[Review] Cheeseburger from the Coach and Horses, Clerkenwell

The Coach and Horses is a small pub situated off Farringdon St. in Clerkenwell. It's a classic old man style london boozer, but attached is a more upmarket kitchen. 

Cheeseburger from the Coach & Horses, Clerkenwell

I was meeting an old friend for a couple of drinks and clocked the burger on the menu - so here's how it went down.

Price:

Cheeseburger - £9.50

Presentation:

Ok. The burger at The Coach & Horses is served on a wooden board with accompanying bowl of skin on fries. It's been spiked through the core to hold it together, and this piece of on-board engineering is definitely needed as the burger has been built up to teetering point and the patty sits on an uneven handful of mixed lettuce leaves.

Toppings: 

OK. In-spite of being only semi-melted, the cheese is nicely gummy and stuck solid to the burger. Thinly sliced gherkins with good depth of dill flavour top a ring of sweet red onion. Underneath the handful of leaves is a frustrating distraction, along with a slice of watery beef tomato. 

Under the lid - The Coach and Horses Cheeseburger toppings

Meat:

Aged, but over-seasoned. The beef in the patty was well aged, but sadly any flavour was destroyed by over-seasoning. I also suspect there was some pre-salting of the minced beef before cooking as the patty was overworked and slightly spongey.  

Cheeseburger cut-through

Mmm...juicy

Bun:

Excellent. The Coach & Horses cheeseburger is served with a toasted brioche bun. No problems here and it sucked up the juicy punishment with aplomb. This was easily the best part of the burger and it gets my Bun Win accolade. 

Accessories:

Excellent. The cheeseburger is accompanied by a portion of skin-on chips which are excellent. As an aside, I'm getting increasingly impressed by the standard of chips and fries on menus at the moment, it's a little thing that makes me immensely happy when the establishment gets it right.

Overall rating: 6.5/10

The Coach and Horses is a lovely pub, and certainly one I'd visit again, I had a great catch up with a friend I hadn't seen for a while, and their selection of lagers and ales is quite good. I would think twice about having the burger again, and if I did, I would ask for it to be LIGHTLY seasoned as too much salt killed what could have been a solid attempt at a burger. Perhaps it's a tactic to sell more beer - I certainly got hammered.

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