Biggies, Shrewsbury – food review

Ping. Here comes one offering Brooklyn burgers.

Ping. Here’s another offering smoked burgers.

Ping. Oh man. Now there’s gourmet burgers with bacon fries. Whoop.

Ping. Hold your horses, cowboy. Deep South Burgers to go. And steady with the pickles.

Ping. Boy. You ain’t seen nothing yet. Hola Biggies Burgers.

Ping. Ping. Flippin’ Ping.

Shrewsbury’s relationship with burger joints is like Asda’s relationship with washing powder. There’s a seemingly endless range that basically do the same thing – beef patty in a bun, pimped to within an inch of its beefy life – but they scream and shout about how different they are to all of the others. “Hey, look at our super white, stain-free, maximum clean, no-marks burgers, served with free statins, a side of Brexitslaw and a slice of melted Scottish Independence cheese. They’re grrrreeat.” The truth, of course, is not so grand.

The newest kid on the block is Biggies, a sports bar and diner that occupies the space formerly filled by The Silverton restaurant and hotel, which sank like the Titanic after grimly holding on for a couple of years. Shame. It started well but lost its way.

One of the beauties of The Silverton was its dining room. The team who designed it spent a small fortune building beautiful solid oak, diner-style seats. They were great: entirely inappropriate for a fine dining restaurant but perfect for a Yankee Doodle Shandy burger bar. Which is what it’s become. Beautifully upholstered in super-bright leather, they stick out like the fenders on a 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado. In gold.

And so rather than a fine dining restaurant which, like Sunderland in the Premier League, was only ever playing for survival, the venue has been transmogrified – don’tcha love that word – into what it ought to have been in the first place. Big TV screens the size of the side of a house (that’s a Wendy house, they’re not THAT BIG) plaster the walls and pipe in round-the-clock sport. There are sodas and beers and good-looking staff with beards and cute smiles who wear Biggies-themed uniforms and offer extra mayo and tomato sauce for those who want to dip and dunk.

The concept is excellent. It’s the right restaurant in the right place at the right time. And yet somehow, Biggies doesn’t quite cut it. The USP for the food seems to be this – Be Bigger, Be Fatter, Be Better. Be so vast and so damn big – hence Biggies – that Elvis would have had a coronary just thinking about it. Blast the other burger joints to Dallas and back with out-sized XXXXXXL patties. And only buy chicken wings from chicks that are bigger than turkeys. Big. Bigger. Biggies. Simples. But, as everyone knows, size isn’t everything. Because it ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it. And Biggies – despite promise – hasn’t quite got it right yet.

The wild bunch who run around on TripAdvisor are in accord. Biggies has got 12 reviews that are ‘very good’, but 11 ‘terrible’ against it. There are nine ‘average’ against nine ‘poor’. On the other hand, 21 rank it ‘excellent’.

MattMasonUK knows his (fried) onions: “There was huge hype about this place. We had to go to investigate but we were pretty disappointed. It was the least American diner experience you could get. The food was over-priced and the quality just wasn’t there. Think I’d return for drinks and the football next time.” MattMason, sir, we salute you. You’ve said in 48 words what we’ll say in 1,100. The drinks are on us.

Attentive

My friend and I ate during a midweek service. We were offered a selection of tables in a quarter full dining room. European football was streaming on the back wall, the lights and styling were a job well done and the staff were attentive and efficient – though the guy with the beard kinda scowled when we didn’t later leave a tip.

As Matt suggested, however, the food lacked the requisite Yowzer. Sure it was XXXXL – but all of those Xs didn’t give it the X Factor.

I started with a dish that sounded great but was a little bland, inelegantly served and had as much personality as B&Q’s 800 Grade Rolls of Wallpaper Lining. Without the paste. Great Balls of Fire invoked the spirit of rock’n’roll’s first great wildman, Jerry Lee Lewis, but was more Sunday School outing than Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.

The balls were of the dough variety, the fire referred to a dip and the great presumably referred to the chicken, which, sadly, was anything but. The dish was, in fact, small balls of dough – rather like Pizza Express’s dull, dull dough balls – which had been stuffed with chicken that was dry. They were right about the fire, however: the sauce was smokin’. However, it looked unloved and was. Dry and tasting only of dry bread and super-hot sauce; like all the worst school reports it was an exercise in disappointment. My friend’s Jal Bombs comprised jalapeño peppers, cheese, a crunchy exterior and a small pot of salsa. They were better than the ignominious Balls of Fire, but nothing to write home about.

We both opted for burgers, of course: when in Rome – or, rather, when in Shrewsbury – and all that. My friend opted for the Balboa, which was topped with mozzarella, pesto mayo and rocket. The bun was good and the patty fine but he found it too greasy.

Mine was decent: the chorizo and brisket burger was tender, well seasoned, a little spicy and the bun was sublime – probably the high point of an otherwise uninspiring evening. The fries weren’t good. Slightly undercooked, so that they were still a little hard in the centre, they were no better than the mass-produced fare at any branch of McGenericBurgerKing.

Potential

The fat lady sang – she’d probably eaten the Balboa – the guy with the beard gruffed that we didn’t leave a tip and we stepped out into the night.

Biggies has the potential to do very well. It’s well located with parking, the concept is good with wittily-named dishes, the burgers and buns were all fine and service (apart from TipGate-SneerGate) was good. It just needs to keep its pricing at a sensible level, give its food a little more soul – yes, that means cook the fries properly too – and serve the starters with TLC. And, providing it does so, it’ll avoid the fate of The Notorious B.I.G.