I once spent too much time with too many interior architects over too many days who were all pitching their ideas for our new office fit out. By day three I’d had enough and asked one of them if they had any original ideas to present. Somewhat bemused and definitely insulted, through gritted teeth, the interior architect asked what I possibly meant.
Minimalistic, natural materials, natured textures, water features, hangars instead of lobbies, an affair with glass and elevators that read my mind to take me to the right floor. I may even have suggested that the offices in the London office scene (at that time) were all poor cousins to the design of the Apple store.
Burger & Lobster reminded me a little bit of that. To my thinking it was a restaurant that should be filled with lawyers, accountants and bankers all lunching with clients and each other. I’m a lawyer and it looked like a place designed for us.
The cement, the low hanging bulbs, the exposed kitchen and long parade of a bar and a noisy buzz are all things that professionals swarm to because they’re perceived ‘hip’ but contain little risk. A safe bet to take clients to if you were bored of the same chains that loiter around the professionals’ offices.
I wished that I’d now gone to the original Mayfair version that popped-up out of nowhere, with the queues, and the excitement that the really good pop-ups fizz with. The Dean Street permanent home is over-gentrified but certainly ticks all the boxes that interior architects and restaurant consultants will tell you to tick to appeal to the masses; the masses who are prepared to drop £20 for either a lobster or a lobster roll or a hamburger with fries and salad.
But the Soho location kept the suited and booted brigade at bay and installed in this massive room (deceptively small from the front) was a pick and mix clientele all enjoying the real attraction. There is no escaping that the food was intensely good.
I had the lobster stuffed and crammed into the brioche-y sweet bun that was plaster scraped with buttery-ness – that fat holding it all together I’m sure. At the fixed £20 price, I’d avoid the burger and dive into the lobster roll or if mess doesn’t bother you (nor wearing a plastic bib) the lobster in shell.
Burger & Lobster | 36-38 Dean Street, Soho, London, W1D 4PS
westbright.xyz 