Restaurants / Reviews
Honest Burgers – restaurant review
We do love a plucky independent underdog in Bristol. It’s why there were no tears shed when MeatLiquor departed from Stokes Croft or Byron from the Clifton Triangle.
In Bristol’s casual dining scene, chains have felt the brunt of the closures recently. But still they come.
Co-owner Tom Barton laid down the gauntlet months before Honest Burgers opened on Clare Street in what was most recently TinCan when he claimed that Honest make the best burgers in the UK.
is needed now More than ever
Now this is very un-Bristol and no doubt raised the heckles of some of our premiere burger restaurants, two of which – Chomp and Burger Theory – are only a few hundred yards away from this latest London interloper which has more than 20 restaurants across the capital and two others in Cambridge and Reading.
Honest Burgers, however, which was founded in Brixton in 2011, is different from a typical chain.
I have never seen a chain so fully committed to local partnerships – as emphasised by the drinks menu alone which sees collaborations with Good Chemistry in St Philip’s for a tropical house beer, and Psychopomp in Kingsdown for a delicious house gin.
Honest Burgers have collaborated with Good Chemistry for their house beer and Psychopomp for their house gin
But what of the burgers? Well, these guys know what they’re doing and have already proved popular at a pop-up in the Robin Hood on St Michael’s Hill and when their food truck called into Good Chemistry’s brewery.
The Bristol burger (£12.95) contains bacon, Westcombe smoked cheddar and cheese curds, shoestring fries, Pilton cider and bacon gravy, white onion and pickles, and is served with skin-on rosemary chips.
It’s a West Country twist on the Canadian dish poutine and is a marker of what Honest can do, with the beef from the Scottish Highlands served pink and juicy.
In a bouncy glazed bun, the burger oozes out its ingredients and is one to relish without fear of dripping its contents onto your lap.
The Bristol burger is a West Country take on poutine
The skin-on chips were also impressive in a restaurant that has arrived in a corner of Bristol that with Pho and Franco Manca has turned into a small bunker of well-liked chains.
In the concertina windows, a co-owner of a Bristol restaurant that has recently opened its second site was waiting for a takeaway burger and chips.
“I just love Honest Burgers,” he said. And it’s hard to disagree.
Honest Burgers, 21 Clare Street, Bristol, BS1 1XA
0117 203 3648
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