Bästa burgarna i Hamina

🍔 Review № 1396

🇸🇪 @levi_bistro ★★★☆☆

Levi Bistro is a relatively new bistro restaurant on Södermalm in Stockholm. They have a focused menu with five main courses, one of which is their Levi’s Burger. During our visit, it came with a thick 180 g beef patty, cheddar, pickles, white onions and their own Café de Paris mayo. It was served with fries and a dipping sauce and cost 285 SEK (30 USD).

The burger was pretty large, just like a bistro burger should be, and we liked its old-school appearance. The bun looked great and was soft and pliable, holding everything together impressively well. The beef had an airy and juicy texture, and after a couple of bites we suspected that it had been ground using the Blumenthal method, which was a nice detail. It could’ve used more salt and pepper, though, to make the beef flavour stand out more. The cheese sat almost like a blanket on top of the patty, and we would’ve preferred it to have melted into the beef more for extra creaminess. Both the white onions and pickles could also have been cut a little thicker for more texture. The salty pickles tasted nice, but a little more acidity would’ve helped lift the flavours. The Café de Paris mayo was tasty, and while we appreciated the mustard notes, it was a little too dominant. That said, it added an interesting flavour profile that worked well on the burger. The fries were slightly over-fried and crunchy, but were saved by the excellent hot seasoning that had been applied generously. The accompanying dip, which could best be described as a more grown-up burger sauce, was a perfect match for the spicy fries.

Levi Bistro serves an interesting and tasty, albeit somewhat expensive, bistro burger that we liked. There are a few details that could be fine-tuned, but we always appreciate restaurants with their own vision of what a really good burger should be.

#burgerdudes

🍔 Review № 1395

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @baggioburger ★★☆☆☆

Baggio Burger was a real talking point in London a few years ago, thanks to their Italian-inspired fusion burgers. These days they’re called Baggio’s and have found a home at The Nags Head pub in Walthamstow. They also won the Traders’ Choice Award at Burger Fest UK 2025, and we got to try their burgers at this year’s festival. We ordered a Cheeseburger with dry-aged beef, American cheese, pickles, diced red onions and house sauce for 10 GBP (13.5 USD).

We suspected something was wrong before the burger even reached our hands, as we could see into the festival tent where they were cooking the food. The chef flipped the beef several times on the griddle and continued smashing it throughout. As if that wasn’t enough, the top bun was also placed on the burger and pressed down with the smasher. The beef still tasted decent, but the treatment on the griddle gave it a compact texture and a far less impressive crust than we’d hoped for. It felt like the beef would have been more tender and flavourful if it had simply been treated with a little more respect. The bun was also good in itself, but had become somewhat flattened and chewy after the same heavy-handed treatment. The other ingredients did their job well. The cheese added creaminess, the pickles freshness and crunch, while the diced red onions provided some much-needed texture. The house sauce tasted like a more luxurious version of classic burger sauce and tied everything together nicely.

Overall, all the ingredients were good on their own, so it was a shame that they were handled so poorly at the festival. We really hope this was just a one-off, as the potential is clearly there. We look forward to visit them in Walthamstow in northeast London to give them another chance in the future.

#burgerdudes

🍔 Review № 1394

🇸🇪 @thebarn1934 ★★☆☆☆

The Barn opened back in 2013 on Kyrkogatan in central Gothenburg and is one of the veterans of the Swedish burger scene. The restaurant itself is quite striking, designed to look like a 100-year-old barn, so it’s perhaps not that surprising that they’re keen on sticking to their traditions. Not much has happened with the menu either, and a lot has remained the same during our many revisits since we first came here in 2014. When it comes to burgers, they only have three beef options, and the only one with cheese uses an 18-month-aged Prästost that we’ve tried before. So this time we ordered a Pigan with onions, tomato, lettuce, pickles and chive mayo for 189 SEK (20 USD). We skipped the fries this time, as a portion cost 64 SEK (7 USD).

The burger looked rather peculiar when it arrived. It was comically tall, with a thick but narrow beef patty, sloppily assembled vegetables and a pointy bun pierced with a skewer. The coarsely ground patty had a good beef flavour, but it was too cautiously seasoned and lacked the juiciness we expect from a bistro burger. The bun had been toasted far too hard and was dry and crumbly on the inside, while the proportions between the bun and patty made the burger difficult to eat and hold together. Instead, it was the toppings that provided much of the flavour. The diagonally sliced pickle was very salty, the tomato had a pleasant sweet and tangy flavour and the chive mayo was really good.

The Barn has been around for a long time, but a lot has happened since the first wave of craft burgers reached Sweden. Our recent visits haven’t come close to the restaurant’s previous level, and this time we were served an expensive and uninspiring burger that lacked relevancy. We hope The Barn dare to evolve in the future, just as they did when they first opened.

#burgerdudes