brave stood in line for two hours in Covent Garden for London's latest burger offering, our strategy was somewhat different: go to Goodman. We walked in to the Canary Wharf branch without reservation and without queue, took a nice table alongside the dock and had already decided that we would enjoy one of their burgers which, in terms of pure meat content, must be the classiest burger in London, because it uses the same aged beef as offered in their steak line up. Bite into their burger, which also has a nice smokiness imparted to it by the Josper grill, and the quality of the meat instantly shows. Sometimes we like dirty burgers, sometimes even from Dirty Burger, but in terms of out and out quality, we've not encountered a classier burger in London than Goodman. Goodman then is not only a go-to burger destination for us, it is without doubt in our top three.

As if that weren't enough, as a starter, we shared a lobster roll which has the same beautiful buttery brioche as sister restaurants Burger & Lobster and also like B&L, it is packed with meaty tail inside and a claw across the top. Finally for dessert, a totally unnecessary addition we should add, a chocolate torte and honeycomb ice cream ended the meal in the same style as the earlier courses.

The Canary Wharf branch is the sometimes forgotten outpost of the Goodman empire but it really shouldn't be, because it not only shares the same meaty ethos as the other branches, it offers menu items like the lobster roll that are not available elsewhere, embraces the same high levels of customer care from staff as the rest of the group and is alone in having an outside terrace fronting the docks such that eating there on a nice day becomes an absolute joy. Regular readers of our blog will know that we love Goodman, and the Canary Wharf branch is no exception. 

The entrance to DirtyBurger in Kentish Town is one of the scariest we've stepped through to purchase food. To get there, turn off the main road, go round the back, when you see an upturned oil can with dirty burger painted on it, turn left. The entrance is in the corner, under the fire escape, the doors rusting corrugated iron. As I step through this industrial style entrance, I half expect to find stolen BMW's being chopped for spare parts. But no, it really is a burger shop.

The sparse simplicity of its exterior continues on the inside, not least because this venue is in fact just one big corrugated iron conservatory with a service hatch cut through into the main building to which it adjoins. A wooden ledge runs the length of the walls of the small space inside and a very large communal table sits in the centre. Seats are bolted to the floor adding a little further to the edginess. 

The menu is simple: Cheeseburger (£5.50). Sides: Fries, onion rings (each £2.50). The drinks menu was obscured by a pillar and I am still kicking myself that I missed out on a milkshake. Oh well. I buy a Coke (bottle format) which you retrieve yourself from a fridge in the dining area. There's even the day's papers around for you to read to pass the time, though think The Sun here rather than The Times.

When the burger arrives, I love it. The name of the place is so appropriate: with melted cheese and whatever special sauces they put on, within moments of picking it up, my hands are covered in it all and I can hardly pick my drink up as it slides from my fingers, all properly dirty. I may upset several parties with this comment but everything here put me in mind of MEATliquor right at the beginning. There's the loud music blasting through, and like MEATliquor, the off the wall setting nevertheless provides coherency and a venue that feels accessible to all, but not at the expense of a crappy burger. We said in a recent post that some places just get burgers and DirtyBurger completely gets it. They didn't ask how I wanted my burger done, they just serve it proper from the get-go. 

We have little reason to regularly visit Kentish Town but DirtyBurger might have just changed that. There are very few places where  we'd make a special journey to eat a burger, but that list has just grown in number by one. The oddest surroundings really, but I can't fault what they do here. This is definitely one of London's very best burgers, and at £5.50, it's burger heaven.

Hard Rock Cafe in the same week as the disaster at Reform Social, are we off our, err, rocker? Well, maybe, though this post might surprise.

Several weeks back, we declined a PR invitation to celebrate the Legendary Burger at Hard Rock Cafe, but instead, thought we should check it out in our own time, on our dime and so get the real experience. There's not so many blog posts on Hard Rock, I think Chris Pople pretty much killed those dead in their tracks with his devastating assessment back in 2011 (read the post here). According to UrbanSpoon, this was the first, and to date, the only independent blogger assessment of the place, strange for a restaurant that is so popular, there is almost always a queue and a wait time to get in. Accordingly, it simply has to be worth a look (and after Reform, I'm prepared for anything).

Our conclusion might be surprising to many: there is a genuine and valid place for Hard Rock Cafe in the London hospitality sector in our opinion. To be clear, Hard Rock Cafe isn't a place for food bloggers. It's not even a place for people who read food blogs. And it's certainly not a place for people who can name London's top ten burger joints faster than most people can name their own children. The small amount of food that I tried was bland and instantly forgettable, even as I was still chewing it, but it never scaled the heights of being totally awful. So why then am I being so kind?

The reason that I can forgive them the food is that while sitting there, watching everything with my beady blogger eye, I came to appreciate that HRC had created a proper service culture that puts to shame many a 'better' restaurant. The greeting on the door is a smile and welcome, approach the door and a member of staff is there to open it for you, the staff seem to genuinely like people (it's amazing how many waiters in other restaurants can perform their task professionally but fundamentally don't actually like people). 

Nothing seemed too much trouble for them. If you are one of those fussy eaters (the table next to me was - can I have that without the mustard, this on the side, and I don' t like....), the answer from staff was always 'no problem' said with all the appearance of sincerity. Sodas at Hard Rock are 'bottomless': my glass never sat empty for more than 30 seconds before my waiter Erik (we're on first name terms) breezed in to swoop up the empty glass and replace it with a full one. And when one family with two smallish children were leaving, their waitress, who had clearly engaged with the munchkins, walked out with them to the pavement to say goodbye; it all ended with high fives for the little people. For sure, high fives are not what I want as a food blogger, but if I were a parent with children in tow, I'd be thrilled. Perhaps that approach to service (and of course an undeniably impressive rock memorabilia collection) is why my fellow diners were a remarkably diverse group of individuals.

The no problem approach also meant I could order my burger medium rare 'no problem' and that's actually how they cooked it, it just didn't taste of much and the cheese on top was a scary fluorescent yellow. The bacon, and I have to point out that I'm never a fan of bacon on burgers here, there or anywhere, only served to add an unwelcome chew and make it a little salty. To be honest, I didn't bother finishing my Legendary Burger, couldn't really see the point. But if, as most, you're too busy trying to read the inscription on Eric Clapton's guitar to really worry about the shade of yellow of the cheddar, you're in solid company. The meal is something else to do, something to chew, while your attention darts around the room clocking the display: most probably finish their food without realising they've actually eaten something (other than now feeling full up, food quantities are decent enough). And to be properly fair, the food here is if anything better than most available 'pub grub' meals in London that tourists would otherwise find themselves eating and the surrounds are ten times more exciting.

So while I didn't see much point to their Legendary Burger, I did see a point to Hard Rock Cafe. You don't go there for the food, you go there for the experience, and that's why we think it has a place in the London hospitality scene. We've been in plenty of restaurants this year, good restaurants with great food, where the service was not a patch on what HRC offered, so seeing us not wanting to go back. A rude waiter can dampen your day just as much as a shitty burger, sometimes more. So even though I didn't like the food, and even though the place overall is not my thing, they treat you well in a unique surround, and for the majority of people I'm sure, that's more important than queuing for an hour and a half in a quest to discover London's best burger. 

Honest Burgers is clearly out there competing at the highest level in the capital's ever escalating burger wars, but somehow it hadn't really crossed our consciousness thus far. Admittedly  that probably says more about us than them, but on recently receiving an email inviting us to try an upcoming special burger (a True Blood burger - an undead cow perhaps?), an invite that we politely declined, nevertheless, it did make us think that we should give Honest Burgers a try. So days later, here we are.

Knowing so little about HB, it was only good fortune that saw us turn up at 5:25 (midweek Soho opening times are 12-4pm, and 5:30-11pm) allowing us to get a table, for by 5:35pm they were already full and new arrivals were told to expect up to an hour's wait. The reality is however that it doesn't take long to pass through and back out the doors of Honest Burgers because it's a focussed operation: beef burger, chicken burger or a veggie alternative. With burgers coming only as a cheeseburger, an Honest-Burger or the day's special, and no starters and no desserts, all but the most indecisive will struggle to order quickly here. Worth noting, they say on the menu that all burgers are served medium unless otherwise requested; our request for medium rare was no problem at all we were delighted to find.

When the burgers arrived, they looked good and tasted good, so very much the burger business. Famously, they source their meat from The Ginger Pig, so one can have full faith in quality. Some places just instinctively understand how to put together a good burger and so it was here. It was excellent from first bite to last. My only point of issue is that the burger is on the smaller side of things (though in the photos below, admittedly, they look pretty huge). While we went there very, very hungry, the burger and chips alone didn't entirely fill us up, and maybe a dessert would have taken us to the finish line, but at Honest Burgers, it is just burgers as already noted, so that's your lot. Given the fact the cheeseburger costs just £8 for a top quality burger, I can't argue against value, but I think I would rather have paid £10 for it to be a little larger. But maybe I was just excessively hungry/greedy that day.

Of late, we have been Patty & Bun enthusiasts, so how does it compare against our favourite? I really enjoyed my meal at Honest Burgers and would snap a future one up in a heartbeat, but as much as I did enjoy it, my P&B allegiance remains intact. I don't know how long the queues and the wait gets for Honest Burgers at peak times, but I am guessing from what I saw this week, that the answer is extensive, so again, as much as I enjoyed it, would I queue an hour or more for it? Great burger then, great price, and definitely worth eating, especially if you can immediately grab a table, otherwise, you'll need to make up your own mind as to whether it's worth queuing for (and clearly many believe it is).  

Sometimes you book a restaurant days or weeks in advance (or years if you are eating at Dabbous), at other times, you just walk the streets and see what you find. Four doors down from Pitt Cue is Carnaby Burger Co, and as I passed by, I wondered if they considered it bad luck to be so close to Pitt Cue or good luck that Pitt Cue only holds around 20 people. And in the age of the celebrated burger and lauded chains, how would an independent that nobody blogs about compare. Lunch venue sorted then.

First off, the Carnaby Burger Co is much more than burgers (yes, I was surprised too). As well as starters (including calamari, wings, nachos and more), within the mains there's chicken fillet burgers, hot dogs, and a 'big char grill' offering a steak, steak and eggs, or BBQ pork ribs. They even have a vegetarian section and a salad section on the menu, though admittedly, I didn't look what was on either. On the burger front, there's 9 burger options and a choice of ciabatta or brioche buns. Faced with altogether too much choice and despite entering a restaurant that says 'burger' above the door, I perversely decided to order ribs. Two things steered me in this direction: how would they compare with those I had yesterday at Smollensky's (which were not special), and how would they compare with neighbouring Pitt Cue, a placed famed for its BBQ pork. 

If my gripe at Smollensky's had been that the ribs had been inadequately trimmed, here at Carnaby Burger Co, I could instantly see from the shape they had done a much better job in this respect so credit where credit is due. The result was that pretty much everything on the rack (ex the bones of course) was edible and when finished, the bones lay in a heap at the side of the plate stripped clean, devoid of extraneous and unwanted piggy debris. There's a little bit of heat in the rub to set a tingle to the lips while the meat itself was moist with the BBQ flavours within, not solely reliant on being smothered with sauce to give impact. Overall then, a pretty good job. Only two small issues arose, first, and slightly trivially, the serving wooden board was barely big enough to hold the contents and one you start having a go at the ribs, food tended to fall onto the table. Second, the glaze on the ribs had at the extremities dried out somewhat and gone hard. Fortunately, this only rendered the end rib on each side difficult to tackle so no big deal really. Most of the rack however was spot on.

This was actually a pretty good rack of ribs, so making Carnaby Burger Co a place I would potentially return to. Eating solo, I didn't get to see the burgers, and that was a shame, but the waitress did tell me that if I wanted a burger, medium rare wasn't a problem. Yay! 

Service was friendly, interested that all was okay, but not invasive, and with my ribs priced at £15.95, identical to Smollensky's, today's offering felt so much better. Okay, it's not Pitt Cue but you can get in here and if you can't get in to Pitt Cue, here is where I'm sure many end up: it may even buck their spirits. Finishing with an inexpensive chocolate mousse, I left the restaurant happy and pleasantly surprised.

If a chain of restaurants has managed to survive 25 years in the capital, you can reasonably assume that it's either a) very good, or b) past its sell by date; it's been about three years since our last visit to a Smollensky's (pre blog) and we wondered how it would now seem. The website meanwhile notes

Smollensky's is one of the great names in grill restaurants... [and] continues to operate with the same values that Smollensky's flagship restaurant... began with back in 1986...

1986 is a bit early even for us, but I do remember that visiting Smollensky's in the early nineties was still considered an exciting new thing to do for food and a night out. But back then, British food was really quite poor and an American based grill that cared about service and food could shake things up a little. Without doubt however, over those 20 years, food in the UK has been on an inexorable journey of improvement and whether you consider the competition to be Pitt Cue, Red Dog, Byron, Burger & Lobster, Goodman, Bodeans or even Bubbledogs, the formulas that worked in 1986 will need to be considerably updated if Smollensky's is to stand shoulder to shoulder with this new peer group. Sadly, for us today, it fell well short.

A starter of blackened shrimp with creole mayo and lemon wedge (yes, they advertise the lemon wedge on the menu) had no real impact leaving you to wonder if it contained any creole spices whatsoever. A crayfish and mango salad was nice enough, and pleasingly, the salad leaves were fresh and crisp, but a heavy hand on the Marie Rose sauce provided a challenge even for a sauce lover like me.

When the order for the burger was taken, we were asked 'how would you like it done?'. The right question, heaven, hope surges. But then when it was ordered medium rare, health and safety kicked in and we were told medium is as low as they go; hope plunges. The burger was better than expected (we now didn't expect much), but in playing the game 'if Goodman's burger is a 10, what is this on the naught to ten scale'; the answer was a four. Since there is a Goodman in Docklands just five minutes walk away, and a burger there costs £15, the question is actually important. A basic burger at Smollensky's costs £10.50 with £1.25 for each extra topping (including cheese) which means that this £13 burger is price comparable. The dip in quality versus a Goodman therefore is inadequately compensated by a lower price. Patty & Bun meanwhile price all their burgers below a tenner; enough said.

Our other main was the ribs. Among the problems here was that they had not been properly prepared. As About Barbecues & Grilling says

When cooking a rack of ribs, you want it limited to the actual bone section of the ribs. Well above the ribs is a section of meat filled with cartilage, little bones (the Chine bone) and connective tissue... you can also find it by looking for a long line of fat that runs lengthwise along the rack. 

As well as lacking basic BBQ flavours (it relied heavily on the sauce for that), and being dry at times, there was simply too much fat and connective tissue for this to be anything other than disappointing.

It left us wondering what the point of Smollensky's now was because it still feels to us like it hasn't moved on from its historical recipe for success. Maybe that recipe still works well with the mainstream, maybe there's enough office parties from the surrounding Canary Wharf area to provide bums on seats, or maybe Canary Wharf stacked only with restaurant chains is itself still years behind the rest of London's food scene. Whatever the answer, we personally would struggle to find a good reason to return.