[Meat Free January] The Diner Halloumi Burger

Another week, another veggie burger on the road through my Meat Free January 2013. 

The Diner Halloumi Burger

It's 11 January so that means I've managed to keep off meat for a whole 11 days. 

I've moved through shock, denial and anger to pervasive depression and am generally feeling sorry for myself as I contemplate my veggie fate for January. Lucky there's a graph for it, so I look forward to moving towards reluctant acceptance...

The Burger Me! meat free January change curve - I'm getting there.

As I'm getting a bit bored of stir fries, I've decided I'll go for my second veggie burger of the month, and so am hitting up the Halloumi Burger from The Diner on Ganton St., Soho. Let's see how it fares...

Halloumi Burger - £6.90 Extra onions - £0.50
Cheese fries - £3.10
Mac 'n' cheese - £2.60
Oreo Milkshake - £4.70

The Diner Halloumi burger - showing off a bit of colour.

The halloumi 'burger' is composed of the standard Diner/Rinkoff burger bun (a brilliant squishy, glazed white bun), toasted and filled on one side with beef tomato, three thick strips of grilled halloumi, grilled red pepper, and on the other side with a basil sauce and a half fan of avocado. It's presented open, as per other Diner Burgers and is an impressive display of vivid red, white and green – if it were French, they'd probably call it a tricolore. 

Diner Halloumi Burger getting it's squish on.

And it does have a Mediterranean influence. The basil, red pepper, halloumi combo is a classic, and in this burger it works really well. It's also sweeter than my previous Byron veggie burger. The pungent basil sauce is freshly blitzed and spread thickly on the top bun. The charbroiled red pepper also adds sweetness, though it suffers by being in a single piece – one bite pulls it all out – cut it into strips and you'd have a better experience. The Halloumi is not as 'squeaky' as I'd normally like, but the flavour is mellow, and it adds a good bit of resistance within the ensemble. 

Cheese fries are great, a mass of cheddar and red Leicester melted into a gooey mess over The Diner's excellent French Fries, and the mac 'n' cheese is good – though the mac 'n' cheese at Byron is a step up from this with an altogether more savoury kick to it.

Mac 'n' Cheese and Cheese Fries...mmm...cheese.

Meat Free January sucks...

I also had a shake. I've loved The Diner's secret shakes menu for ages now, so much so that I included them in my Time Out piece at the end of2012, and my favourite non-hard shake is the Oreo – a fantastic combination of chocolate and vanilla ice cream with nutella and malt.

All in, I've enjoyed my meal and although I'm all dairy-ed out, I spot the group of five in the booth next to me with their chilli cheese fries and Diablo Burgers, and have a massive pang of jealousy. At least this time I spare myself the ignominy of sobbing into my mac 'n' cheese.

Only 20 days to go before I can eat meat again – why not help me through my pain and sponsor me for MS Society.