A Night at Meat Liquor

Earlier this week, I ventured to Meat Liquor with friends to see what all the fuss was about. For the past year, I’ve heard endless reviews about how fantastic this burger joint is from the likes of my boyfriend, friends, Grace Dent (who I’d quite like to be friends with), not to mention the entire blogosphere.

Meat Liquor has an incredibly democratic, and mildly irritating, queuing system, which means that you can’t be seated until the final member of your party, arrives. I arrived at 6.30pm on Wednesday night and a queue was already forming (although a waitress did kindly bring round a tray of onion rings the size of my head to all of us shivering in the bitter cold). There’s a strict no queue-jumping policy in place, which I always resent when you have late friends.

There is a no reservation policy that all restaurants seem to have in London at the moment. It’s essentially there to make the place look heaving and super-popular to everyone that walks past. It would be great if they could either tell you how long it will be for a table, so you can sneak off to the pub for a drink or two at half the price, or do a combination of reserved and non-reserved seating.

However, despite all of the above the food was as dirty, moreish and flavoursome as I had been told. I ordered the bacon burger, which was sumptuous and melt-in-your-mouth delicious; I also had a sneaky bite of my friends’ chilli dog and chilli burger, which were even better! Both had a real kick, which never fails to satisfy me.

We decided that if we were going to do it, we’d do it properly, and pretty much ordered everything off the menu from the slaw to onion rings, fries to chicken wings. Thank God for kitchen towel!

Another highlight was the booze, forget beer and go straight in for a cocktail as they’re delicious, strong and a great accompaniment to the all-American food. Opt for the Grogg, a white and dark rum concoction that is so potent you are only allowed to order two.

Meat Liquor broke my burger joint virginity and I would love to go again but for fear of having a heart attack, I will wait another year (or simply order less).

Meat Liquor 74 Welbeck Street, London W1G 0BA 
Contact: 020 7224 4239 www.meatliquor.com