Shake it Up Baby: Shake Shack Flatters to Decieve

Sometimes, you just need a burger. I encountered one of these moments while I was negotiating the crowded and depressing expanse otherwise known as Westfield Stratford City. Westfield is a place of lost souls and if I spend more than a few minutes within its yawning bowels I get all out of sorts so a burger was required to set me straight before I headed home. Westfield isn't great for burger joints, there being just two: GBK and recent American chain arrival Shake Shack. Although I have not exactly heard heaps of praise for Shake Shack before, some blogs rate them so I elected to see for myself whether they can fry up a good patty.

The venue itself was quite big, but strangely empty considering it was half past twelve on a Saturday afternoon, there being a smattering of people waiting on the large expanse of bench seating to the left of the counter. The menu wasn't overloaded with choices but sometimes that's a good thing if they can do the simple things right. I don't trust Americans with bacon so I went for the ShackMeister, which was a cheeseburger with "shack sauce" and crispy beer-cooked shallots.

I was sent to the seating area to wait, and they gave me one of those curious things that vibrates when your order is ready - that was surely a bit of overkill considering there were about nine people in the restaurant and half of them were already eating! Nevertheless it gave me a chance to google some reviews of them online and before I knew it the little plastic thing was buzzing and the burger arrived.

For the second time in two days I was suprised by a burger's size, but unlike the previous day's Dirty Burger, this one did not make up for it in thickness, I thought the patty to be rather sadly small. The bun wasn't particularly special either, just a normal sesame seed affair, and rather dry to boot. I don't mind a seeded bun (in fact I quite like them - they certainly makes a change from the proliferation of brioche buns we get these days) but you need a decent burger to be contained within it... and this wasn't. I might have suspected that it would not be great when the chap behind the counter didn't ask me how I would like it cooked but it was the most well-cooked burger I've had from a dedicated burger joint. No juiciness and melt-in-the-mouth texture here, just fairly dry and a little tough, and coupled with the under-par and dry bun it didn't exactly make my mouth sing with pleasure. The cheese was plasticky, like those supermarket cheese slices often seen at barbecues,and the shallots were a bit stringy and I certainly couldn't taste any of the beer that they had allegedly been cooked in. The 'shack sauce' was either used so sparingly it was hardly there or it was just plain tasteless. Either way I was totally unimpressed and it was more of a waste of money than the £20 effort from Burger and Lobster. At least that one was nice.

I've eaten a lot of burgers in my time and despite my criticism above this was nowhere near the worst, the problem I have is that when you spend over six pounds on a burger alone it should be pretty damn good, and not just barely a step above a McDonald's cheeseburger. If you gave me the option of a Big Mac, a Whopper or a ShackMeister then I would choose one of the two big chain burgers and that pretty much says it all. Maybe Shake Shack are better at milkshakes....





Shake Shack ShackMeister: 4
The Details:

Shake Shack
124-125 The Street
Westfield Stratford City
London
E20 1EN



Burger reviewed: ShackMeister, £6.50

HVNP Burger Rankings (May 14th) :

1. Bleecker Street | Black | 9.25
2. Patty & Bun | Ari Gold | 9.00
3. Honest Burger | Bacon Tribute 8.50

4. Dirty Burger | Dirty Bacon 8.25

5. Lucky Chip | Royale with Cheese | 7.5

=6. Byron | Chilli 7.25

=6. Byron | Father Cheesemas | 7.25

=6. GBK | The Don | 7.25

9. Burger & Lobster | Cheeseburger 6.50
10. Shake Shack | ShackMeister 4.00