Burger & Beyond, who are right up there in terms of the best burgers in London, are doubling down in 2022 with the launch of two new sites. The first one recently opened on Old Compton Street in Soho, so we swung by to see how the expansion has gone so far.
On the burger front, they’re as good as they’ve ever been. The bestselling Bacon Butter Burger was as juicy and messy as you could want, with their excellent dry-aged beef patty slathered in burnt butter mayo. One of the new creations for Soho, the XL Pork Belly Burger, with crispy pork belly, pickleback slaw and honey mustard sauce on top of a beef patty, was a real big boy but was stopped from being a total wipeout dish thanks to a good understanding of ratios and balance in the kitchen – the pork belly wasn’t sliced overly thickly, allowing it to retain its crunch and not dominate the other components of the burger, and the slaw had enough acidity to cut through the extra fattiness added by the pork.
On the beyond front, the fried chicken bites with honey mustard sauce were excellent, and almost made us regret not following them up with a chicken burger. Tater tots are already pretty great on their own but when blanketed in truffle mayo and cheese they’ve ascended to another level. If you asked an eight year old to describe their perfect plate of food, it wouldn’t be far off what Burger & Beyond have created with their Biscoff S’mores Brownie dessert – it’s a pan of chocolate brownie topped with marshmallow, melted Biscoff spread and crunchy biscuit nuggets, served hot, finished with a scoop of cereal milk ice cream. It was obscenely indulgent and we loved it.
Cocktails, beer and wine are all present and correct but Burger & Beyond also has a great softie selection if you’re off the sauce. Both the peach iced tea and house lemonade felt grown up and not overly sweet, which is often a trap people fall into when trying to compensate for the lack of alcohol.
As great as the food was, the service was on decidedly shakier ground. It was very early days for the restaurant on our visit but unfortunately you could tell from the front of house staff – hopefully it’s just teething problems as the kitchen really is doing some quality stuff and the second new site in Borough Yards is still to come so maybe there’ll be improvements there too.
10 Old Compton Street, London W1D 4TF
burgerandbeyond.co.uk