Bring out the big buns — London's most luxurious burgers
The burger has been an object of culinary fascination since the 1st century AD, when the Romans experimented with a dish made from pine nuts and minced meat. By 1747 the 'Hamburg Sausage' made of minced beef and served with toast was popularised. The dish made its way into the Oxford English Dictionary by 1802, although described as a 'slab' of minced meat rather than a sausage. In New York in 1885, the Menches Brothers were the first to sell a minced beef sandwich, after their pork supplies ran out, and the same year Charlie Nagreen, or 'Hamburger Charlie', did something similar in Wisconsin. Following this our appetite for the burger has grown and grown.
Today, there are many sorts of burgers. As an American with a particular affinity for the form, I have a strong opinion of what constitutes a good one. It's my view that you don't want a burger with too much going on. The longer the list of accoutrements, the harder it is to pull off the perfect blend of texture and flavour. And perfection is what we are after, so we have toured the restaurants making the capital's finest burgers, turning the simple sandwich into a fine-dining phenomenon.
This is the hottest burger ticket in town. Started by the acclaimed British chef Jackson Boxer, Dove has a menu filled with dishes such as a fried-potato pizzette with burrata and mortadella, zingy fresh tuna tostadas and a wood-roasted herb-fed chicken slathered in café de Paris butter and paired with Tokyo Turnips. All this against the backdrop of a cosy, airy venue with large windows and a pale pink and brown colour palette.
But the real star of the show isn't featured on the menu. It's the restaurant's now-viral 50-day dry-aged beef burger. This is a very thick patty (think two inches high) dripping in melted gorgonzola, paired with onions cooked in champagne and butter.
Getting the burger is no small feat. The restaurant will typically make about 24 burgers each day: 12 for the lunch sitting and 12 for the dinner sitting. This means to snag one you will need to book the first sitting for lunch or dinner at 12pm and 5:30 respectively. Also worth noting is that people will start queuing to make sure they're one of the lucky few to grab a burger about 15 minutes before. Burgers are assigned on a first-come first-serve basis but you can only order them with everything else you'd like to eat so be sure to take a look at the menu while you wait to go inside and decide what you want. The burger is very rich so splitting it with someone is a good idea.
It sounds like a palaver, but it will be worth it. The burger, with its rich creamy cheese, succulent patty and a buttery brioche bun with charred edges truly does raise the burger bar. Pair your burger with duck-fat fries and the Sapling Martini for an extra decadent evening.
Burger £18, dove.london, W11 2EU
Any burger lover will tell you a classic hotel is a great place to start if you're on the hunt for a perfect patty. Most have been refining their burger recipes for years. The Claridges burger includes a patty made of chuck, brisket and beef fat. The beef is from Aubrey Allen Butchers, a butchery which has been operating since 1933 with a focus on ethically and sustainably sourced meats.
The burger's brioche bun is topped with onion seeds, and the patty comes aged with comté cheese. Butter lettuce leaves, burger sauce (ketchup, mayo, chopped gherkins and shallots), and caramelised onions are in the mix too. On the side you can opt for onion rings and fries, as well as smoky pickled cucumbers and sour onions.
The best part about the Claridges burger is that it can be enjoyed in the opulent environs of the hotel's Foyer & Reading Room. If you're in a particularly hungry mood, it's also possible to order a 'burger and fries' trolley for special events — or just for you.
Burger £46, claridges.co.uk, W1K 4HR
While Otto's may feel unassuming from the outside, you won't be disappointed by the extravagance of its interiors. The restaurant has the feel of a posh French family's country estate. Walls are coated in a mix of classic and quirky pieces of art. Tables are lined with white cloths, on which sit blue-and-white plates next to the grand, polished silver ornaments.
While the restaurant has no shortage of high-end culinary offerings, it also offers one of London's most expensive (and unique) burgers: the £300 Burger Bespoke de Luxe. Available exclusively to those smart enough to pre-order. The patty is made up of a combination of fillet, sirloin and ribeye. Instead of a bun, delicately stacked on top in the world's most luxurious game of Jenga is seared fois gras, followed by a lobster claw and finished with a generous dollop of Oscietra caviar. It sounds like a complex, if not downright crazy, combination. However it is surprisingly delicious (and an exception to the aforementioned inclination towards fewer ingredients). The owner, Otto Tepasse, came up with the idea after a conversation with a couple of American customers. When he asked them why Americans loved burgers, they told him that it is a great leveller. If served at state dinners, the burger would bring the president down a peg and the regular folks would be hoisted up to the same burger-loving level as a head of state.
This inspired Otto — although he was much less bothered with the egalitarianism. 'I don't want a burger that levels. I don't want everyone to be able to have this burger,' he says. After six months of development last year, Otto and his team created the poshest burger in Britain, if not the world.
Burger £300, ottos.com, WC1X 8EW
Last summer, the Emory Hotel opened an outpost of the acclaimed ABC kitchens, the restaurant first dreamed up by the Michelin-starred chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten in New York in 2010. The New York locations — ABC Kitchens, AbcV and ABC Cocina — all helped to inform the flavours of the London iteration, which has a modern Latin-inspired menu, with the same emphasis on local and sustainably sourced ingredients. You can expect delights such as sweet pea guacamole, green chickpea hummus served with warm crunchy tortilla chips and crudites, and pretzel-crusted calamari.
The cheeseburger here features a patty made of different meats: Hereford meat always accounts for two of the cuts and the third is a rare breed, either Longhorn or Belted Galloway, a combination that the kitchen says 'encourages flavour, texture, and mouthfeel'. This is paired with a bun from a secret house recipe, herbed mayonnaise with chives, rocket, basil and lemon juice, fresh and pickled jalapeno and Montgomery cheddar.
The location at the Emory features large glass windows overlooking Hyde Park, interior design by Rémi Tessier and artwork by Damien Hirst, making it a particularly glamorous burger-eating experience.
Burger £33, the-emory.co.uk, SW1X 7NP
The newest of Jeremy King's London haunts, The Park has the feel of a chic Manhattan cafe. It's the kind of place it would be easy to become a regular, with the menu offering a satisfying array of treats from shrimp cocktail and a classic cobb salad to a Coney Island chilli dog.
The Park's cheeseburger features patties made in house, which are topped with a homemade spicy burger sauce (deliciously pickle-y and dill-infused), and lettuce, tomato and onion. There's also a very cute toothpick stuck in the centre of the burger that has a Union Jack on one side and the American flag on the other. All of this is accompanied by tater tots topped with Cajun seasoning. At the Park you can trust that the Manhattan, or Dirty Martini, or Tom Collins you order will arrive alongside your burger crisp and expertly curated.
Don't forget to order a banana split at the end, trust us.
Burger £18.75, theparkrestaurant.com, W2 3RX
There are some days when you want a burger but you need to pull back on the red meat a bit. These are the days when a visit to Bébé Bob, the playful younger sibling of the restaurant Bob Bob Ricard, is in order. Here you can find the restaurant's famed 'Chicken and Egg' burger.
The burger, which is presented on manga comic paper, is a glossy toasted brioche bun containing a thick wedge of crispy chicken fillet, a confit egg yolk, gem lettuce, pickled red cabbage and gochujang chilli mayonnaise — you can also add a heaped blob of caviar. This burger is as much about texture as taste. You would be hard pressed to separate out the individual flavours, but together they coalesce into a delicious, dense, salty, fatty, tangy taste explosion. The smooth silky egg with moist mouth-popping caviar is particularly addictive.
Eating this burger is a messy — almost performative — business, what with the egg and the caviar splurging over everything (you will need more than one napkin). We suggest cutting it into quarters to make it more manageable.
Accompanying fries can come regular or truffled and arrive in a cute cardboard fry box. You can add a caviar and sour cream dip for £10, but keeping it classic with ketchup works too.
The great thing about a visit to Bébé Bob is that it really feels like an experience, especially if you commence proceedings with a 'bump' of Siberian caviar (£15) or oscietra caviar (£20) swilled down with a shot of small-batch Ukrainian vodka from Startsky & Levitsky, served at a crisp minus 18C.
Don't get so distracted by the good food that you forget to look around and enjoy the restaurant's swanky decor, which involves a lot of red lacquer, modern art and a leather banquette that wraps around the whole room.
Burger £19.50, add a scoop of caviar for £21. bebebob.com, W1F 9LB
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I always thought she was talking about just a few fish. But actually, it's thousands of fish – just kokanee salmon, which look like small sockeye.' Since 2022, Daniels and his crew – including his 24-year-old son Justin; 33-year-old Roger Williams; and 41-year-old Walt Washington – have been working to undo decades of damage. 'We're trying to get this forest back on its feet,' Daniels explains. 'But it's not just the trees. We're restoring the entire ecosystem: the fish, the wildlife and the cultural traditions connected to this land.' Following the all-clear from Greenhalgh, SAWC watershed scientist Kelsey Dean slings a forest service Pulaski – part ax and part adze – over her shoulder and follows the old logging road to the blast site. She describes dense thickets of spruce as 'dog hair trees' where deer can't forage, and bears can't hunt deer. This six-day hitch we're participating in is just the second blasting session in a much larger effort. At the end of five years, the team will have removed 80 of the 89 culverts left by loggers, and three bridges, Dean says. 'We're restoring habitat, improving hydrologic function and strengthening the land's resilience. After that, it's hands off,' she says, releasing the Pulaski to underline the point. Up ahead, a reddish-brown haze settles over the blast site. The crew gathers along the banks and stares into a triangular trench where the culvert once ran. Sean Rielly, a former wilderness ranger and forest service recreation specialist, slaloms down the mud and begins removing shards of the shattered culvert. Daniels and his crew follow, pushing boulders out of the new streambed. Suddenly, the goop of mud and alder leaves releases, flooding downhill. After an hour of work, a small mountain stream flows freely. 'Now,' Dean says, 'we watch for fish.' The fish are anadromous, she explains – a fancy word that means they spawn and then die. Their decaying bodies provide food for the carnivorous spruce, hemlock and cedar trees in a healthy stand of old growth. The salmon also sustain the brown bears prowling the island, their coats glossy with salmon oil, their humps shifting as they patrol the rivers, waiting for the salmon to arrive. The Cube Cove project reaches its midpoint at a moment when the Trump administration renews logging efforts in the Tongass. In June, the US Department of Agriculture announced plans to remove the Roadless Rule protections, exposing 7m acres of the Tongass to extensive clearcuts. Ecologists warn that cutting much of the old growth could release massive amounts of carbon stored in the trees. In fact, Dean says, when federal funding dried up, Cube Cove progress stalled. Luckily, SAWC was able to use wetlands mitigation money from the state of Alaska to account for the shortfall. 'It's unfortunate, what's happening. The region is just now starting to recover from the violence of clearcutting,' says Rob Cadmus, director of SAWC. 'At Cube Cove, what we're doing essentially is cleaning up the mess left from logging. Going back to those timber bonanza days would be unconscionable, from an economic, environmental and psychic standpoint.' Federal subsidies have long made old-growth logging in the Tongass artificially profitable. By selling timber below market value and covering high costs like road building and transportation, the government incentivizes larger logging companies from the lower 48 to cut down trees, despite the fact that south-east Alaska's economy is shifting toward eco-tourism and fishing – industries that depend on preserving the Tongass intact, rather than transforming the mountains into a moonscape, with no habitat left for salmon to spawn. As the crew works with hand tools, Dean inspects the flow of water, while Greenhalgh examines the composition of dirt. The two assess whether a second 'cleanup shot' of explosives might be necessary before abandoning the site. Hand tools can take care of the rest, they decide. As the sun sets over the mouth of the valley, the group begins a 3.5-mile hike along the logging road back to the ATVs and forest service truck. Along the way, Daniels nods toward an alternating series of oven-mitt-shaped prints in the ground – evidence of the island's apex predators. 'Bear have survived here for thousands of years,' he says. 'And so have we. All of that makes what's happening today feel really personal.' Rielly catches up and talks about all the time he spent behind a desk justifying the need for mechanized equipment and explosives and the minimum tool necessary to help the region's recovery. In 2024, a youth group from Angoon removed a culvert barely beneath the ground using only standard forest service hand tools: Pulaskis, shovels, mattocks and rakes. The effort took seven days. 'If we don't do this work, the land will continue to degrade. Culverts clog, landslides are triggered, watersheds are blocked,' Rielly says. 'This is the only way to get the job done quickly, especially in such remote terrain.' Through the scrim of spruce saplings, stumps of ancient old-growth loom: cedar, hemlock and spruce recorded at more than 1,000 years old. The group crosses the Ward Creek bridge, held in place by steel girders 8ft wide covered by creosote timbers. These will be removed at the end of the project, when the crew erases their footprints. On the other side of the bridge, Daniels, Washington and Williams hop on the ATVs, while the rest of the group pile into the truck for the 12-mile trip back to camp. After showers in the ocean, the group congregates around a driftwood bonfire on the beach, where thousands of logs were once dumped and rafted together, on the way to the mill. Dean sips from a can of lime sparkling water – a treat in the remote area. Dressed now in flannel pajamas, Washington perches on a rock. He describes his work in the forest as engaging in a cycle of 'destruction and renewal'. 'The land will heal itself if left alone,' he says. 'But sometimes you have to set a bone before it can heal properly. I know that this hard work we're doing out here is for my children, and for their children down the line.' 'What you're seeing here is a version of the next generation of conservation – partnerships that connect people, place and purpose,' Cadmus of SAWC says. 'When we're out here working side by side, we build a bond that's stronger than words. At the end of the day, that's what heals us. We're all in service to the land.'
