Exterior
Where Paperino’s used to trade, Handmade’s interior has beautiful tiling and cornicing, to which they’ve seen fit to bolt-on caging and the obligatory overdose of filament lightbulbs. I found it completely soulless.
Burger
One of the very friendly waiters, who had shown me to a table next to the cage-work, ran me through the menu in detail, which was appreciated. The breadth of their core range is impressive and augmented by specials. I was in simple mood so settled upon a cheeseburger and chips. Of course, I had to then go and place my order at the counter where I was furiously upsold, but to no avail.
Chips
The chips were pretty good, but there was an absolute boat-load of them. The portion was easily enough for two people.
After a final round of trying to get me to buy more stuff, with full-on table service now in operation, I was left to contemplate matters. It was their first day of business on which I was visiting, so I’ll be nice and not give a scoring review, but I think you can work out that it would not be brimming with points.
So overall, in a highly competitive market, the Handmade Burger Company has a mountain to climb to get anywhere near the type of quality that will lure customers away from their neighbours. The whole experience needs huge improvement.
I ate: cheese burger and chips
I drank: water
I wore: brown suit
Total bill: £10.70
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I went there yesterday, and they’ve got a ‘new’ menu- I thought it was pretty expensive, £16 (although I had a hangover to suppress so I’d gone No-Holds-Barred-all-the-trimmings)
The Rosemary salt chips made the ketchup redundant (yummy, although it had a few teeth breakingly big bits of sea salt, I thought I was going to pull broken filling from my mouth).
The spinach and lentil burger wasn’t full of flavour but had plenty relish etc so you wouldn’t notice or complain too much, also I added avocado to mine as well. The morning roll with sesame on it was ‘fine’.
The corn on the cob was pretty enjoyable, chargrilled (I think) before it got too burnt.
I did think the serving arrangements were a bit convoluted as well, and I got placed on the other side of the metal grilles from another group eating, so in terms sound of levels I was effectively sharing a table with them. They were short of a knife and I was tempted to pass one through the grille like we were in some kind of prison break caper. Thankfully there was no touching.
Good to know, Kempo. The cages in these places are just weird. And I hear Byron Burger is due to open on West George Street. When will the burger madness end…? 😉