My local pub serves Britain’s best burger – I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I support The Montpelier on Choumert Road in all its endeavours, just as it has supported me through celebrations, hangovers, breast-feeding emergencies and excruciating family lunches. But I’m not sure I want it to become famous for burgers.
The sense of being a secret known only to a few is what makes a great local. While it’s hardly news that Peckham – with its great pubs, restaurants, independent shops and rooftop bars – is London’s best neighbourhood, serving up the nation’s top meat bun is the kind of publicity it doesn’t need.
Let’s be honest, burgers are populist. There was a brief period in the 2010s – with the rise of chains like Gourmet Burger Kitchen – when it was fashionable to pretend there was more to the American staple than fast food. Then Chancellor George Osborne was ridiculed in 2013 for appearing “out-of-touch” by eating a Byron “poshburger” (yours for just £6.75 at the time).
These days, surely, we all accept that there is only so high that beef mince and bread can aspire. Burgers are for children, TikTok influencers and midnight drunks. Every good pub should have its share of punters like this, but like that seven per cent vol craft IPA, they should be taken in moderation.
Yet, when The Montpellier in Peckham won the ‘Champion of Champions’ prize at the National Burger Awards for its Aged Cheeseburger, I had to show up. The Whole Beast pop-up kitchen won the award after competing against previous National Burger Award winners from the past ten years.
I ordered it to an outdoor table on perhaps the last sunny day of 2024 and it was delicious. The bread is squishy like a marshmallow but not too sweet like the brioche buns Byron made ubiquitous. The first mouthful tasted of kebab van burger sauce and took me straight back to student nights out – which must surely be the intention. But bite again and you appreciate meat mature enough that you can taste the grass, soil and sunshine, crisped rather than left bloody. Pickles, smoked bone marrow and plastic American cheese that melts properly finish it off. At £12, it could be an inflation index all by itself, but you can talk to Osborne and his successors about that.
Chefs Sam Bryant and Alicja Specjalna describe the Whole Beast as a ‘nose to tail live fire concept’, and prides themselves on having ‘a plan’ for every part of the animal and acting like “pyromaniac sommeliers” to match different woods, flames and smoke to different meats. They’re serving great burgers at a superb pub – but you should probably leave it to the locals.