Best Burger Goodman or Hawksmoor?

Hawksmoor

At the end of last year I was on Quora looking for recommendation of the best burger in London since it’s one the things Bikerboy loves and wanted to take him.  The two names coming up to the top of the list was Hawksmoor or Goodman.  There was also Haché and the Meatwagon.  The Meatwagon is what it says on the tin, a moving van providing what is regarded among foodies and bloggers the best burger in London.  We haven’t yet tried Haché.

Our first visit was to Hawksmoor in January on a very cold Sunday afternoon.  We didn’t have a table booked and ate in their bar area.  It’s a basement restaurant and as such basement restaurants should compensate for lack of daylight and street view and this one does.  You can see from the photo above of the dinning room and photos below of the bar area they have made the most of the space given.  It feels very spacious with high ceilings in the restaurant and even though in the bar area the ceilings are low there’s plenty of room to move around.

Our first impression of Hawksmoor was good, the staff are friendly, it’s not so noisy you can’t hear yourself speak and there’s a pleasant atmosphere all round.  We returned to Hawksmoor 2 months later taking the two oldest girls and oldest boyfriend, this time sitting in the main dinning area and again our experience with the staff was a good one.  Middle child is the allergy kid and on arrival I discussed with our waiter about what she could and couldn’t have.  Within a short time one of the supervisors was over to talk to me about alternatives for the burger bun since it contained egg.  They also provided Heinz ketchup instead of their homemade one because in theirs it contained Worcestershire sauce which has anchovies in it.  I felt we were looked after.  Our waiter forgot our drinks and something else but when you’re served with a smile and charm those things are easily forgotten.

Last weekend was our third visit with just the two of us to confirm who had the best burger and why.

Goodman

After having been to Hawksmoor twice we tried Goodman a couple of weeks ago one Saturday evening.  It’s a completely different restaurant in its layout to Hawksmoor, it’s on street level but it’s much smaller, feels cramp and the layout is not as well planned.  We sat near the back of the restaurant and the walk over to our table was a lesson on how to avoid knocking into a waiter carrying food platters from the basement.  I had the same experience later when visiting the toilets downstairs, every few steps I had to stop to let a waiter pass with food from downstairs, a bad layout.

Our waiter was an odd one, she had the smile painted on but there was no happy smiley eyes behind it.  When the order was wrong a couple of times such as giving us two glasses of wine and not one glass I ordered, instead of saying ok and removing it, she questioned if we had touched the wine of the second glass?  We thought that was very odd.  Was she going to pass on the glass of wine to another diner?  Or was she going to charge me in case I had a sip?  This is the problem when you have charmless unhappy waiters, any silly mistakes they make you remember the experience, where’s in happier circumstances you forget all about it and not only are you happy to pay the service, your overall experience of the visit is remembered as a good one.

Our evening up to this point was not as good as dinning at Hawksmoor, served by charmless, unhappy staff and cramp noisy can’t-hear-yourself place.  Even the barman did the unthinkable when he poured my kir the wrong way round…is there a right way?  Yes, you should put the cassis in first then wine.  I know this sounds trivial but there’s a reason, if you pour the wine first followed by the cassis it never mixes properly.  I’ve never seen an experience barman do it the wrong way…but he had a lovely friendly manner so I forgive.

Burger at Goodman

Ok so you can see by the time the burger arrived I was rather inimicable of the place and really did not want to like the burger more than at Hawksmoor because it would make things simpler.  I would not have to come back here again.  I could go back to my marmalade cocktail and Bikerboy to his cornflake milkshake at the place where staff engaged with you with complete smiley faces. I had also read in another blogger’s post that he preferred the Hawksmoor’s burger to the Goodman.   And here I was with all my pre-conceived ideas set in place when the burger arrive.  Dam and bum…we both agreed halfway through eating the burger, the Goodman’s burger was better…dam and bum!

I didn’t like the chip flavour and I think that was down to the variety of potato used, they were crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside as you would want but the flavour wasn’t great.  That still didn’t make up for the fact the burger was better here.  I was miffed by this, so much so I had to go back to Hawksmoor last weekend to confirm it before writing up the post.

Goodman & Hawksmoor Burger

The burger at Hawksmoor is a good one and we are not talking about the difference between a bad burger and a good burger.  We’re are talking differences of good nice burger and a better burger, the sort where if you’re only interesting in eating the burger you will return to the place regardless of everything else.  On the basis of the burger alone, Goodman is the place.

Hawksmoor Burger – Why does the Hawsksmoor burger come second best?

Some of it is to do with liking your burger cooked medium rare and liking the texture of a burger that way.

The biggest problem with having to cook the burger well done as they do at Hawksmoor is it leaves no margin for error as I discovered on the visit with the family. They add bone marrow to their burger and for this reason they are not allowed to cook it medium rare.

On that second visit mine and Bikerboy’s burger was over cooked, dry overcooked.  I was so hungry I didn’t complain just went ahead and ate it anyway.  I did bring it to the attention of the guy supervising our table with allergy kid, told him there was someone on the grill being too enthusiastic and ruining a good burger.  He did look into it and yes someone was cooking the burgers for too long.  My burger was taken off the bill but truly that was not why I mentioned it, I ate it I’m happy to pay for it.  I like the place, it’s a shame a cook is having a bad day and disrespecting the good cow sacrificed.  All cooks have a bad day.

If I go back to my very first time and first impression of eating the Hawksmoor burger when it was cooked well done but perfectly done, I was expecting this burger to be one of the best in London.  I have to say we both ate the burger and thought “nice”, but that was it, we were underwhelmed by it.   There was no wow’s or amazings or yes! must come back and eat this burger again next week.  It was a nice burger, that was all.  The bun was nice and the burger was nice.

I won’t mention the second visit and the over enthusiastic cook and forward to the third visit to Hawksmoor last weekend when I was still feeling distraught from discovering Goodman made a better burger and was hoping I remembered it wrong.

I really paid attention this time.  The bun at Hawksmoor was a tad too sweet, if you notice your bun is sweet it takes attention away from the meat.  The bun was also thicker and I noticed the bottom half which is the thicker half anyway was a tad dry, left me wondering if the bun was fresh because it had the texture of slight stale bread.  I think the combination of dry and thick and tad sweet just didn’t help the burger at all.

We had one portion of triple cooked chips which were over-salted, on previous visits they weren’t, over-salted chips makes them inedible for me and I’m someone who likes well seasoned food.  My portion of chips cooked in dripping were good.

Bikerboy had the cheeseburger.

The Bone Marrow – Is It Worth It?

I tried a bit of my burger without anything to see how much this meat benefits from the bone marrow that supposedly is worth sacrificing a medium rare burger for.  I concluded it wasn’t worth the denial of medium rare.

If the meat had more meatiness, more umami, a taste I couldn’t quite put my finger on it I would go, ok, fair enough, but I couldn’t taste anything that special.  I’ve had better burgers eleswhere and I make burgers that have a meatier taste than this by choosing good beef.  I didn’t prefer the texture of this burger to Goodman’s either, when a burger is cooked to well done the slight coarse texture makes it taste harder than a finer texture in your mouth.

Goodman’s Burger on the Left.                            Hawksmoor’s Burger on the Right.

Goodman’s Burger

When you have a burger cooked medium rare you can taste the texture of a rare steak but only in mince form.   The taste between that underdone bit of meat comes through in the overall taste of the burger. If you hate your burger medium rare and have them well done then obviously none of this applies.

Being a big carnivore I like my burger tasting of meat and Goodman had that nailed down better than Hawksmoor.

Below Hawksmoor popular cornflake milkshake which Bikerboy can’t get enough of, and my drink of choice when there, marmalade cocktail.

Below right was the lobster I had to start at Goodman, served cold as a salad, overcooked so it had a chewy texture but the flavour was good.  Below left the lobster at Hawksmoor served hot, perfectly cooked but lacked lobster flavour.

Goodman v. Hawksmoor

I would go back to Hawksmoor any time but not likely for the burger.  I’ve seen them serve huge plates of roast beef & Yorkshire puddings on Sundays to other dinners which look great and would like to try that or their steaks.

If I was in the area I would go back to the Goodman for the burger but maybe next time I would have it at the bar because the barman had a genuine smile on with effortless charm…I would just have to explain to him how I like my kir.