Restaurant reviews by Justin Tanner, our retired food critic, who would have watched more of the women’s Euros if the kits had been skimpier.
NOBODY knows their burgers like us Brits. They’re a homegrown national institution, like pizzas and curry. Except these days everyone feels the need to reinvent the f**king wheel.
Take the latest culinary abomination to wash up on our shores, the ‘smash burger’. I can only think they got the name because you’d need to be smashed off your tits to consider eating one, haha. I should be a comedy writer.
Anyway, I’m not one to pre-judge, so when a smash burger place opened in town, I mentioned I was a highly respected food critic, and promptly got offered a meal on the house. They don’t need to know I retired in 2007.
How smash burgers really got their name soon becomes clear. The meat is ‘smashed’ into patties thinner than a bloody beer mat. If I wanted burgers thinner than an anorexic sparrow I’d order a sodding Big Mac. I order two, and I’m still expecting to have to get chips on the way home.
The standard ‘house’ burger comes with cheese, ketchup and unnecessary shit like pickles and bits of salad, which I studiously pick off. As expected, it’s gone in three mouthfuls. No wonder the youth of today are all such pasty, undernourished little shits if this is the rubbish they live on.
My second one, the BBQ Bacon, isn’t much of an improvement. A couple of rashers of bacon plus an onion ring, which admittedly, is an upgrade on the raw rubbish served with its predecessor. And BBQ sauce, whatever the bollocks that’s made from. Give me Heinz tomato ketchup all day long, not this trendy Americanised slop.
But it’s the side orders that really bring down the tone. Loaded fries, which are basically skinny little chips covered in melted cheese. How in the name of God’s bollocks are you meant to eat those? You can’t pick them up without scorching your fingers on molten cheese, and everyone knows that only poofs eat burgers with a knife and fork.
Then honey chicken bites. Who the hell wants chicken nuggets that taste of honey? The world’s gone mad. Besides woke and feminism, obviously. But, worst of all, sweet potato fries. Sweet bloody potatoes. It’s against nature, like Quorn sausages.
There’s the now-obligatory ‘plant-based’ bollocks to cater for the lefties, and a separate children’s menu. Although serving your kids this is child abuse in my book, and I don’t think I need to explain my views on nonces.
Nonetheless, I unenthusiastically eat my free fill and promise a glowing review in due course. As in: when hell freezes over, Kylie Minogue asks me on a date, and England win the World Cup.
Although smash burgers did live up to their name in a way, because I nipped into Spoons to fill up with a proper burger and ended up having eight pints.
