It is not the crossover anyone can truly have thought London was missing. Crosstown doughtnuts have partnered with Burger and Lobster for a collaboration. A pudding, perhaps? A milkshake of sorts? No. They've put two doughnuts in lieu of the bun, with a triple stacked bacon-and-blue-cheese burger in between.
To be clear here: that's two full-sized glazed doughnuts, trimmed a touch to make them look mildly bun-like, bookending three (yes, three) full burger patties, with bacon, melted blue cheese and some red onions thrown in for good measure. It is a monster.
In fact, when Mary Shelley described Frankenstein, she painstakingly forged the image of a creator in our minds — and I can almost picture the Burger & Lobster x Crosstown chef flicking his switch on this burger, and saying with a machiavellian grin: “Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil?”
It's a towering behemoth of a burger, intimidating in its heft. It's so large it casts a shadow; I wouldn't be surprised if it has its own time zone. And at 4pm on a Wednesday, after lunch at a nearby Italian, I'm worried that I'll be seeing my fettuccine alfredo again.
The smell of a slightly warm doughnut is an infinitely pleasing thing, as is the waft of cheese melted over meat, but together? The experience is more than a little jarring at first. Nerves mount.
The first question is: how to eat it? Perhaps a snake with a jaw that unhinges could reasonably be expected to tackle such a thing. But me? My mouth doesn't do that. The trick, as it turns out, is pressing down on the top doughnut, opening wide, closing your eyes, and hoping for the best.
This doughnut burger (burgnut? doughger?) shouldn’t exist, and it definitely shouldn’t work, but — largely because Crosstown has opted for a plain glazed doughnut — weirdly, it does. Though I dread to think what a version made with jam or Biscoff doughnuts would be like.
The anatomy of the thing is what takes the project from the realm of the gimmick to something Londoners can actually consume. To any right-minded eater, three patties in a burger is too many. It’s comically gluttonous and needlessly excessive. In Britain, we've become accustomed to a double burger patty (see: Black Bear, or the new Supernova). It's an ideal meat-to-bun ratio. Three patties, on the other hand, is what an American would order.
And yet here, three is the right number of patties: it’s only with that third beef patty that the requisite meatiness is delivered to counteract the doughnut-delivered sugar hit. Any fewer and the burger would be a kind of horrifying dessert.
The bacon carries a lot of salinity too. It’s shatteringly crisp and it needs to be; this is only kind of texture here. With a soft doughnut, soft meat and soft blue cheese, without the bacon this could easily have become a kind of meat porridge. And no-one can be ready for that.
My advice, try it for yourself. This wasn’t the sick-making monster I thought it might be. On a stomach filled with nothing more than two strong drinks, I’m confident I could polish a whole one off.
But best to show restraint. Collect your most zealous and intrepid dining buddy, steel yourself with libations, and order one to share. Don a bib or some weather-proof outerwear — this burger drips — and tuck in. I’ll wager it’s wildly better than you anticipate.
