Foodie Pick This Weekend: Bunsen Burger, Wexford Street

Dining out this weekend? In weather like this the only thing for it is a cool drink and a tasty burger.

But, if you’re sick of blackened meat from the back garden grill, why not leave it in the hands of the experts?

Bunsen Burger is a newly-opened burger joint on Dublin’s Wexford Street, and it’s getting our thumbs up as the pick of the weekend.

Operator Tom Gleeson trained as a Chef in world-renowned Ballymaloe. He then worked for the Fat Duck in Oxfordshire, Heston Blumenthal's famous molecular gastronomy restaurant. Here, Tom says he was “introduced to the idea of meticulous research to build a great dish”.

He adds: “After leaving the Fat Duck I started work on putting together my take on the classic American hamburger.”

Explaining his passion, Tom told us: “Having also lived in New York for a year I became a massive fan of classic hamburgers. There are several places in New York, the Burger Joint and Shake Shack to name a few, that offered a really delicious but simple burger. The style of burger was very different to the kind of burgers on offer in Ireland at present and I felt that this was really missing in the Irish market.”

Tom uses Black Aberdeen Angus beef blended according to his house recipe, combining specific ratios of three different cuts of beef. He tested a whopping 50 different kinds of cheese before arriving at the American style hamburger cheese Bunsen now uses. Buns are delivered fresh every morning from bakers in Tallaght. Again, the research was painstaking, with 12 prototype recipes discarded before the team arrived at a bun that mimicked the classic Amish dinner roll. 

The Bunsen menu currently includes hamburgers, cheese-burgers and fries. You can also get your hands on tasty milkshakes and sodas, and a beer licence is on the way. The focus at Bunsen is to keep a simple menu and make sure the quality is very high for the food on offer. In the future, Tom says they will expand the menu in terms of toppings and deserts, but the primary aim will still be to do the best hamburger we can day in day out.

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