7/10 - Firefly, Old Bailey, City of London

Location: Firefly is a cool cocktail bar and restaurant located on Old Bailey, close to Smithfield's Market, and St. Paul's tube station. 

Price:

£9.50 (plus 50p for bacon and 50p for cheese!)

Presentation:

Great. The burger came out pre-bunned (that is now a real word!) and it looked really appetizing! Good amount of mixed salad, nice dollop of coleslaw, and a decent portion of chips.

Toppings:

Comme ci, comme ca. Tomato and little gem lettuce underneath burger, and bacon and cheese on top. Smoked bacon was both delicious and generous, and the cheddar cheese really complemented the flavour nicely. The tomato and lettuce were disappointing, the lettuce being single, little gem leaves which were hard to bite off cleanly and pulled out during eating, and the tomato made the bun soggy and was relatively flavourless.

Bread:

Not good. Plain, low quality bap dusted with flour. Mine was toasted (a little too toasted!) to give it some body, but sadly over the course of the meal it compressed against the burger, and with the tomato ended up as an unappetizing, soggy lump...bread fail.

Meat:

Fairly good. Juicy, flavoursome and nice char-grilled grooves, but just a little over-cooked.

Plate Accessories:

Good. Delicious creamy, peppery coleslaw, tasty and crisp chips with skin on (annoyingly they were small and a little fiddly) but tasted good.

Overall rating: 7/10

So overall this is not a bad burger - let down by the bun fail, and poor choice of lettuce to go in the burger. The cost is just shy of £10, but I added bacon and cheese which pushed it just over the limit. The good news, however, is that if you go on a Tuesday they take 20% off your bill! Firefly is a good option for a reasonable burger.