We had a real treat on Friday with a pre-theatre meal at a real underground American diner called Meat Liquor which is on Welbeck St, just north of London’s famous Oxford Street.

As you approach it its looks like an unassuming car park – that’s until you see the entrance of what appears to be a nightclub. We got here nice and early, like about 5.15pm as we’d heard it was a place to queue at. More about that later. There’s no booking, just queue, and get a table. Lucky for us at 5.15pm on Friday we got straight in, and took up two seats on a breakfast bar type seating area close to some larger tables.

Menus were duly dished out, but once we’d had a browse it took ages to get someone’s attention to order a couple of drinks. I had read this, and they were right – the waitresses are paid to look cool, rather than serve! However once we got someone’s attention they couldn’t be nicer, and we ordered a bottle of cider and a bottle of some London lager – whose name I have completely forgot……

The menu is very much a classic USA burger joint style – think of names of dishes such as Chilli Cheese Fries, Deep Fried Pickles, Double Bubble and Philly Steak.

It’s a place I’d avoid if I was vegetarian – for the 10-15 meat dishes listed there was only two under the amusingly titled ‘Rabbit Food’ – anyhow would a veggie head to a restaurant called Meat Liquor – hmm not sure!

The food was fantastic, and was very quick once we’d ordered – it was presented on a tray for sharing, rather than plated up – a nice touch, and in line with the dirty blues music playing – no need to wash up I suppose.

We shared the Chilli Cheese Fries – a huge helping of proper American fries as a base, smothered in acidic mustard and just-spicy-enough beef chilli, topped with chopped gherkins and onions and lots of melted (Squeezy?) cheese. We also shared some deep fried pickles – deep fried gherkins with a blue cheese dip – the crisp savoury batter against the acidic gherkin was a perfect match for the sweet blue cheese dip.

The burgers was had as our mains were the Double Bubble –  yes a double decker burger, and a mushroom swiss – obviously mine as mrsalflavor hates the fungus. Oh and a side of the biggest and best onion rings we had even seen.

The actual burgers themselves were the highlight – proper homemade from the best ground beef it would seem, lots of charring and smoky tastes without actually coming over as BBQ burnt. The buns were a perfect size to hold in your hands – just. They are loaded with gherkins and mustard – so you need to ask to ‘hold the gherkin’ if you aren’t a fan.

Luckily there are no namby pamby napkins here, just great rolls of kitchen roll at each place setting – and you need it! These burgers are fantastically juicy and so tasty too.

We skipped dessert as we really didn’t have the room – and so the bill was paid – it was around £40 in total including service. Worth every penny and we’d definitely head back here.

Oh and about the queuing – no lie, when we left about 6.30pm the queue outside was at least 20 deep – I don’t think my picture does the queue justice but hey. After a great early tea it was off to Frank Skinner and Friends which was a superb cabaret night compered by the very funny Frank!