I was a bit worried before arriving that I might be too uncool, too badly dressed, too poor, or all three (!), to feel comfortable here, but upon arriving I was pleasantly surprised. There was a wide age-range of people already there, everyone was dressed pretty normally and basically it wasn't an intimidating atmosphere at all! There was incense burning which made the place smell great, and the bar staff/waitresses were really friendly.
The Player serves both cocktails and Breddos Tacos food - an amazing menu of sliders, tacos and some very tempting sides.
To start off with, we had a "Fabulous Gay Wedding", a sharer cocktail with a fabulous name...
It was Bombay Sapphire gin, with fresh lime juice, honey syrup, strawberries, raspberries and cucumber, topped with pink champagne, and it was really refreshing, and deceptively strong!
After a few sips we were straight into ordering food - there was so much good stuff on the menu that we didn't want to miss out, so probably looked really greedy..it barely all fit on our little table!
Anyway, we went for....
10hr chipotle beef short rib tacos, with mature cheese and habanero sauce
Short rib cheesy fries with salsa
Pork belly croquettes with coriander aioli
The short rib slider - beef patty, short rib, american cheese, habanero sauce, salsa and lime
The Breddo - beef patty, American and Swiss cheese, pastrami, ketchup, chipotle mayo, shoestring fries, habanero sauce.
Everything was great, but the sliders took it to another level - they were absolutely amazing! If they had been big burgers they'd have rivalled Meat Liquor which is a big deal in my mind! (For my Meat Liquor blog post see here) The Breddo was just about my overall favourite - juicy, pink centered, with salty pastrami and the fries adding extra flavours and textures. Also, they're about the only two burgers ever where I haven't felt the need to add ketchup which is definitely saying something.
The short rib cheesy fries were also really good - it was a cheese sauce rather than melted cheese which normally I don't like too much, but actually it worked really well. You also got bursts of flavour from the coriander now and again which added freshness and made you feel a tiny bit less like a fat pig - there was some green in there after all!
The tacos were overshadowed by the sliders but still good; I couldn't taste the cheese much in the short rib ones, but the cod ones were very good, especially with the burst of acidity and freshness from the lime.
The pork belly croquettes were very tasty, and I think coriander aioli must be one of the best dip inventions ever?!
After all this it was time for another round of cocktails
This time I had the Grapefruit Julep, with Finlandia grapefruit vodka, fresh pink grapefruit juice, lime juice, honey, grenadine and mint; it was really tasty and the honey took the sharp edge off the grapefruit so it was very easy to drink!
James always goes for the ones with loads of alcohol and not much juice (never a fan of fruit and veg) so had the London Buck Highball (Bombay Sapphire gin, lemon juice and ginger ale) which he really enjoyed.
Then...we decided to have more sliders! They were just so good that we couldn't only have one each!
I had another Breddo, and then we shared a classic which is just a beef patty, American cheese, ketchup, mustard and pickles
They were as amazing as the last time and I only wished I could have ordered more, but with a week of St Andrew's eating out ahead of me, I thought I ought to conserve my money. I cannot rave enough about the sliders though, and the other accompaniments were great too - go there!!
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