Browns Manchester Wild Boar and Chorizo Burger

Review of Browns Manchester Wild Boar & Chorizo Burger

Website: http://www.browns-restaurants.co.uk/home/

What they say:

With manchego, pico de gallo salsa, and apple & celeriac slaw, served with crisp seasoned chips, lettuce, tomato, onion rings, and Browns chunky house ketchup, mayonnaise and dill pickle on the side.

Price: £14.00.

Calories: Unknown.

Browns is one of my absolute favourites. It’s great for families, great for kids, great for romantic couples and great, in this particular case, for lone diners. Great for everyone in every circumstance.

Browns is also great for food, whatever your interest. Mine of course is burgers and they have a terrific line-up of beef, boar, lamb and so on. Very gourmet.

I wanted the Black Pig. It wasn’t available. I ordered the Wild Boar and Chorizo Burger instead. This turned out to be incredibly fortuitous.

I’ll come back to that in a minute, but first a word about Browns.

I first went over a decade ago, to Oxford. Since then I’ve been to almost all the London branches, Windsor, Edinburgh, Manchester and Leeds.

They are all fantastic. The brand tends to buy old buildings such as merchant banks or Edwardian clothiers and refurbish them to restaurant standards, while retaining as many of the original features as possible.

The Manchester branch is no exception. High ceilings, marble, shiny everywhere.

Browns Manchester Wild Boar and Chorizo Burger
Browns – timeless and sedate…

Anyway, while admiring the surroundings my burger arrived.

Presentation was immaculate. A neat white rectangular plate, mayo, pickles and ketchup lined up on the side.

The burger itself was served with a spike to hold it all together, and the top off, displaying the crispy onion rings and the large slice of tomato which I removed altogether. (After recent experiments retaining the tomato, it is back to tomato business as usual).

As I prepared to take my first bite (and prepared is the word – the smell coming from this thing was unbelievable), a pianist sat down near me and started to raise a tune.

If ever you wanted a burger in the most sedate, elegant and timeless surroundings, Browns is the place to go.

Browns Manchester Wild Boar and Chorizo Burger
Wild Boar tamed…

The burger, wild boar, is possibly a Burger Lad® first (must check the archives), but biting in, I kick myself for never having tried this before. What an utterly outstanding meat.

The main topping in this, alongside the Manchego, seems to be the slaw.

This is usually served on the side, but at Browns, it is on the burger, and what a terrific decision. The slaw and the cheese work in perfect harmony, complementing both each other and the meat.

Browns Manchester Wild Boar and Chorizo Burger
Too good to eat, too tasty not to…

I’m not going to, but I feel I really could write a library on how wonderful wild boar is in a burger.

The taste is wonderful, but the main sensation is the smell.

You raise this to your mouth, and the smell tantalises your nostrils before you open your mouth, making it salivate in anticipation of the taste that goes with that smell.

Before I go on too much, I have to leave the table and make a request of the pianist.

The classic location, perfect food, perhaps a little too much to drink and my request, the national anthem, played gently on the piano, hark back to a time, before the internet, ebola, beheadings and nationalism and the seemingly endless list of things serving their own purposes, to time when it was alright to take time out of the day for some happiness and pride.

Browns Manchester Wild Boar and Chorizo Burger
Can you smell the magnificent meat…?

Ah, but this is a burger review, and this burger is showing me that some things in the world are still great. Of the high-end burgers I’ve had recently, this is absolutely one of the best.

The wild boar taste lingers long after the last bite and when it does finally leave my taste buds, I’m devastated.

This utterly unique meat deserves a place among the greats and may even challenge the position of lamb amongst the very best “alternative” burgers in the Admiral’s galley.

So there you have it. A wild bore talks about a wild boar. But I’m happy, and Browns is glorious.

Browns Manchester Wild Boar and Chorizo Burger
Inside the Wild Boar…

Admiral Burgerbar