Meat & Shake (Restaurant)

Top 10 things we learnt about Meat and Shake restaurant:
 
1) It’s an alien concept sending a Fluid London critic to a restaurant that doesn't serve alcohol, then again Meat and Shake is no ordinary burger joint. It serves halal burgers and you can count the number of places in London that do that on one hand.

2) Marketing halal isn't sexy. The word isn't shouted about on their menu. The owners clearly don’t want to alienate non-Muslims, but have they missed a trick with the ethnically diverse local residents?

3) The masterstroke is opening Meat and Shake in Tooting Bec. It is transplanting a Hoxton hipster hangout to an area littered with non-descript restaurants from the Indian subcontinent. In fact, it’s directly opposite the UK flagship for Chicken Cottage.

4) The décor here makes their neighbours look distinctly Jurassic: comfortable red leather booths, exposed light bulbs to illuminate their sign and even a Moose’s head named Claude.

5) The Darwinian evolution of the Tooting Bec dining scene continues with their menu with dishes likes truffle shuffle burger, rosemary fries and basil infused créme brulee milkshakes.

6) I've always had a magnetic attraction to pulled pork, so my eyes were immediately drawn to the rib'n cheese with its pulled beef rib. Flavoursome, tender and no pesky bones to deal with, it was a delightful surprise to find burger heaven deep in South London.

7) Part of their secret? They are supplied by Macken Bros of Selfridges and the beef is dry aged for 35 days. If it was my last supper tomorrow, their burgers would be high on my “to devour” list.

8) You would’ve thought it might be sacrilegious to add more sauce to your ideal burger, but they do have an array of curious sounding sauces on the tables: psycho juice; red savina and fat bastard; bear bite

9) To make up for the lack of alcoholic beverages, they have a whole page devoted to milkshakes. Conceive an inconceivable flavour and the chances are it’s probably on the menu. I went for the relatively prosaic mango and coconut. Momentarily I did trick myself into believing that I was at some tropical island rather than the borough of Wandsworth.

10) My one piece of advice to Meat and Shake is to shout out about halal loud and proud, as they've definitely put the cool into Tooting Bec....read more