Bar Boulud, London

As I hadn't had a burger in SO long (!) I decided it was high time I tried another of the restaurants which frequently appears in top burgers in London lists - Bar Boulud. Located in the Mandarin Oriental, the same hotels where you'd find Dinner by Heston, it's very smart and sophisticated - slightly incongruous with big juicy burgers perhaps, but very nice surroundings all the same! It's a fairly big restaurant and when we arrived it was already pretty much full which I hoped gave an indication of the quality of food which was to follow!

Rubbish photo but very cool open plan kitchen - you can see all the pâtés and meats etc!

They brought over bread and as soon as we sat down, and replenished it a total of three times throughout the meal - one time it was still warm! Yet again I filled myself up massively from it, but bread and butter is just SO GOOD.

Drinks wise I had a delicious non alcoholic cocktail - The Batida, with fresh pineapple, lemon juice, passion fruit, sugar syrup and coconut dust. As well as being beautifully presented and refreshing, it tasted like summer holidays in the sun!

Just like in Dinner, the service was so friendly and helpful - again, they have the luck of being able to try everything on the menu so that they can talk knowledgeably about it. Our waiter (Tommaso!) was so enthusiastic and gave us some really helpful recommendations which helped us pick our starters and made us choose something really out of the ordinary rather than playing it safe. We shared two starters; stone bass tartare, and the terrine de canard.

The stone bass was probably one of the most interesting starters I have ever tried - I hadn't even heard of stone bass before then! Delicate chunks of meaty fish on an earthy tasting mushroom ketchup type sauce, all of which had a light citrus tang, apparently added by something called Buddha Hand, which, again, I had never heard of. To complete my woeful ignorance of this starter, there were fried rings of something which may forever remain a mystery to me topping the fish, and these added a really nice salty crunch. So, although I have next to no knowledge of the components of the dish, I now know that they worked amazingly together to create a light and well balanced starter.
The terrine was very good too, but I suppose slightly less special and out of the ordinary, although I did like the chunks of carrot in it; also they brought over the bread for it in a little napkin pouch which I thought was sweet!

For main courses it obviously had to be burgers. I went for the "Frenchie" which is a beef patty with confit pork belly, rocket, dijon, tomato compote, morbier cheese and a peppered bun, and Anne Marie had the "Piggie" - a beef patty with BBQ pulled pork, green chilli mayonnaise, bibb lettuce, red cabbage slaw and a cheddar bun. We both asked for them to be medium rare. Our food arrived quite promptly, but Anne Marie's burger arrived without BBQ pulled pork! She sent it back, but they were really apologetic about it and even made me a completely new burger as well so mine didn't go cold while waiting! So, second time round, here are the pictures!

The Frenchie

The Piggie

The best thing about these burgers was how well they had been cooked - look how lovely and pink they are!

This made them an absolute joy to eat - the Frenchie is probably the juiciest burger I have ever had. The nutty morbier cheese was thick and oozy complemented well by the compote, and pork belly was thick and salty. I also really liked the slight heat from the mustard - basically it was amazing. The fries cost an extra £5 which I actually wish I hadn't paid, as they were too thin and crispy for me and I didn't end up eating most of them as I wanted to concentrate on the burger - next time I'd genuinely be tempted to share three burgers between two, but not have chips!

For pudding we both had mango soufflé with mango and coconut sorbet.

It was HUGE, but very light with a lovely fluffy inside, and the sweet taste of mango the whole way through. The sorbet was really refreshing and would even have been a satisfactory pudding on its own - that's not to say I didn't love the soufflé, because I did, but if you're slightly less greedy and want something smaller, then it would be perfect.

It's definitely not cheap here, and the Frenchie is one of the most expensive burgers I've had, but I would say it's 100% worth it; the burgers are fantastic, and the rest of the menu is really varied and interesting if that's not what you fancy. I'm already dreaming of the next time I can go...!