Burger Night at Joe Allen - Covent Garden, Monday July 3rd, 2013

I've written about Joe Allen before. Especially about what an awesome, friendly place it is and how great the burgers are there. A friend had booked tickets to the burger night event run by American food writer Daniel Young of the award-winning Young And Foodish website and ended up with two spare, so the wife and I joined to make four for the night.

Mr. Young organises regular events through his website, inviting punters to participate in comfort food themed nights. His Burger Mondays are over-subscribed successes on a regular basis and, due to excessive demand, the mid-summer outing to Joe Allen had been pushed to two nights. It was on the Tuesday that the four of us headed down to see what the fuss was about.

Now, Joe Allen and burgers are as much a part of Covent Garden as theatres. There is no getting around the fact that the burger is what a lot of people go there for. The atmosphere, staff and decor are nothing to sniff at either, making the offer of spare tickets an enticing one.

Mr. Young is a dab hand at organising food events. Merrily milling around between tables, offering opinions and topics for discussion amongst the diners, the evening was underway in a seamless and spritely fashion. Because of the number of tables and attendees, every table is made up of randomly assorted groups or couples which adds to the spirit of the event.

Without much ado, we were into the starters and boy were we excited. Buffalo chicken wing sliders with celery & apple salad is more or less the most appetising thing one can read on any menu (with maybe the exception of "pulled pork") so we were hankering to get stuck in. The sliders themselves were an absolute vision: chock full of greasy, deliciously tender chicken wing meat slathered in proper barbecue sauce (left).

Chicken wings are some of the juiciest, most flavoursome parts of the bird. They're also very cheap, which is why they're the base for most good home-made chicken stocks. However, removing the meat from the bones and covering them with sauce is a real touch of class. Combine this with the fresh well-balanced salad and blue cheese dressing on the side and you have one hell of a satisfying starter.

The main course was the standard main Joe Allen event: burger with bacon and cheese, onion inside and gherkin on the side, with skin-on fries in sharing bowls on the table. Amazing stuff as usual and we were so impressed/greedy that we tucked in so fast as to forget a photo. That said, I have taken Joe Allen burger photos before so I don't feel too bad about it. The burger, as ever, was a treat and about as good as you'll get in a proper London restaurant.

The dessert had excited me the second we saw the menu. Peach cobbler and clotted cream was a dish I was dying to get into. Cobbler is basically like a pie or a crumble except the top is made up of biscuit or dumpling. It's a wonderful thing but what we were presented with was a strange dish of stewed fruit with a sweet scone on top (right). It wasn't a traditional cobbler but a more modern interpretation, as Mr. Young explained.

Apparently the cobbler is under serious threat in the USA where crumbles are becoming ever more popular. If this was an effort on behalf of the kitchen to remind us how wonderful they can be, they did a good job. The balance was excellent, between spongy topping, soft fruit and a deliciously sweet note all the way through. The whole thing capped off a sensational evening of comfort food at a reasonable price.

Two things to take away from this: firstly, if you still haven't been to Joe Allen, it's high time you paid a visit there. Despite the recent sale of the premises, under new ownership it's still going strong and is the most fun place to eat if you want proper food in the west end. Secondly, Burger Mondays by Young And Foodish are a great event: well-run, properly-priced and damn fine burgers to boot.

Joe Allen