Lucky Chip Royale wit Cheese

28/05/201522/10/2018 Burger Lad 3821 ViewsLucky Chip

Review of Lucky Chip Royale wit Cheese

What they say:

You can find us at Birthdays in Dalston or The Old Queens Head Islington 7 days a week. Royale wit Cheese: Aged Beef Patty, Bacon, American Cheese, Tomato, Onion, Lettuce, Ketchup, Mustard & Special Sauce.

Price: £8.95.

Calories: Unknown.

Lucky Chip doesn’t have a permanent home. It pops up as a kitchen residency in pubs and bars across London. At the moment it is in two. A bar in Dalston and a pub in Islington.

Geography and public transport dictated that I’d visit the latter. When I arrived it was chaos.

Now, in fairness, I’d been warned that it was pub quiz night in advance, but still, this wasn’t your typical sedate pub quiz. It was a pub quiz for twenty-somethings and there were kazoos. Don’t ask.

It’s not my thing at all, but after all, we reproduce younger humans to replace us and the world belongs to them. Old sea dogs like me feel out of place in this sort of environment. But that’s not why I was here. The twenty-somethings were having enormous fun with their quiz and I was here to try a burger, a fairly iconic one at that.

Lucky Chip had very kindly kept a table for me, which is just as well because it was packed to the gunnels.

I went to the bar and ordered a beer and a Royale wit Cheese, which is effectively their bacon cheeseburger.

There are about six permanent burgers on the menu, plus one changing special. And a word about Lucky Chip – it regularly makes the top of whichever list of burgers for Londoners written by Londoners.

But BurgerLad.com scrutiny means being compared to the best burgers not just in one city, but throughout the whole country and, to an extent, worldwide. Will it cut the mustard?

As I waited through the apparent hilarity of the kazoo/breakdancing competition I became more and more excited about the arrival of this London legend.

Lucky Chip has been on my list for a very long time, but the changeable geography has been against me. Not today.

The burger came out, presented on a red plastic tray. Very straightforward construction on a seeded bun. The size was not huge. Perfectly manageable.

Bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, beef and bread. All the classics. But all the classics done really well. You often find that the very best burgers are absent any gimmicks.

I’m over the moon to say that this lived up to every expectation, and then some. Absent gimmicks, and with mayo and mustard on the top, present a whopping amount of mess.

This was an utter beast to eat. Red, white, yellow mess absolutely all over the place as I tucked into my burger.

And my taste buds were taken on a stairway to heaven or some such crap metaphor. It was outstanding, I mean properly outstanding. Well worth all the accolades thrown at it.

The bacon was a huge piece. After getting through tonnes of American style streaky bacon in Arizona, it was an utter delight to come back to the good stuff in such a wondrous way.

Every single minor ingredient played a part in the harmony here. I even tasted the lettuce. Mustard and mayo – not too much to kill the flavours. A couple of pickles, a large but quite thin slice of tomato. All present and correct.

A thick cloak of cheese of the sort that has been melted to just the right consistency. Not too thick and not too runny. And very yellow. This burger was great on the eye too.

The bun, slightly shiny and seeded, held together well. Not perfect considering the messy onslaught, but enough to make it edible right to the end.

Onions gave a bit of a kick in conjunction with the pickles, but as I always say, the best burgers belong to the beef.

What a patty! Small enough to fit in the bun, quite thick without being a rock, and the juiciest, most tender consistency of meat I’ve had in a while.