Places To Eat In London: Burger & Lobster, The City
I like dining in the Square Mile. On the weekends it is deserted. During the week, if you book a table for 1pm, by the time you’ve got your drinks your restaurant has practically emptied out when all the city workers go back to their offices. I’ve wanted to eat at Burger & Lobster for about two years, since back when there were the hottest pop up ticket in town down in Mayfair, so on Wednesday to escape from rain and midweek blues Kathryn and I headed to their City branch to indulge in some grilled lobster. Who said students ate eat badly?
For those of you not familiar with Burger & Lobster, the concept is simple. For £20 you either get a burger, a lobster (grilled or steamed and served with a garlic and parsley butter sauce) or a lobster roll. Everything is served with chips and a salad. The menu that you are presented with when you sit down is for the drinks. The usual suspects are on the back, but on the front there are a range of cocktails; aperitifs, digestifs and cocktails matched to your food choice. As it was only lunch time we both went for the lobster matched Abfab: Rose Wine with Peach Vodka and topped with iced redcurrants. Aside from being totally delicious, it really reminded me of Summers in France (where, let us be honest, I usually spend most of my time eating various shellfish and crustaceans, drinking rose and peach schnapps), but not in a way where it felt wrong to be drinking it on a rainy Winters morning in London. It was, also, perfectly matched to our lobster lunch.
Let us be honest, this is practically the only restaurant in London where I’d be content to wear a bib. Though, to be fair, I am a messy eater and I did need it! I must say that I was much slower attacking my lobster than Kathryn was, but I think I did a better job of wrestling the delicious meat from inside the shell, even chewing on the legs to free the flesh! Kathy described the whole undertaking as a version of the game ‘Operation’ at the lunch table. You can see the carnage we created. Luckily clean up towels were provided.
There is no dessert menu, your server will simply tell you the two options. Our choices were a white chocolate and vanilla cheesecake with fresh raspberries, raspberry coulis and a digestive biscuit topping (above) and milk and plain chocolate ice cream with brownie pieces, which Kathryn had. Both were delicious, but my cheesecake simply blew me away, the perfect balance of sweet, tart and fruity. They come in paper cups like this because, in a pretty low maintenance kitchen the chefs finish service pretty early, so this way people can still order dessert once the kitchen has closed.
Have you had a Burger & Lobster experience yet? I can’t believe I left it so long before finally checking it out, and I will be back to sample their lobster rolls. As well as this City branch they also have restaurants in Mayfair, Soho, Farringdon and in the upstairs of Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge.
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