Lucie Loves… Food // #Triedandtasted | My first time at Burger & Lobster, Harvey Nichols, Knightsbridge with @_MissWong
It was just before the New Year when I visited the recently opened Burger & Lobster restaurant on the fifth floor on London’s Harvey Nichols with my friend, Pauline.
We arrived rather late and quite peckish after eye-wateringly expensive cocktails at the Mandarin Oriental hotel.
I was delighted to find out that this is the kind of place where they don’t take reservations, so we were able to get a table pretty easily. However, please note: it was a week night and quite late so I guess the weekend might be pretty manic and you may have to queue.
The beauty of the Burger & Lobster deal is exactly that. You can order a burger OR lobster. No fuss. They’re all served with chips and salad too, at a cost of £20. Now for those of you who don’t live in London and might think £20??! Twenty squidlings is actually quite cheap for a meal out in London - the capital is quite extortionate when it comes to food, rent and drinks. But oh well!
I think this would be a great place for dining out with friends, perhaps a birthday party or other celebratory shindig, as everyone would know what they owed. Simple. No quibbling over bills.
Pauline ordered a tasty lobster roll, which comes in a brioche bun. I ordered the grilled lobster and fries. I felt a bit silly asking for a burger on my first visit. But who would?
I’ve only ever had lobster a handful of times in my life. So I’m no connoisseur, but I do know good food when I taste it. The first time I ate it was when JMG took me on a date to Bentleys fish & oyster bar. It was very romantic.
The second was when we went to Paros last summer and found a great little rooftop restaurant called Franca Scala that looked like it did a mean lobster dish and it certainly delivered the goods.
I’m yet to be disappointed when ordering lobster. Have I just been lucky? My preference is to have it grilled as opposed to boiled. I must confess that it was only on my third time eating it - whilst at Burger & Lobster with Pauline - that I found out that the best bit of the lobster is supposedly the claw meat. They were so tasty!
Lobster is definitely a treat as it’s by no means cheap, although the prices are known to fluctuate. At Bentleys it was £24.50 for half a lobster, in Paros it was around 50 euros for a whole one to share and at Burger and Lobster just £20.
I found an article in the New Yorker that talks about an increase in the number of restaurants pairing lobster with other lower-priced items to attract new/more customers. James Surowiecki, from the New Yorker, wrote that by serving lobster with other cheaper side dishes like fries, salad or mac ‘n’ cheese or dressing it up as a 'hipster favourite high-end lobster roll’ they can exploit the luxury of lobster but keep other costs down but not do the lobstermen out of business.
Interesting stuff!
I’d quite like to try oysters next… but I’m a bit scared/squeamish.
If you’ve got any London restaurant, cafe or food market recommendations that JMG and I should try, please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.
Photography © Lucie Kerley