Emma Byron is making a name for themselves down south and they’ll be heading to Glasgow soon. We’d considered visiting them in London a year or two ago when we first heard about them. On this occasion we were in Manchester and looking for either Byron or Almost Famous – we stumbled upon Byron first, in the Deansgate area, which is handily placed for shopping and bars.
We ventured in with two friends for an end of trip splurge. Ranging from £6.75 to £9.95 for the burger alone, it was to be a splurge night.
Whilst checking out the menu, we munched some tortilla chips, with tomato salsa and guacamole (£3.75) – creamy guacamole and spicy salsa = thumbs up from us all!
We wanted beer and Byron have a craft beer selection – lots of cans (as you can see from our photos), my personal preference is always bottle over can though.
Anyway, onto the burgers…
Our eyes were blinded by some form of shiny white disc that the burgers were served on. We’re not quite sure what the mysterious item was but it certainly wasn’t a paper bag or plastic container.
Burgers-wise we ate:
SHADY Special £9.95
Shady– 6oz hamburger, crispy cheese, pickle relish, American cheese, onion and ketchup.
BYRON £9.50
Dry cure bacon, mature Cheddar, shredded iceberg, tomato, red onion and Byron sauce.
CHILLI £8.95
Green chilli, American cheese, shredded iceberg and chipotle mayonnaise.
Sadly our pictures were all crap but they were pretty good and served pink as standard, however you can request your own cooking preference.
We ordered the following sides too:
FRENCH FRIES £2.95
COURGETTE FRIES £3.50
MACARONI CHEESE £3.95
CHICKEN CAESAR £10.25
with char-grilled chicken breast, cos lettuce, Grana Padano, anchovies, croutons and Caesar dressing
Again, all pretty decent and we really enjoyed the courgette fries. To finish we climaxed on:
CHOCOLATE BROWNIE £4.95
with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce.
KNICKERBOCKER GLORY £4.95
Chocolate, strawberry and vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, toasted almonds, whipped cream and a cherry on top.
And again we were happy but at £80 we could have had a really good 2 or perhaps 3 course pre-theatre with wine for that price; this is where the “gourmet burger” joints loses me. If I’m paying premium price, I’m wanting more than “minced beef” on the label, in saying that though the burgers were very good and the quality was certainly higher than what we’ve had at most of the gourmet burger joints in Glasgow recently, so although we’re fed up looking at burgers we did actually enjoy Byron and they’ll be opening in Glasgow later this year so we’re optimistic about this one. Toilets were in the basement and clean.
TL;DR
+ table service
+ served on a plate not in a bag
+ tasty burgers and sides
+ craft beer selection
– sad when a plus is table service
– still expensive though not as bad as other gourmet burger joints
You pair are going to turn into a burger!