Byron Burger

Time to see if this upmarket chain can hold it's own.

Now I've never really heard of Byron burgers before they came to Norwich, I was just told it was a London thing by many of my chums who are from that region. Being a direct competitor for GBK and being positioned directly opposite on the Chapelfield plain, I was intrigued to find out how it compared. First thing I noted was that it's certainly priced for London, with a can of their craft brew setting you back £5.95. It packed about as much flavour as a can of soda water. If you're an avid beer fan, give this one a miss.

The Burger

So what did I have? As the BurgerMan I have to go big so I opted for the 'Double bacon cheese': Two 6oz patties, Byron cheese, bacon, pickles, ketchup and American mustard. All for a fairly hefty £12.50. After having looked on their website the burger does also have a notice that it contains sulphur dioxide (aka E220) as well, what a lovely addition. I've never known any company that says they make 'proper hamburgers' to consider E220 to be a 'proper ingredient'. Quite why a fresh burger would need preservatives in it I'm not sure and quite frankly at that price it should all be fresh. Enough of that and on to the actual taste. As per I asked for medium rare, which as stated by the tiny cocktail flag, was very much medium rare.

The meat was incredibly tender and very moist with a decent level of seasoning throughout, so hats off to the chef it was a well cooked slab of meat. Apparently they have a unique blend of cuts of meat for their burgers which adds to the flavour of them. Now I will point out here, in order to actually get a proper taste of the meat I did deconstruct it slightly to get a piece of the burger not smothered in cheese or mustard, but I'll get to that later.

Here we are then, later. The cheese: creamy, gooey and melts to instagram perfection. What a photo can't tell you though, is how little flavour it contained. It is supposedly a blend of cheeses to create a rich American style cheese. Creamy it was, to the point of claggy and I felt I had to chew on for several seconds even once the burger had ventured further down my alimentary canal. It left the mouth with something I like to call the 'Phantom Food Effect', whereby it seemingly leaves the mouth feeling as though it's still ram packed with cheese sauce even after you've swallowed. In my humble opinion American plastic cheese is never something that should be attempted to replicate and they would be better off using a combination of gruyere and cheddar cheese to create a rich creamy and most importantly cheesey blend.

So this intense creamy sauce was cut through with vast quantities of american mustard and pickles. To the point where it did overpower the flavour of the meat. Hence why I deconstructed to fully assess the burger.

Now on to the bacon, something that should be a highlight in a bacon cheese burger am I right? Well if it wasn't for the fact I could see a small strip when I was deconstructing, I honestly wouldn't have realised it was there. There was no real flavour to it and any there was was obliterated by mustard. The over indulgence of the cheese soaked up any crispness that it may have had in the beginning so it had little texture as well.

The bun was nice though. Very soft and fluffy. Could of been toasted though.

The Sides

One word. Pricey. I stupidly opted for cheesy fries with a tag of £4. These were smothered in that same uncheesy sauce so a once crisp fry ended up just being a bit soggy and limp after a few minutes. In hindsight I'd always opt for normal fries. 

Overall

If you like that crappy tasteless american cheese and fancy remortgaging your house in order to take your loved ones out for an overpriced mediocre burger that tastes not too dissimilar to 5 Guys then I'd strongly recommend this place. In total the meal cost £22.45 which is quite a lot considering the amount of places that do burger offers with drinks for 10-15 pounds. The meat itself was nice but was hugely overpowered in texture by claggy cheese sauce and in flavour by large quantities of American mustard and pickles. Unfortunately upsetting the delicate burger yin yang flavour balancing act. A bonus was it did come with a large pickle on the side which you can't go wrong with. Potentially the other burgers that don't have the cheese sauce or bacon on might be better, but I doubt I will venture back here to find out given how unimpressed I was with their signature dish. As much as I hate recommending chain restaurants, if I had to choose I would actually venture across the hipster filled courtyard and go to GBK, or go hungry.

5/10

Byron Burger

Chapelfield Plain

NR2 1SZ