Brewdog Manchester and Honest Burger 'Brew Burger'

As a major fan of both Brewdog beers and Honest burgers, I was pretty excited to read that they'd been working together on developing a burger for the launch of the Bourbon Baby beer that would be available in Manchester for ONE NIGHT ONLY and so drew a big burger on the calendar at home to make sure I wouldn't forget when the date rolled around.

Whilst trying to translate the list of ingredients, it became clear I was looking at a bbq bacon cheese burger which would incorporate the following:

Bacon that had been candied using 5am Saint (an existing Brewdog red ale)
Comte Cheese
Onions in beef dripping and Punk IPA (Brewdog's flagship IPA)
BBQ sauce made with one of their Paradox beers
Pickled Cucumber
All on top of the classic Honest 150g aged beef patty and sandwiched within their usual toasted bun

The sauces were supposedly so boozy that the burger actually had an ABV, unfortunately I forgot to take my kit to test this so i'll have to take the claim at face value.

I arrived a bit early meaning I was ready and waiting like a horrendous over-zealous fan (i'm ashamed) at 6pm to get an order in as soon as they went on sale.

I was overjoyed (really) to see the burger arrived accompanied by Honest's triple cooked hand cut chips with rosemary salt, none of this frozen fries nonsense. I'd been fiending for these for months and they absolutely didn't disappoint.

I dived head-first into the burger and it all held together admirably but while very enjoyable to my taste buds the sheer range of ingredients and flavours was very difficult to separate when mushed together inside my chops. The good news was that the signature Honest meat wasn't completely overwhelmed and shone through, helped by the meat being cooked perfectly pink in the middle.

I could've gone at it with a knife and fork in an attempt to give you a break down of how well thought out the list of ingredients was and how they all worked together perfectly to result in the burger to end all burgers (bringing on burgergeddon) but that's kind of missing the point.

The Bourbon Baby beer which came with the burger was a great accompaniment. Typically Brewdog beers aren't known for a subtle flavour and this was definitely a nice surprise with a mild and sweet taste of it's own. My taste buds were hammered by the burger so I won't even attempt to describe notes for you i'm afraid. I was interested to read in the the recent issue of Hop-Propaganda (kills me it's not just called HOPAGANDA), the in-house Brewdog magazine that it's been developed as an "experiment in how a lower ABV session ale will develop in cask" and understanding fully what they were aiming for they definitely nailed it.

In the spirit of experimentation and trying something a bit different it was a great little burger and I have a lot of respect for the ideas that went into it all. A collaboration that was certainly a lot of fun and something that i'm definitely pleased to have experienced.
 

Lucha Libre - Manchester

If you've been to our capital in the past few years you're bound to have heard of Wahaca, a chain that specialises in reasonably priced Wagamama quality (take that as you will) Mexican inspired food and has a menu featuring a range of small plates to share as well as larger dishes of Burrito, Tacos, salads and other standard Mexican fare. It was setup by the winner of the first post-Grossman MasterChef and is a resounding success - at the time it was a fresh concept done to a high standard, with a broad imaginative menu and great value for money.

You’ve probably worked out where I’m going with this but Lucha Libre is essentially a reasonably well done carbon copy of this format, I can picture lots of ‘research’ having taken place on the Wahaca website and meetings on the Virgin pendolino up and down the country. It's all fairly blatant, even the menu is set out very similarly. I have mixed feelings around this type of thing but if Wahaca aren't looking to make the move up here any time soon then shame on them and fair play to Lucha for filling a gap that clearly exists. 

I ducked my head in on a Saturday night around 7pm and it was absolutely heaving, with catchy pop indie tunes blaring over the stereo, people 2-3 deep at the bar and with just a 20 minute wait for a table I decided to go for it and get it ticked off the ever growing list. Things got off to a great start with the cocktails - including the comically named Negringo for a starter then on through the Gecko, Classic Margarita and Espresso Jalico. They were all nicely boozy, all very well done classics or imaginative enough twists to be interesting.

Having a list of places to visit as long as my arm I’m often working on the principle that I may as well try and order anything on the menu that sounds interesting as unless somewhere is particularly impressive I may not be heading back for some time and this lead to me going a bit too far here. Having said that, when I asked if we’d ordered too much, the waiter did suggest that we may need a few more sides – I enjoy a challenge as much as the next man but this was a ridiculous amount of food once it all arrived.

Spicy poppers – breaded jalapenos, stuffed with cream cream. I expected the peppers to be fairly bland but they had a decent kick, biting straight into one was a double whammy of melted cheese hotter than the sun with the spicy pepper. Coating was a bit flavourless.

Chilaquiles – tortilla chips smothered in mild salsa roja, melted cheese served with fresh coriander, jalapenos, fried eggs and I had also added chicken as an extra. It all worked together really well, it was good as a sharing plate to pick at during the meal - chicken was a tad dry and some of the tortillas had gone a bit soggy under the weight and juices of all of the toppings so it was inedible without help from a spoon, but overall pretty decent. 

Braised short rib tacos with jalapenos, yogurt slaw and spring onion - these were the special taco of the day and were lovely and light, there'd clearly been special attention paid to these - nice to see a chef grabbing the opportunity to show off some creative flair.

Baja fish burrito – beer battered fish, sweet potato fries, pickled onions, red cabbage and habanero tartar sauce all tightly wrapped. It was just like a stodgy overly-heavy burrito - the habanero tartar sauce was incredible, verging on eye-watering heat but wasn't enough to break up the too similar carby flavours in the rest of the dish.

Rib enchilada – slow cooked bbq rib meat in flour tortillas smothered in cascabel chilli sauce, melted cheese and sour cream. This was only spoilt by the tomato sauce which was very bland, considering the kick to the habanero and jalapeno poppers in the other dishes it seemed a shame not to bring a bit more life to them and expect me to add my own hot sauce. The meat was lathered in so much sauce and cheese that it was lovely and juicy but by now I was stuffed so just picked the meat out and polished that off.

Service was excellent, we were dealt with very quickly and our waiter was chatty, very attentive and kept the water and drinks flowing without having to constantly flag him down. Would I go again? Food was all of a good standard for this type of mini-chain, it just all got a bit heavy after a while - i'd order differently next time and have more of the small tacos. Nothing extra special to go out of your way for but if you have an itch for some Mexican food, fancy somewhere different for cocktails to start a night out or if you’re in the area for a cheap film at the AMC it’s a decent option.

Almost Famous Great Northern - Manchester

I absolutely love a good burger and having lived in London until last year I got fully caught up in the burger trend that was relentless over the past 3-4 years.

I cut my teeth on a Dead Hippie during the MeatEasy days above Goldsmiths Tavern in New Cross and went on to enjoy a burger odyssey taking in more joints than I can even remember, among the highlights were Burger and Lobster, Patty and Bun, Lucky Chip, Meatliquor, Mother Flipper, Honest, Meatmission, Bleeker Street Burger, Admiral Codrington, Byron, Meatmarket, Hawksmoor....it makes my arteries quake just seeing those listed out.

The good news up there is that Manchester has two fantastic burger restaurants in Solita and Almost Famous that sit comfortably alongside the company mentioned above. The even better news is that they are both doing their own thing - Solita has more of a mature feel to the food and surroundings and AF is just all about a cracking dirty burger with over the top sauces, grease and fat (in the best way). I've been to both several times now and thought it was time to get some words down about Almost Famous.

Good flavoured meat is essential and AF absolutely nail this - I have read that the meat itself comes from WH Frosts who supply a lot of the better restaurants in Manchester. I enjoy the fact that the meat has it's own distinct flavour, whether this is down to the cooking or mix to the meat it's exceptional in this regard.

Range wise they cover the classics well, the menu leads with their versions of a classic burger, a cheeseburger and onto the bacon cheeseburger before really letting loose with their personality and taking us into into cheeseburgers with chilli beef, triple tower burgers and burgers with a layer of rare steak as filling amongst others. Some of these go a little too far and verge on distracting from what is an excellent burger but I appreciate in these 'man vs food' times that people expect more and more excess from their burgers.

On this occasion we ate the following:

Butter and Bleu - Double cheeseburger with a layer of flat iron steak, there was supposed to be chorizo but this was minimal and then a ton of blue cheese sauce. I had a quick go on the sauce and it was cracking, nice and thick like proper cheese had been melted down not just watered down sauce.
Awesome Frickin Chicken - the fried chicken burger, didn't try this one but my friend was extremely complimentary.
Pulled Pork Roll - having had the burgers a few times I thought i'd try the pulled pork sandwich which was sufficiently stuffed with pulled pork with lashings of various sauces to keep it nice and juicy.
Crack Wings with suicide sauce - these were disappointing, not much meat on them and a weird mix of hot sauce but slightly cold wings. A couple of them were left behind which says a lot considering they are served in 6's.
Bacon Bacon Fries - my favourite side on the menu, great fries with bacon mayonnaise and bacon crumbles on top. Works an absolute treat.

Almost Famous re-opened late last year in this large new premises in the Great Northern complex after their last place burnt down. I know this is a massive step up in scale from the old place and my only real complaint I suspect is tied to this. On both visits to the GN restaurant the food was served slightly cold, as if it'd been sat under the pass a couple of minutes too long. As it all tends to get demolished pretty quickly this wasn't a huge issue but having the burgers served up piping hot would've been the icing on the cake and I suspect this is just down to a learning curve of a much larger kitchen and extremely successful and busy restaurant.

The only other thing to mention is the mix of art is bizarre, the constant references to 'winning' and a 30 second internet meme over three years ago is a truly bizarre design choice and results in the decor feeling very dated despite being brand new. I know this is a nod to the original AF but surely a new building would've given them the chance to breakaway from such a shit and tired theme.

Aside from that it was a spot on lunch, the service was polite and efficient we were seated very quickly and sufficiently away from other tables to have a bit of space to ourselves. Despite the minor point above and the wings the food was all good and great value for money - burger, sides and drinks were approx £15 each. Definitely recommended.