Cardiff's Ultimate Burger? Chucks- Street Food Cardiff, The Depot, Dumballs Road

The Depot, then. Street Food Cardiff. The target: Chucks. Taking care to omit the erroneous apostrophe, we were in search of the main burgery attraction.

The Grill & Barrel: Bun- A fluffy, buttery brioche which accentuates the peanut butter

Patty-First impressions can be deceiving. Pillowed in its brioche bed, what the patty lacks in diameter, it makes up for in height. The patty looks a little overdone but the beautifully charred exterior only encases a wonderfully pink centre like a Turkish delight made from the finest Welsh beef. Juicy yet with that crunch from the outside of the burger, these are some damn fine patties. Damn fine.

Condiments-a slathering of peanut butter, which not only aroused my curiosity but aroused my taste buds. It sounds wrong, but it tastes so right. If you can put a patty in a doughnut, by heck you can put peanut butter on the bun!

 

Toppings-with Trealy bacon topping your burger, you just can't go wrong. The passion and history that goes into Trealy's products is outstanding and the bacon adds a whole new dimension to the burger. That salty smack worked so well with the lushness of the peanut butter. Take a little read about Trealy on my blog here: http://thegrillandbarrel.com/2014/05/02/trealy-farm-a-british-breed-of-charcuterie/

Sides-No sides accompany the burger.

Drinks-there are no drinks directly on offer from Chucks but when you've got a bar serving Pipes, you're onto a winner, especially when it's serving chocolate ales that go together with the peanut butter in the burger better than Bill Clinton goes together with his interns.

Atmosphere-The Depot is like Marmite. You love it or you hate it but there's no denying that the atmosphere is alive in there. 

Overall- These aren't namby pamby gourmet burgers served on a wooden chopping board with a skewer through the top. These aren't made to win beauty pagents. This is street food and they scream Americana drive-in burgers with their branded wrapping, take-away kissing-boothesque stall and their no-nonsense attitude. 

These aren't meant to be ogled at, these are meant to be gobbled up. Quickly. And they were.

The Plate Licked Clean: Unfortunately mine was far from hot- I'd be struggling to accurately describe it as lukewarm, to be honest. I had a humble cheese and bacon burger. I left the Thanksgiving soecial to m'colleague.  I'm a huge Elvis fan: it's just that I draw the line at emulating certain of his choices. Like peanut butter on my burger. Or wearing satin jumpsuits. Not quite yet, anyway. In short, this was not a hunk of burning love.

Perhaps these aren't ideal conditions for this kind of cooking: on the inaugural SFC they seemed an awful lot hotter (I'm fairly sure I was asked to take a ticket and wait a few minutes while they cooked it fresh; that night they had had a supply issue and weren't using their typical patties). Whether it was the sheer demand of numbers that had them straining a bit on the night I don't know, but there were serried ranks of made-up burgers wrapped and ready when we were there. These are not going to win beauty pageants. They look a little lumpen, a little functional, compared to some of the tanned beauties preening themselves in the area. There are more bronzed, more lissom lovelies parading themselves for your attention in this city, with more than one eye trained coquettishly on your Instagram.

But... and it's a big but.

And I love big 'buts'.

This is the key bit. Looks aren't everything. This is a spankingly well-cooked burger. Not well-done, but presented with a smoky char and (sound the satisfaction klaxon!) cooked medium as standard. This is, sadly, less common than you'd expect. A properly thick patty, thick enough to have a charred crust built up while still retaining that extremely welcome, virginally blushing insterior.

The bacon- Trealy Farm- was no mere makeweight. Thick-cut, smoky and good enough to be the star of a cooked breakfast in its own right, it did this burger proud.

Our Chucks' burgers weren't the most visually appealing I've met; as The Grill and Barrel suggested, they are meant to be eaten in a warehouse, possibly (probably?) while standing up. They don't photograph nearly as well as others, for example.

A good-a very good- burger. Free of hype and window dressing and general titivation , with no flourishes or flummery to distract you from the essential nature of what's in front of you. No big bronzed brioche, no aesthetic trills and frills to seduce. Just a damned good burger.

Bigger isn't necessarily better in burgerworld: for example, Bleecker St might look underpowered next to many examples. But a patty this flavoursome, supplied by Dyfed's (and Riverside Market's) Cig Lodor, in bread baked in-house, belies its somewhat pedestrian appearance to pack a real texture and flavour punch. I'd love to see what they could do, given their own premises and a good run at a few side dishes; whichever step they take next, it'll be worth keeping more than an eye out.

Look- I didn't even use the 'can't help falling in love...' line. I didn't say they're always on my mind. But... Chucks the name of my latest flame. Recommended.