Burgers

Five Guys is a US burger restaurant (chain) that opened its first restaurant (if you can call it that) in London in Covent Garden last summer. Even Obama apparently loves Five Guys burgers, so if the burgers are good enough for a US president, I decided to make my way down to Covent Garden and try Five Guys. Five Guys opened its first store in 1986 (Five Guys is almost as old as me!) in Arlington, Washington. Then they rapidly expanded over the years and now there are over 1000 locations (they do franchise stores) in 47 states in the US, 6 Canadian provinces and now in UK (they have managed to open 7 stores in the UK since opening the first one last summer in Covent Garden).

I had once had a takeaway from Patty & Bun that my boyfriend brought back home with him, and I did not really find the burger or the fries that amazing, so for a long time I did not understand what the hype about Patty & Bun was. After many times walking past this place and seeing crazy queues outside, I decided I had to go once more to see whether I had been right in my critical opinion about this place.

Patty & Bun started as a pop up but now has a permanent place in Marylebone, close to Bond Street tube station. They apparently use the best ingredients you can get, and try to use British ingredients whenever possible.

Jamie Oliver is a very successful entrepreneur that has made a lot of money through his books and various restaurants and his latest venture is equally smart, a diner on Shaftsbury Avenue. Everyone in London these days is crazy for comfort food, burgers, pizzas, fried chicken, the type of food you should not eat, but somehow we think that if it is served in a nice restaurant and is more expensive than McDonalds and uses better meat, it is ok for us. Jamie’s latest restaurant appeals to people that love this sort of food and the menu features burgers, chicken, meatballs, tacos and ribs. Also he has labeled his new restaurant a “pop up” despite the fact that it will be here for 3 years, and my fiend Katrina was shocked when she found out about this and said that she would not have come if she knew it was going to be here for such a long time.

I went to Honest Burgers by coincidence. Looking rough and gangster like and trying to blend in, I headed to Brixton as I wanted to go to a new Southern fried chicken and beer place called Wishbone in the Brixton Market, but when I got there and walked around a few times (and got some people shouting at me “hey sexy” clearly an example that my dressing down and trying to blend in was not working) and could not find the place, I googled it once again and realised it was not yet open. So I had to come up with another plan of where to go for food on a Friday evening. I could have gone back to central London and given up on the whole Brixton thing, but on my printed out map it actually had tagged a few restaurants (google maps thankfully does it these days) and one of the places was “Honest Burgers”, and I had heard and read a lot about this place, so I was keen to try it.

My brother was taking a few of us clubbing to the club Piens in Riga and after our night out the boys were feeling a bit hungry so my brother suggested we all go to DeliSnack for some mid night food, as DeliSnack is located right next to the club (there are now more locations of DeliSnack, including one in the old town of Riga, and one in Liepaja, another city in Latvia). The Riga branch was very casual and was half full with people like us enjoying a meal after clubbing.