Frequently found at Nottingham Street Food Club, we put their patties to the test...
What is the quintessential dirty burger? Close your eyes and picture one. In my mind’s eye it’s the sort of lightly-greasy, sticky, cheesy, properly squidgy burger I imagine Bill and Ted might pick up from a classic Californian drive-thru on their excellent adventure, or perhaps the “Big Kahuna Burger” that piqued Samuel L’s appetite in Pulp Fiction.
It’s a fantasy caricature of a burger, dripping juice through the bag held in a clenched fist, with which we’re all so familiar and yet one that’s so hard to find in reality, especially on British soil. Although well-established names in the city are great at piling myriad toppings onto burgers in the name of variety and novelty, it’s Secret Burger Club that delivers the near-fantasy burger.
The West Coast (£7) is the no-faffing-about classic: beef patty, American cheese, onions and pickle and a rate-good slathering of ‘secret sauce’. If you insist on more complex toppings, The Duke (£7.50) won’t let you down, adding stilton cheese, bacon and onion jam to the stack. The Halloumi (in crunchy batter) burger (£7) on offer for veggie visitors is better than most too, and because you’ll want more of the ‘secret sauce’ in and around your face you can get a portion of their excellent and veggie-friendly fries loaded with it for a fiver.
All the burgers from a menu featuring regular specials tick the right boxes: squidgy, sticky and tasty-as-hell. Respect to them for using local beef from Clipstone, and searching high and low for the perfect buns (eventually tracked down in neighbouring Leicestershire). Not everyone has honed the skill of proper US-style burger building as well as Secret Burger Club. While other places keep the crowds coming by heaping on the toppings, too much choice rarely results in the best burger. Leave it to the pros. Keep your peepers on their Instagram for updates on where and when you can get your mitts on one of their bad boys.
We have a favour to ask
LeftLion is Nottingham’s meeting point for information about what’s going on in our city, from the established organisations to the grassroots. We want to keep what we do free to all to access, but increasingly we are relying on revenue from our readers to continue. Can you spare a few quid each month to support us?
