Best Eats This Week - The Emilia Burger (London)

When are brioche burger buns going to leave the food scene? When it first showed up couple of years ago, it was cool.  A classic French pastry encasing your meat patty, giving your standard comfort food a posh spin was new and different and cool. There came a wave of gourmet burgers with truffle oil, foie gras, caviar and diamond speckled baby veal meat patties all sandwiched in a brioche bun, and yea, it was fascinating but these food trends come and leave and it's time for the f*cking brioche bun to leave.  After the gourmet aspect was stripped away you just started getting everything in a brioche bun.  Everything's in a f*cking brioche bun.  From your classic cheese burgers to your exotic curried chicken patties and sausages.  What happened to the humble burger buns? Your down to earth American buns that are perfect in their simplicity?  What happened to your simple burgers?  Fortunately Shake Shack's sticking to traditional ways.  Serving your roadside American classics with fries, milkshakes and your 50's burgers -- no posh spin on them, rather they just focused on using quality produce. And whilst their usual items are good, on Sunday they had the holy grail of burgers.

A collaboration between three-Michelin starred chef Massimo Bottura and culinary director of burger joint Shake Shack Mark Rosati resulted in the most sensational burger -- The Emilia. An Angus beef burger patty enriched with parmigiano reggiano, topped with thick slices of cotechino sausage and laden with salsa verde and balsamic mayonnaise -- all encased in your classic humble burger bun.  It was divine.  Those sauces, especially the balsamic mayonnaise, sweet and sharp, with the rich and salty meat patty -- gorgeous.  Sorry, guys, it was a one time thing that involved queuing in Covent Garden on a Sunday morning. 


Check out Shake Shack all over the world
and check out Massimo Bottura's restaurant, Osteria Francescana, in Modena.