In my mind, the French are incapable of a good burger. They are magnificent custodians of butter and hauteur, the high priests of sauce and ceremony. The burger is beneath the French. It all stems from a burger I had in Lyon that ranks as one of the worst I have ever had. They had less cooked it, more rehabilitated it; treated it like a piece of prime cut, a tidied, self-conscious puck of animal that had been charred so that the outside was all maillard reaction and the inside all raw meat. It was bleeding directly on to the overly sweet brioche. I had one bite and the shits the following day, the waiter aloof and sneering at my full plate, in a way they often do. The French invented food. They always know better.
A burger doesn’t need refinement. A burger should drip; it should threaten the integrity of your cuffs; it should taste of smoke and mild irresponsibility. It isn’t that the French lack skill; it’s that they distrust the burger’s essential vulgarity. Except the times are a changing, as Timmy Chamolet wrote and Dylan covered, with Junk and Dumbo leading the charge of Parisian smashed burgers. On a day where I’d eaten little more than vinegar, kefir, and chocolate in the name of work, I passed Junk in Soho and decided to give it a go. They’ve made the journey over the channel, hopefully through the tunnel and not the hostile hello of Dover. It had to be decent, surely?!
It’s not. Sure the hostile service and the decision to make one side of the table a comfortable bench and the other a pile inducing metal plate stool don’t help, but the burger is awful. The meat is devoid of flavour, flattened by enthusiasm and the will to create an Instagram moment so that the patty flops out of the side like a gormless dog’s tongue. The bun is too sweet, the burger sauce overflowing, more suitable for a bowl than the cheap cardboard box. The pickles are good, the cheese suitably shit and in good quantity, but this is a poor burger. You could stand outside on Old Compton street, throw a dart in any direction, and hit a burger better than this.
I get a side of chicken nuggets that have been zhuzhed-up in a way they never should. Dry chunks of chicken breast in a panko crumb that require imagination and plenty of dip to make semi-interesting. It’s very depressing, though at £18 for the meal at least affordable. Apparently Dumbo is much better. I have my doubts.
4/10
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