Gourmet Burger Kitchen (Lounged)

[citizenED]

Oh, and Daniel Bedingfield was in there too.

[MitchK]

Has this guy got nothing better to do?

[capt_birdseye]

Bedingfield should lay off the burgers. He's a big lad already.

[SteveT]

The bugs are surface lying so a steak is healthily cooked because you sizzle the outside. With mince the bugs are stirred into the burger, hence the need to cook through and through to kill the internal bugs.

I hope you all eat healthily from this day my friends!

[mockney piers]

Libra, great advice on the chilli, the bonnet's cherry tomato flavour would work very well with a burger. I should warn you that having given sean advice on chillis you may now want to advise his granny on yolk and albumen removal techniques involving sucking ;)

[SeanMacGabhann]

lol!! well, I didn't want to say..... and it was advice given with the very best intentions

[macroban]

The financial status of the firm is more interesting than how to cook burgers.

> Over the past year chief exec Paul Campbell has sold ?3m worth of shares (his remaining stake is now valued at ?113k), while chairman David Page has off-loaded ?2.6m of his stake (current holding: ?1.1m), and finance boss Nick Wong is ?35,000 richer after cashing in a few of his chips (current holding: ?13k).

[Ant]

GBK - have been once. It was nice enough but I'm definitely not in a rush to go back.

Pros: excellent milkshake.

Cons: stupid ordering system, stupidly huge portions, high prices.

The burgers were fairly nice but not all that, and just too big to eat comfortably. Yet because they cost so much you feel compelled to struggle on and eat every last bite. Meh.

[templeton]

I agree they are too big to eat comfortably. They need to watch that Heston Blumenthal show where his 'perfect burger' was 2.5inches deep (i think) as this allowed you to get an even mouthful everytime.

[Caron]

The burgers in the Herne are very nice although about ?8.50

[barrymarshall]

citizenED Wrote:

When I get to a foodie thread

> I sometimes I feel I've stumbled into the pages of

> the Egon Ronay Aficionados forum! Jeez you guys,

> you need to stay in more.

Indeed, citizen -

the best I can afford in ED these days is a chicken shish from Kebab and Wine. V good tho!

[cchan]

I have eaten a couple of times at Liquorish recently (admittedly not the burger) and the food was fantastic - I went there for a family meal at the weekend and everyone loved the food (including a great fillet steak) and also for dinner in the week. I think that they have a new chef on board, so I suggest that its worth a try.

[lozzyloz]

Nice first post

[SeanMacGabhann]

To be honest i have re kindled my affection for liquorish in recent weeks. . . Ate there at the weekend also and standards are definitely up again

[luddite]

BURGERS ARE FINE AS RARE AS RARE YES STEAK CAN BE EATEN RAW WITH NO RISKS ..IF FRESH ? gbk WAS STARTED BY TWO KIWIS THEN THEN SOLD TO A GROUP CALLED 'THE REAL GREEK 'I SUSPECT THATS WHEN THINGS WENT AWRY . sorry my caps locked :} ive been a couple of times its been fine friendly service the paying ordering thing is tedious i admit , its to stop people fiddling the money side of things and for no other reason . why not have a food adventure have a starter in one place get the bill a main in another and a pud some where else ? like the fab brownies at the gowlett gooey chocolate and good vanilla ice cream ...........mind you it ? 4 for you folk who think food is too expensive in ed and its environs ...

[dc]

That's incorrect. A rare steak will reach a high enough temperature on the outside to kill any pathogenic bacteria. If you have contaminated meat that is minced or ground you can end up with those bacteria inside the meat. Leave the burger to stand for a while and mmm lovely.

From McGee on Food & Cooking (a great book btw):

"...meats inevitably harbor bacteria, and it takes temperatures of 70 degrees Celsius or higher to guarantee the rapid destruction of the bacteria that can cause human disease - temperatures at which meat is well-done and has lost much of its moisture. So is eating juicy, pink-red meat risky? Not if the cut is an intact piece of healthy muscle tissue, a steak or chop, and its surface has been thoroughly cooked: bacteria are on the meat surfaces, not inside. Ground meats are riskier because the contaminated meat surface is broken into small fragments and spread throughout the mass."

McGee recommends blanching meat (30-60 secs) in boiling water to kill any bacteria on the surface. Remove, pat dry and "grind in a scrupulously clean meat grinder. The blanching kills surface bacteria while overcooking only the first 1-2mm, which grinding then disperses invisibly throughout the rest of the meat".

The alternative is to prepare raw meat dishes (tartare, carpaccio etc) only at the last minute and with cuts where the surface has been carefully trimmed.

....which might explain why centrally prepared burgers are cooked in the way they are.

[dave]

I'm not a scientist, but I believe the theory with rare beef in steak form is that the bacteria which might cause food poisoning tend to live on the outside of the meat - you sear the outside and the heat kills those bacteria, making it safe to eat.

With burgers, and particularly where they have been freshly prepared (and presuming the mince was minced some time before), just cooking the outside won't be enough. Since the bacteria can be anywhere in the patty you need to raise the temperature right through in order to kill them and make the food safe.

About 8 years ago I ordered a burger medium rare and promptly came down with some pretty bad food poisoning - have not done so since. Of course, food hygiene plays a part and all you are doing is mitigating the risk - you could still get some nasty after-effects from a well-cooked burger depending on what had happened between farm and plate. And you might get away with a rare one. I just choose not to take that risk any more.

[dc]

Ahem. I think that's what I said in the post above yours dave. I just said it with more words.

[DirtyBox]

I would have thought that the refusal to cook the burger rare is more down to the employment of a "chef" who doesn't know what he/she is doing. They probably just slap the burger on the grill for as long as the timer says then turn it over for the same amount of time, thus every burger is cooked the same and the "chef" doesn't have to have a brain (and the owners don't have to pay for a skilled chef).

[Administrator]

Moving this to the Lounge as it's now a discussion about burger cooking

[Alex K]

-- moved topic --

[AnotherPaul]

GBK chips are mdf-like, the atmosphere not up to much and the order at the counter idea's both genius (for profit) and tedious (for customers). For taste I'm with Mockney, Hach? in Camden is well worth a visit if you're already in the area.

But what really gets to me is the copy-cat chains. It seems ugly brown graphics have become the uniform of middle class burger chains GBKand Hamburger Unionare the two I can remember, started blocking them out after that.

Oh, and there's a Burger place just off Carnaby street which makes the complaints about GBK look like compliments.

[Domitianus]

Amelie Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Why doesn't GBK just trot across the road and ask

> William Rose to make their burgers for them? This

> would encourage local trade and would enable them

> to inspect the preparation of the burgers whenever

> they wanted.

And it would possibly put the burger prices up as well???? I mean this organic melarkey............

[dave]

Bumping this old (non-ED) thread - I quite liked Hamburger Union (out of the yuppy burger places it always seemed the best/tastiest). Until a few weeks ago when I went to one of the ones near Charing Cross - and discovered that it's now a pale imitation of its former self. Expanded menu (containing some of the old things) but a dramatic dip in the quality of ingredients and preparation of the food (and speed of the service). Looked pretty much the same, but didn't taste anywhere near as fresh/good.

And why might this be? Well, possibly it's not entirely unrelated to the fact that the original founders/owners have sold out to the Angus Steak House Group...

Beware - Hamburger Union (apart from the branch in Hampstead which was retained during the sale) is not what it used to be...

[cate]

Sorry to hear the info about Hamburger Union. I tried the one in Tottenham Ct. Rd last year and really enjoyed it.