So it’s a summer food special and probably the thing to do would be to review
a lovely new Italian restaurant with a bit of outside space where it’s all
tinkling glasses of prosecco and mwah, mwah, darling, you must try the
boooo-rrrr-a-t-a, it’s sssssimply divine, and oh, the tomatoes, and I do so
love dining alfresco, and linguine alla vongole per me, grazie miiiille…
But, in fact, I want to hit you with a summer food scandal.
Because, let’s face it, summer isn’t really about paying through the nose for
imported delicacies that have flown further than you are likely to all year.
And if you can afford to go to the top places, then one of the things you’re
going to be wanting to pay for is four walls and a roof. Eating outside is
for homeless people and cigarette addicts, and especially so when the
weather is hot. I can just about get hip to a burnt sausage or a bit of hard
baked potato scoffed in gloves on Bonfire Night, but when the weather warms
up then, like the Southern Europeans whose food we turn to at such times,
the sensible ladies and gentleman head straight for the cool indoors.
Except – and we’re going to get to the scandal now – when we are at big
outdoor events. And by “big outdoor events”, I really mean cricket. But also
a bit of horse racing. And then maybe a low-key music, art or literary
festival. But mostly cricket. And the scandal is not about dodgy outside
catering from vans in general, because we know about that, and we plan
accordingly: we can either be arsed to pack a quality picnic or we decide to
go unencumbered, eat well before we leave, and accept that come
mid-afternoon, if we’ve had a few drinks, we’ll be eating something warm and
shrivelled and smelling of socks from a plastic sheath, spilling ketchup
down our shirt and throwing half of it in the bin.
But there is a thing afoot these days where temporary fast-food shacks at
sports matches and concerts and the like are setting themselves up as
“quality” options. People are getting fussier, the caterers realise, and
with chains like Leon and Hummus Bros and the Ultimate and Gourmet Burger
companies doing so well, they are thinking that maybe there will be profit
in providing this sort of fast-but-good food at public events.
I was at Lord’s for the third day of the Test against West Indies the other
day and, around teatime, went strolling for some scran. Round the back of
the Grand Stand was the usual collection of vans, including one called the
Fine Burger Co. Well, you can see what they are trying to do there, can’t
you? Ultimate Burger, Gourmet Burger… Fine Burger. And at £6.50 a pop
(compared to, say, £2 for a big sausage roll from the van next door), it was
clearly going to be quality.
So I handed over £13 for two cheeseburgers – one for me, one for my girlfriend
– and took delivery. Ah, what a joyful summer moment: a temperature in the
middle 60s, a light breeze, blue sky, the whiff of newly mown grass in the
air, watching cricket on a weekday while the Muggles are at work, England
about to win the first Test of the summer, and a premium burger in my hand,
fat, juicy, with that red, smoky flavour and the hot, cheesy mouth coat we
crave.
Except, it felt strangely cold, and hard. I pushed away the napkin and pressed
the bun. Stone-cold. Fridge cold. Who keeps burger buns in the fridge? And
the cheese looked as cold as a dead mouse on a foggy morning too: utterly
unmelted, a rigid yellow edge at the corner of the bun. The menu had said
“Cheddar”, but this was as like unto the Kraft cheese slices of my youth as
any piece of cheese I had ever seen (and nothing wrong with that, in itself,
for a slice of hot, melting, yellow processed cheese is just what a burger
needs, it’s just the misleading description that is so irritating, and the
inability to achieve even that meanest of culinary accomplishments, a bit of
melting).
Still, I’d shelled out now, so I bit in. Inside the cold bun and cold
cheese was a warmish beefburger of the frozen, 12-for-£2 variety you see
advertised in the window of Iceland. The texture was stiff and mealy, the
flavour grey, sad, doggy.
The sun was out, the sky was blue, with not a cloud to spoil the view… but it
was raining. Raining in my burger.
How dare they? How very dare they? There was nothing “fine” about it. It was
totally not fine at all. It was not even mildly okay. And there was nothing
to merit a £6.50 price tag either. This burger was identical,
i-freakin-dentical, to every crap-awful turdburger I’ve ever had outside a
football ground, except that those ones came in a floury white bap and were
slathered in greasy onions, cost £2, exactly fulfilled my expectations of
them and were thus totally delicious. This, on the other hand, had a
theoretically interesting bun and a sliver of salad, but so failed to
deliver on its promises as to constitute the most disappointing thing I have
put in my mouth since Robin Stopford dared me to lick a science lab locust
in 1979.
This is the excellent foppery of the modern food world, to spy a gap in the market
for double-priced hamburgers with a positive adjective in front of them and
seek to plug it with the same old traditional rubbish, adding only the posh word
and the eye-watering price. It is very much the M&S marketing principle. You
take the same old product and identify that words like “organic” and “free
range” are playing well in the marketplace, but realise that legally
you can’t say that about your food so you just slide other, subjective and
essentially meaningless words into the template and hope that nobody will
notice. You know the sort of thing: “These are not just tomatoes, these are
red, round, bulbous, tomatoey tomatoes, with skins and a little green stalky
bit on.”
By the same token, the people from “Fine” had done nothing to their burger
except describe it erroneously and double the normal price tag. This was not
just a burger, this was a lavishly adjectived, preposterously
over-described, linguistically inflated but nutritionally thoroughly
bankrupt burger. It was an abomination, a horror, a downright summer food
scandal.
Esther and I hoicked our burgers straight into the bin – £13 down the tube,
which is the price of a two-course set lunch at any number of excellent
restaurants – and bought, with our remaining two pound coins, a sausage roll
from the sad old van next door. Excellent, it was. Flaky, greasy and hot,
with a pink, fatty flavour. The same as we used to eat in the bad old days
before the food revolution and all the more delicious for not being ashamed
of that.
As well as the Fine Burger Co, there also appeared to be other “Fine” food
vans in the area. There was definitely a “Fine Fish and Chips” and also, I
think, a “Fine Pies”, although I’m not certain of that. All I can say
is that, as you head off into the great outdoors for your summer fun, and
find yourself feeling a little peckish, just be wary of anything that
describes itself as “fine”. And, to be on the safe side, it’s
probably best not to take “great”, “excellent” or “tasty” too seriously
either.
What a funny world we have made for ourselves.
Fine Burger Co
Lord’s Cricket Ground and assorted other outdoor venues across Britain
Meat/fish: fine
Cooking: fine
Service: fine
Score: 0
