Meat Liquor London

This is the story of two lunches.

The first lunch we had was at a brand new Hamburger Restaurant called Meat Liquor. Hamburgers are a big thing in London. You get all kinds of burgers and at all kinds of price points. You have the very good New Zealand style modern burgers from Gourmet Burger Kitchen, the very plain and simple ones from Byrons, the very Frenchified and luxury ingredients burgers at Bar Boulud and the superior meat ones from Black & Blue where we ate a couple of nights ago. Two new burger places have opened. One is called Burger and Lobster which serves, you guessed it, only burgers and lobsters for 20 Pounds each. The other is called Meat Liquor. Both have a strict no reservation policy. You stand in line and get to enter when a table gets free. If you are part of the group and get to sit, you cannot block seats for the missing members of the group.

The line before opening

Line after we finished

The line on a Friday night 8 pm

Meat Liquor is where we were headed for lunch. Restaurant opens its doors at 12 noon. At 11.50 we were number 3 in the line. By 12 noon the line was about 15 persons long. By 12.15 the place was full. The restaurant is grunge personified. It’s dark with harsh images on the walls. Dim lighting, loud American country music and young un-uniformed staff. We ordered fried pickles, quite nice and two burgers accompanied by French Fries. No cutlery or crockery is provided. All food is served on trays and you get a large roll of tissue paper to wipe your fingers.

HRH the Queen ordered a Green Chilli Cheeseburger and I had something called the  Dead Hippie Burger which contains a double beef patty, binding sticky cheese and a secret sauce.  Both burgers were quite nice. The meat patty was very juicy and I quite liked the coarse ground meat. However I thought the burger lacked salt. All in all a nice meal in a cult restaurant, very cutting edge and very popular.

Fried Pickles

The Green Chilli Cheeseburger

Dead Hippie Burger

We were in the Soho/Chinatown area and it was getting to be lunchtime. So we popped into Four Season a Cantonese Chinese Restaurant on Gerrad Street in Chinatown for a quick lunch. Four Seasons is known for its roast meats.

HRH the Queen ordered Barbeque Pork and Roast Duck on Crispy Noodles, while I had my favourite, Crispy Pork in Noodle Soup. In a word, superb. The Roast Duck was especially good. The Crispy Pork in my soup had shattering crisp skin and was really well made. If only we could get food even half as good as this back home.

Crispy Pork Noodle Soup

Roast Duck & Barbequed Pork on Crispy Noodles