t11 1 1111111 111 SOME JOURNALISTS risk shrapnel and exploding bombs in the
course of duty, so I shouldn't really complain about the faintest danger of a little BSE. Still, I won- der whether this is the wisest time to investigate the hamburger. It's not beef so much I worry about as meat that doesn't look like any recognisable bit of animal, those scraps from the abattoir floor swept up and formed into pies and patties for our delectation.
What puts me off almost more is a report I read recently which revealed that the waste from all these fast-food joints is producing so much fat that all our drains are becoming clogged. After this, I went to eat my first burger through gritted teeth.
No one could really say that a McDon- ald's burger is a model of the genre, and yet the big chains are where people eat most. And children love this muck, which means that if your sole interest in the hamburger joint is to choose somewhere to take your children or grandchildren, then you may as well not look for anything more raffinato. When I was a child, the Wimpy Bar was our McDonald's, and perfectly vile it was, too. Formica-clad rooms breathed out a hostile and acrid mixture of oniony sweat, fat and cigarette smoke, and the burgers were little more than this alienating aroma made charred flesh. The Wimpy Bars that remain are rather different now, but eat- ing one of their burgers is still, for me, a joyless activity. The Wendy Burger came over here in the 1980s, and was intended to be the coming thing: better than McDonald's and, it was hinted, classier. Then some- thing happened, and most of their restau- rants, as they style themselves, faded into thin air. Either a new company has taken them over, or there has been some turn in their financial fortunes, because suddenly there is an upsurge of Wendy Burger Bars, and more are. to open in the coming months. The deal about the Wendy Bar is that you can fiddle about ordering the specific relish you want or don't want on your burger, in much the same way as you would in a more upmarket joint. And the burgers aren't bad.
McDonald's is the greatest mystery. When I went to Alastair Little's lecture at the Savoy, in which he lambasted the lower rung of English fast-food chains, I was astonished to hear him praise McDonald's for at least being 'a good product'. I find McDonald's burgers truly inedible. They're too salty, too card- boardy, utterly rebarbative. By far the best of these types of place is Burger King, which is my occasional weakness. The Whopper, while somewhat undignified to order, has a certain junky charm, although you still do have to eat fast and without reflection, so that thought of those fat- clogged drains doesn't have time to intrude. The chips, though, are absolutely dreadful: they taste raw and greasy at the same time, as if they've been fried in a microwave.
Maxwell's is probably the next best stop for a proper hamburger. They have branches in London and Oxford, and do this sort of thing dutifully if without much inspiration. There are a lot of relishes which are flamboyantly offered, and the meat is fine enough, though I suspect the hamburgers have been formed into patties for a long time before they are cooked: the lack of taste and the nubbly dryness.. suggest as much. But still, they are not bad burgers, merely competent ones.
Fatboys in Maiden Lane (there is anoth- er one in Bishopsgate and one in Covent Garden) has hamburgers rather better than the usual. The place itself is actually a diner transplanted over here from America, and somehow, even inside, an agreeably white-trash atmosphere per- vades. The chips aren't up to much — for some reason they are served in a paper cup, just to enhance sogginess — and the puddings are disgraceful (the cylindrical pies at McDonald's are better), but the burgers have something going for them. I like the bacon-and-BBQ sauce burger. Most barbecue sauces are too sugary and vinegary, but not this one, although, after eating it, I did look like a surgeon who's just performed a major and bloody operation.
My favourite burger joint in London (and I can't think why they don't open any units, as they call them, outside it) is Ed's Easy Diner. The larky American retro decor is too contrived even to irritate — it goes beyond that — and at least it all works.
It serves a function. The hamburgers are great, as are the hot dogs, and the chips are superb. I know they're bought in, as indeed they are in more and more proper restaurants, but naturally they are fried on the premises, and they come hot with melt- ing plasticky cheese or gravy or alone. There are branches of Ed's in Hampstead, Chelsea and Soho — so we are, as you see, at the chichi end of the fast-food market.
Nigella Lawson
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