Dover Street Counter, Mayfair

First of all, apologies - to Dover Street Counter and readers of this blog alike - for the atrocious state of the photos in this post. What's strange is that I don't remember the lighting in the room being particularly subdued - each generously spaced table had a decent spotlight on it, and I could read the menu clearly enough, but for whatever reason they've all turned out looking like they were served at the bottom of the sea. Don't get me wrong, it's not like regular readers will expect world-class food photography, but they deserve better than this. Even in the one photo taken under more normal lighting conditions, of the front window signage, I've managed to capture an overflowing bin in the reflection.

So maybe the lighting might be more camera-friendly in the main long bar area, but I was actually pretty glad we ended up on our own table and not sat cheek-to-jowl with fellow punters. Sometimes I like eating at a bar but it has to come with the correct amount of personal space - if I feel in danger of being poked in the ribs when the person next to me cuts up their steak, that's not fun. Far better to have a bit of space to stretch out and relax to enjoy my ice-cold martini - no nicer way of starting a Saturday lunchtime - and a bowl of nicely seasoned homemade potato chips with a refreshing sour cream spritzed with lime juice.

Disco fries - chips with mayo and chilli and a few other toppings - veered dangerously close to the kind of thing you can order in your local 'Spoons, but were just about lifted above this level by virtue of the chips themselves being of elegant shape and perfectly crisp and greaseless.

Summer rolls - a token Vietnamese dish on an otherwise largely Italian-American menu - could in lesser hands have been a bit of a disaster, but they actually turned out very nicely. The peanut sauce was thick and salty and satisfying and the rolls themselves came with a fantastic crunch of supremely fresh coriander. Obviously they cost half the price (and are just as good) at my local Vietnamese place but this is Mayfair not Lavender Hill.

Snacks out of the way we got stuck into our mains, in my case a huge French Dip sandwich. A delicate crunchy baguette loaded with strips of nicely rare roast beef, topped with rich ragu and bound - a very clever move - with funky Taleggio cheese, it was a very satisfying Italian-American fusion affair, a real treat to eat. The accompanying gravy "dip" was perhaps a little thin and underpowered, but still just about worked - fortunately the sandwich itself was around to do most of the heavy-lifting taste-wise. And at £19, in Mayfair, for all that beef and cheese, it was something of a bargain.

I didn't try the famous Dover Street Counter cheeseburger but was told it was "very good" - it certainly looked the part, with its nice low profile for easy eating, and I could easily detect the aroma of properly charred beef.

A side of un-Discofied fries - which I did steal some of - showed that fries this good don't need messing about with; they stayed crunchy right to the bottom of the cup. Broccoli had been aggressively grilled so had a good amount of crunchy charred bits, but was otherwise fairly unremarkable. Maybe I'm just not a huge fan of broccoli but I can see why it needed to be on the menu to counteract all the cheese and meat elsewhere.

Desserts, despite being fortified by a glass of Vecchia Romagna, ended up being a bit disappointing. I've often noticed a tendency for kitchens to focus all their energies on the savoury courses and run out of interest and imagination when it comes to pudding. It occasionally also happens the other way round, when a place has a great pastry section and the mains are a bit lifeless, but this is more unusual. The Dover Street Counter apple pie may have been a cheeky tribute to the McDonald's version but needs to be a lot nicer - and prettier - to justify being five times the price, and the chocolate choux - incredible for something containing chocolate, cream and pastry - somehow conspired to be bland and boring. Cheesecake was pretty decent though, so there is that.

It's easy to see why Dover Street Counter is popular - it pulls off the same trick that Bob Bob Ricard are so good at, serving friendly, familiar comfort food done (mostly) well, in glamorous Mayfair surroundings and doesn't charge the earth for the privilege. This, of course, is to be admired. And despite my grumbling about desserts and a very slightly slow service (wine glasses left empty for long periods with the bottle squirrelled away somewhere out of sight) I can probably recommend the place, even with the caveat that, of course, Bob Bob Ricard do it better. And although we all left happy enough (and £79pp lighter, not completely unreasonably), I think if I wanted this kind of thing again I'd most likely end up there. I think they have better lighting, too.

7/10

Bite Me Burgers, Holborn

Cha Chaan Teng is a huge, ugly basement restaurant off huge, ugly Kingsway in Covent Garden, which - as far as I can tell - has remained relatively unbothered by paying customers since it opened in September last year. I didn't like it much then, and a quick glance at their menu today reveals hardly enough to have changed to make me think it would be worth another try now, and yet I found myself venturing down that garish staircase once again thanks to a residency (sorry "pop-up") by Bite Me burgers, who have set up shop in Cha Chaan Teng's small kitchen (yes, CCT had two kitchens; we don't know why).

Bite Me are from Australia, joining a list of restaurants that have made the jump across from the Southern Hemisphere as long as... actually, now I come to think of it, are there any? Is Bill's Australian? If it is, I'm not surprised you don't hear many Aussies bragging about it; my friend once had a lunch at Bill's in Richmond so bad she left in tears. So if there's no great tradition of Australian restaurant concepts expanding to the UK, it's a brave soul indeed - in this case chef Adam Rawson - who would attempt such a coals-to-Newcastle move as starting up a burger chain. We are, as even the most oblivious must have noticed by now, sort of "OK for burgers" as a city.

For Bite Me to even get noticed at all, then, they'd have to be something pretty special. Surprisingly - and I genuinely was surprised - the burgers themselves, slider-size little things, pretty as a picture and sold in sets of 3, 4 or 12, have immediately found a space in my top 5 burgers in the city. They're great. Unfortunately for Bite Me, sharing a space with Cha Chaan Teng means not only that they're served in a room with as much charm and sophistication as a branch of Foxtons, but that they're also at the whim of CCT's seating policy. Those spacious, leather-backed booths at the sides? Not for you, my friend - you'll be seated on a ricketty plastic table for two in the middle of the room, while all the good tables remain resolutely empty for the duration of your meal.

But enough moaning about seating arrangements; Bite Me do takeout anyway, and Lincoln's Inn Field is just around the corner. No, what's really important are the burgers, and it turns out that Adam Rawson, along with MeatLiquor, and Bleecker, and Burgerac, and perhaps only a handful of other people in the country, knows exactly what makes a good burger and exactly how to transfer that knowledge into a cracking end product. The beef, aged and fluffy of texture (I'm guessing from never being frozen) brings to mind Nathan Mills' work for Bleecker, which of course is about as big a compliment as you can pay to, well, mince. The short list of varietals - one with bacon, one with shredded lettuce and a "Big Mac"-style sauce - is exquisitely well-chosen and tastefully done; I'll even allow them a "Hawaiian" option with pineapple in because even this was pleasant and oddly comforting rather than deliberately quirky for the sake of quirk. And even a lamb burger, spiked with blue cheese and jalapeno, boasted powerfully fresh products and satisfied on every level.

Chips were skin-on, which is faintly annoying, but had a good crunch and were well seasoned (Himalayan salt, apparently, if you think that makes a difference). And I didn't try the chicken burger, or duck and truffle, or even a milkshake but I very strongly suspect these are all as superbly well-researched and expertly-executed as everything else I did try. As I say, this is an operation that knows what it's doing.

So, who knew a brand-new burger concept, from Australia of all places, would have the power to rise to the top of the burger tree in 2017? The only dark cloud on the horizon is that with it being so close to work, and so eminently suitable for takeout, my burger consumption could end up even further off the scale than it already is. Perhaps I could ask them to limit their sales to me, like the arrangements problem gamblers make with Casinos. One set of four a month, that should be my limit. Or maybe 3 every week? Come on, I can take it. I can stop any time I like.

8/10

Bite Me are in 50% off soft-launch mode at the moment, hence the tiny bill.

Burgerac's Burgershack at the Social, Fitzrovia

The best thing about reviewing a burger joint (apart from the actual eating of the burger, of course, if things go well) is that I don't need to feel guilty about passing judgment after eating only one or two items on the menu. I can see Burgershack at the Social do a mushroom burger, and a Korean chicken burger, and a lard-fried buttermilk chicken burger, and based on the chicken burger I tried at their outpost at the Royal Oak in Marylebone one lunchtime a year or two ago I'm sure they're all lovely, but really any burger joint's success is measured on the strength of its main offering - the mighty cheesebuger. And that's just what I ordered on a recent trip to Fitzrovia.

And here it is, in all its glory. "Burgerac" is an ex- burger blogger who knew what he was talking about when he was writing about burgers, and knows exactly what he's doing now he's making them. A nice thick, loose-mince patty, seared to a good dark crust but pink inside, with a layer of salty, gooey American cheese soaked into the top of it. Beneath, a few thin-sliced pickles and white onion, and finally that all-important cross-hatch of Heinz ketchup and French's mustard. If I'm being brutal the one thing I'd change is the bun, which is it a bit bland in taste and with a slightly dry texture, and could perhaps do with a quick MeatLiquor-style steaming under a cloche. Having said that, it did hold its shape to the last bite so it is doing something right.

If I have one complaint to make about the "Hot'n'blue fries" (fries with Buffalo sauce and blue cheese on them; Bleecker Burger do them as "Angry Fries") it's that I could really have done with being allowed to order a smaller portion, as this was an unfeasibly vast amount of fries for one person for £4 - I think I managed about a fifth of them before giving up. However, they were very good - the blue cheese element wasn't too funky or too thin, and the fries maintained a good crunch.

And that's pretty much everything you need to know. A short review, this, of an uncomplicated and refreshingly unpretentious little operation, doing a few things very well and for not much money. A final bill of £15 didn't even add on a charge for (friendly and attentive) table service, so I left a few quid anyway. It's all too easy to get burger fatigue from all the myriad of dreadful copycat places that have sprung up in this country over the last few years, but it's always worth making the effort to go to a decent burger joint and remind yourself that there are few things more easily enjoyed than a nice big, bloody pile of loose minced beef in a bun.

8/10

The World's End Market, Chelsea

The World's End is a building with a long and distinguished history. Well, a long history. It's been on the map since Chelsea was a small farming village a couple of miles from the old City of London, and became such a landmark that it lent its name to that whole end of King's Road. Oh, and eventually a bus stop. You know you've arrived when you've a bus stop named after you.

But the Chelsea of yesteryear was nothing like the playground of oligarchs and Middle Eastern royalty it has become today. The original Five Fields, between Chelsea and Kensington, now the somewhat ironic name of a very fancy restaurant, was a notorious area of crime and deprivation, and even in 1897 when the current building was erected, this was not a smart part of town. In fact, it was pretty rough, and remained fairly working class right up until the 1960s when thrusting young creative types like Mary Quant did for the area in much the same way as the Young British Artists of the 90s did for Shoreditch and Hoxton. So presumably the oligarchs and Saudi princes are something that Shoreditch and Hoxton have to look forward to in the next 50 years. Lucky them.

Anyway, back to Chelsea, and the World's End Market. I admit I only visited the most recent previous incarnation once and found it an unremarkable (and oddly dark) space, making very little of the Victorian gin palace architecture it has been blessed with. Whether you consider the recent revamp as "better" probably depends on what fond memories you have of the old place - I didn't grow up in Chelsea in the 90s and I prefer nice restaurants to Sloany drinking dens, so I quite like the new look. Each to their own.

As for the food, well, someone is at least trying hard. An impressive-looking selection of seafood is laid out on ice next to an open kitchen boasting a Josper grill. A good start. Less impressive were the rather underwhelming cuts of meat displayed in the cabinets in the corridor on the way to the toilets - they looked tiny and swamped by the huge space they were in, although maybe the plan is eventually for these to hold something more substantial. If the effect they were going for is the glorious drying cabinets at Goodman City or Beast, well, they need to contain more than a couple of New York strip steaks.

The next worry is the menu - it's huge, a mistake a lot of new restaurants make in trying to cover every potential corner of their new market to see what sticks, but is just never less than bewildering for us poor customers. Twelve (!) different starters, god knows how many different types of fish and seafood, steaks, sides and sauces, but amusingly just one veggie option - I quite liked that. Oh, and there's a whole 'nother menu just for burgers, lest they miss out on that particular zeitgeist.

Seafood soup was pretty decent, one of those things you suspect isn't particularly technically difficult to make but just involves a lot of time and effort, for which I am most grateful. A beguiling, earthy mix of fish and seafood flavours, possibly involving lobster, and I happily polished it off.

Lemon-cured tuna with ginger, jalapeno chilli & coriander dressing was an interesting and colourful starter. Nicely presented, not too much chilli, and all through it that slightly ceviche-y note of subtly marinated fresh fish.

A 2nd starter ordered as a main was a rather more straightforward tuna tartare, albeit shot through with aubergine and cumin mayonnaise. Many of the starters involved (mainly) raw fish so this is clearly where this kitchen's talents lie...

...because I'm not entirely sure they lie in the preparation of beef, at least not yet. My steak needed a much hotter oven in order to get a nice dark crust on instead of the soft, pallid grey we ended up with. They may have splashed out on a Josper grill but that's only half the battle; next you need to know how to use it, and this was cooked so slowly it may well have just been done on the hob. In fact, maybe it was. This was doubly disappointing as you could tell the beef itself was pretty good, from Surrey apparently with a good grass-fed taste and plenty of fat. But if the beef was disappointing the "peppercorn sauce" it came with was genuinely horrid, thin and pale and with about as much flavour as a jug of dishwater. I can't imagine the set of events that led to this rank liquid being served to customers, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it won't happen again.

Of the desserts, chocolate fondant was the best but then it's pretty hard to mess up chocolate fondant. The ones you can get in the little boxes from Waitrose are nice if you don't overcook them. Vanilla ice cream was churned well to thick and smooth though, which was good.

Hazelnut and caramel cheesecake sounded like a good idea at first, except I don't think they should have embedded the nuts in the cake itself as they'd gone offputtingly soggy by the time it came to opening the little Kilner jar and eating them. A much better idea would have been to roast the nuts to order and put them in at the last minute, then they would have stood a chance of being nice and crunchy and toasty. But hark at me, giving cooking advice to a professional kitchen. Maybe they were supposed to be the consistency of pickled garlic. Who knows.

There we are anyway and there the World's End Kitchen is, despite the early weeks' flaws still probably better than you can do in much of this part of town. In fact it's still only really Medlar (just a short walk away) that's a reason in itself to visit Chelsea for a meal, and I can't see that changing any time soon. So if you have to be wandering down King's Road with £45 or so (I assume) burning a hole in your pocket and want some nice fresh fish, or a cocktail or two, then you may as well give it a go. After all, it's a long walk to Shoreditch.

6/10

I was invited to review the World's End Market

Free State Kitchen, Liverpool

There I was, enjoying the early evening sun in the oasis of calm that is the Free State Kitchen garden, and it made me wonder why there are so few al fresco dining options in Liverpool. There a couple of tables outside Ego on Hope Street, and there's a terrace attached to the disastrous collection of what can only loosely be called restaurants in Liverpool One (Café Rouge, Wagamama, Zizzi's and so on and so forth until you just want to kill everyone in the world), but for a city that boasts so many green spaces, not to mention a multitude of handsome old buildings with gardens in that area between the cathedrals, outside seating is a rarity. And the weather isn't that much worse than London, surely?

Anyway, the scarcity of open-air eating in the city only makes you appreciate that much more anywhere where it is an option, and even if Free State Kitchen had just put some deck chairs in a carpark it would have been a pleasant novelty. But the striking space behind this unassuming Georgian building on Maryland Street is worth the trip on its own; bordered on one side by a vast, ten-story windowless brick wall covered by vines, and on another by the imposing edifice of the rest of the ex-convent (or so I believe) that houses the restaurant, the space in between is a quiet, gently ramshackle green space, decorated with wild flowers and grasses planted in old cooking oil drums, a large vegetable patch (which I'm hoping is used by the restaurant) and a lovely old tree providing shade for a few wooden picnic tables. Oh, and a life-sized statue of Jesus. As you do.

The menu is unfussy, and pleasantly priced. A vast bowl of sweetcorn chowder for £3.50 is the kind of value that you rarely see in that there London, and it stayed piping hot until the very last mouthful thanks to generous chunks of potato.

Buffalo wings were correctly jointed, had a nice crisp coating and a good dollop of sauce, which judging by the colour and the chilli levels had a commendably low ratio of Frank's to butter (though by no means unpleasantly so). The less said about a disastrously thin blue cheese sauce the better - someone needs to go back to school on that one - but at £4.75 for nine wings this was still worth your while.

Burgers are the main event here, and the pescatarian option is something called a "clam sam" - crunchy deep-fried morsels of assorted seafood with a light mayonnaise dressing, in a poppyseed bun. Most likely the seafood was previously frozen, but that only added to the homely, no-nonsense style of the place, and in fact the textures and flavours were pretty good. Excellent fries, too, all crunchy out and creamy-white within.

The "Double French Onion Burger" was very nearly excellent, and clearly the concept is sound - double beef, properly melted Swiss cheese, onions, Dijon mustard (a very under-used burger ingredient I find, it's lovely stuff) and a golden brioche bun which held together very well. But it suffered from a dramatic lack of seasoning - even the cheese seemed entirely flavourless - and the onions needed a much longer association with a heat source before they could be called "caramelised", these weren't anything more interesting than "cooked". Still, good quality beef and more of those fries saved the day.

I forgot to take a photo of the "Herby Chicken Burger" but it looked the part and all disappeared without a complaint, so it can't have been bad. And what's not to love about a drinks list that has an elderflower G&T (Hendricks gin) for £5, glasses of house wine for £3 and bottles of Goose Island for £3.80? Nothing, that's what.

And let's not forget, you're eating all this decent, well-priced food in that lovely garden, the secret sanctuary of L1, at least you are while the weather holds. And even when summer turns to winter or sun turns to rain, you'll still be able to enjoy the service, which is quite extraordinarily good - smart, efficient, friendly - especially for a city that so often struggles with this "final mile" of the restaurant process (I think I've asked for the service charge to be removed more often in Liverpool than anywhere else in the world).

So it's not perfect, but then where is? What it is is comfortable and comforting, and they do what they do well enough for quibbles not to seem to matter much all said and done. Writing these posts it's often too easy to focus on where something has gone wrong and lose sight of the bigger picture, and with that in mind, there's really only one important thing I need to tell you - that after we'd paid the bill and been wished a cheery "goodbye" from the staff, we left happy. And there's hardly any better compliment than that.

7/10