angel | Veggie Matty's London Patties

The Blacksmith and The Toffeemaker

Posted on April 20, 2017 by mattspurr

I might be a bit late to the party, but in 2017 vegan has gone big. Food bloggers and Instagram accounts may have been hash-tagging vegan for a while as far as I know, but my real gauge is the veggie burger scene. Whilst, in the past, a vegan option was just a veggie burger without the cheese, more recently a number of different restaurants and options have popped up, targeting the vegan market but also offering increasingly enticing, and exciting options that may appeal to the non-vegan consumer, such as myself, without going down the route of straight up meat-substitute products. One of these options is the pulled-jackfruit burger.

Jackfruit 'pulled-pork' on @SundayBrunchC4 right now. Noticed this popping up on a few veggie burger menus recently. Very intrigued

— Veggie Matty (@LdnVeggieBurger) January 15, 2017

It was a particularly alarming moment when I saw Tim Lovejoy & Simon Rimmer sampling the burger on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch. I knew right there and then that I was behind the mainstream, and had to get myself down to the closest pulled jackfruit proprietor. It just so happened that I was working in Clerkenwell that week, and just around the corner from The Blacksmith and The Toffeemaker.

The pub, nearer the Angel end of St John street has a tasty looking menu consisting of sandwiches and classic bar snacks. The main event for sure, though, is their burgers. Of the five burgers on offer, two are veggie, one, as I have already divulged I was there to sample was the pulled jackfruit, and the other veggie – the halloumi and kimchi burger – was equally as tempting as well. The burger comes with fries and slaw for a very reasonable £8. To accompany my burger lunch on that cold January lunchtime was half of Hobgoblin. I know, hipster burger, dad beer. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Sunday Brunch.

I didn’t know what to expect from the burger itself but it was a lot fuller than I had imagined it to be. The chunks of jackfruit were virtually spilling out of the brioche bun. Biting into it I was confronted by a texture that I had never experienced before. Having never eaten pulled pork before I cannot make a direct comparison, but it was definitely similar to what I imagine it to be like. At the same time chewy and stringy, lathered in the sweet, sticky BBQ sauce synonymous with it’s meaty cousin. Personally, I’m not too big a fan of barbecue sauce, perhaps because I’ve always associated it with the smell of spare ribs and brisket. The unfamiliar flavour starting to feel more to my taste, safe in the knowledge I was consuming plant-based goods. Saying that though, I’ll hold my hand up – the meal was not completely vegan as the slaw had mayo in it, but could have also been easily missed.

My own indifference to BBQ sauce aside, I thoroughly enjoyed my first foray into this new world of pulled jackfruit and other trendy vegan delights. As someone who has always been inclined to drag my feet when it comes to veganism, it is encouraging to know that tasty, alternative options like this are becoming the norm. And why not? There’s literally no harm in it.

VEGGIE BURGER RATINGS: 7/10

OVERALL RATING: 6.5/10

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The Island Queen

Posted on January 27, 2016 by mattspurr

So, a new year has arrived and what have we to show for it? An empty pocket, a full-stomach, and a hangover that just doesn’t want to go away, no matter how dry our Januaries are. The fact is, December always lives up to being the massive blow out that it threatens to be, and I, for one, always try and grab the bull by the horns. One thing I was looking forward to this year – having been writing this blog for just over a year now – was the onrush of Christmas burgers. It quickly became apparent though, after reading list, after list, of the capital’s meaty Christmas offerings, that there was to be no veggie Christmas. After a (I admit) slightly half-hearted campaign on Twitter to find out if any of the big burger chains were going to be offering a #VegXmas option, it turned out that only Honest offered a veg option (swapping the veg fritter in for the beef in the Christmas burger). Aside from that, it was only Yeah Burger (where I went for my Christmas burger in 2014) that offered a legitimate vegetarian Christmas option, and they actually had 2! It slowly dawned on me that Christmas wasn’t to be celebrated with burgers as a vegetarian, for this year at least. Luckily, however, I had something else to celebrate! December marked a year of living with my girlfriend Rach, so we went for a drink to celebrate at one of our favourite local pubs. And eat a burger.

The Island Queen, located on one of the backstreets just east of Angel Islington is a nice little pub, one of a cluster of pubs in the area where you’re sure to hear the hubbub of the pub against the relative silence of the residential streets before you actually stumble across the place itself, especially in the summer months. In the winter the big bar and high ceilings paradoxically provide a cosy atmosphere to while away a few hours on dark, chilly evenings. On Wednesdays, the pub offers a burger, chips, onion rings, and a drink for £9! (I did mention it was a low key celebration, right?). I decided on a pint of Doombar, along with the menu’s only veggie option – the lentil & spinach burger.

The burger looked tasty enough. When I picked it up, though, it proceeded to fall apart quite rapidly. One of the problems I’ve always had with lentil burgers, no matter how tasty, is that they only seem to be held together by the fact that they are deep-fried. This facade will hold together when delicately placed within a bun, but as soon as any pressure is placed on it – namely between finger and thumb – it will come apart before your very eyes. With this in mind I took a bite out of it far too quickly, for as soon as the my teeth clamped down I felt the scolding-hot, lentilly middle stick to the roof of my mouth. Unfortunately, this put a downer on the rest of my meal but I did take some positives: one, the flavour of the actual patty (what I could taste above the pain, anyway) was genuinely very flavoursome, also the meal was very, very good value for money. My last moan, though (I promise!), is that I have never understood houmous as a sauce or ‘lubricant’. Don’t get me wrong, I love houmous, but normally it just provides another drying element to the ensemble. And for some reason it is always served with lentil burgers (and felafel burgers, naturally).

Whilst the Island Queen will still stay as one of my favourite pubs, I can think of a few better places to get a burger and a beer, although maybe not at a better price! It was a nice evening regardless, and the pub lets you bring dogs so little Amber came along with us too. Alas, with the Christmas burgers disappointing in general – I did get round to trying out a few – December was to be a bit of a let-down month for me and burgers.

VEGGIE BURGER RATING: 5/10

OVERALL RATING: 7.5/10