Smashin’ Burger, Mount Pleasant Food Market, reviewed

There are a lot of students in Liverpool. Much.

And while a diet of instant ramen, pasta and cheap lager has fueled generations of intrepid young minds, they sometimes want to branch out and even use some of that maintenance loan.

Around the corner from the Unite Students dig is the Mount Pleasant Food Market, an efficiently sized and cozy unit neatly carved into rooms with a large dining area behind.

Up the stairs and to the left is Zaman Crepes and Coffee, a quiet and nice place, and to the right is Safi’s Desserts, so it has the sweet stuff.

But this was lunchtime, and sweet stuff at 1pm is totally crazy in my book. When you have a craving, what’s better than a burger?

It’s fair to say that the burger trend has been, gone, come back around and stuck around this time, seemingly here to stay.

Personally, I like them more in style than the hockey thick steaks that were served at every place for what seemed like forever. “We make our steaks a little bloody”. Hmm, I’d rather you didn’t. They were almost impossible to complete, and often you didn’t want to. So the transition to ground beef flattened under a Victorian iron has well and truly taken place, feet planted and elbows out. On the one hand, I’m happy.

Burgers are one of the great inventions of the food world, but then you could say that sneakers are a boon to the fashion world, and there are plenty of shockers out there. You have to try them first, and so on to the Smashin’ Burger.

First, it is very reasonably priced. I got a £11.90 meal deal for all burgers, drinks and fries which shouldn’t put too much of a dent in any nicely balanced budget.

I chose the Classic Double Stack, which has a soothing name and includes pickles, American cheese, lettuce and burger sauce. It’s not reinventing the wheel, and it doesn’t need to be. That, chips and a sugary cup of what should now legally be called a “Full Fat Coke” and you’ve got pretty much everything you need. I was given a buzzer to let me know when it was ready and sat in the back. This is probably the best asset that Mount Pleasant Food Market has. It’s not huge, but certainly roomy enough for hordes of hungry or hungover students to come and hide from the world or block Chaos Theory or break Jude the Obscure. Or just a hamburger.

I sat on the upper level amidst bicycles covered in Sicilian lemons and roses, an odd choice of decor but very effective in helping you forget how close you are to Lime Street. Mount Pleasant appears to be a safe haven, and it does it well.

The buzzer rang and I went in to get it. It’s an efficient system that saves you standing in line or awkward milling around waiting for your order. You just sit and wait.

It’s a neat trio when it’s all laid out on a tray; a foil-wrapped burger, fries piled high and a cup of the brown-black good stuff. You always have to try the chip first, surely? The skin usually makes better potatoes in my opinion, there is more rotating oil to stick and crisp, and so it was in this case, a solid set of potatoes given a decent dusting of Cajun seasoning.

Now the hamburger itself. If you take each ingredient and give it the star treatment, it can turn into something that is truly more than your average run of the mill burger. There are a lot of possibilities; bun selection, how much cheese is too much cheese? A sensible sprinkling of pickles or so much that it almost feels sarcastic? And finally, do you slip a slab of tomato into it? Personally, I’d say no.

Smashin’ Burgers went with tomato and that’s it veryit’s easily fixable, no problem. As a bun, we chose an explosion, a heavily seeded top, a slightly sweet, slightly brioche-like and rather supple bread that can withstand two steaks. Much better than those bready barbecue buns that disintegrate on contact with any substance.

The patties themselves were certainly of good quality, well seasoned and crispy on the edges, which is certainly one of the most appealing aspects of burgers – you just don’t get that with a hockey puck. The American cheese – the kind that would survive a nuclear explosion – melted well into the steaks and did its job, binding the whole thing together to know and love.

However, their pickle game needs improvement. I found those mealy-mouthed pickle impersonators, window decorations. You want fatty chunks of shrink-wrapped pickles with this type of burger, the vinegar plays off the fatty beef. Again easily fixable. The hamburger sauce could lean more heavily on the dill, again a matter of contrast, otherwise the whole thing is too straightforwardly fatty.

All in all, though, more than a solid burger for a price that many sell very sorry imitations of. With a few tweaks and a little more boldness with the pickles and burger sauce, this could be a very good burger, one you keep to yourself so you don’t have to line up every time. And drop the tomato, only weirdos enjoy them on burgers.

Currently, the Mount Pleasant Food Market is a balanced event, not trying to be too many things (three is already hard enough). I think it made the right choice in making the burger a savory option – a lot of people don’t like burgers – and what they do, they do well. But they could make them even better with just a little extra ingenuity. And more pickles. A lot more pickles.

Smashin’ Burger, Mount Pleasant Food Market, 62 Mount Pleasant, L3 5SD