OCTOBER 24, 2025 | FEATURES | By Asa Gartrell
Cheerio! Not a fortnight ago, I went out to the nation’s capital with a contingent of Tigers. While our primary focus was academic, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to plumb the depths of an esteemed burger scene.
After a week of meetings and a Saturday spent bumbling about the concrete jungle, I hungered for a blood-rare bite. I was fully whelmed by the panoply of eligible eats around me, but I realized that I was as close to London as I would ever be.
I had to get the scoop on Street Burger, Gordon Ramsay’s fast casual chain that boasts “honest priced burgers with bags of flavor.” I had heard they put a little English on their double-smash fastball.
Street Burger exemplifies a Brit’s idea of America. You descend into the burger basement, with walls covered in corporate appropriations of graffiti. Eight televisions and a host of parlor games offer diversion for all of the English expats who missed out on a Chuck E. Cheese childhood.
QR code menus, shirts proclaiming the restaurant is “A Whole Damned Mood” and a staff too busy upholding the verisimilitude of the Ramsay-verse to personally connect. As I ordered my Oreo milkshake and O.G.R. (Original Gordon Ramsay) Burger, I was nervous—would it be smashing or stodgy?
Yuck! Salty… Sticky… Tacky… Gluey? Way too much American. The oozing sandwich effortlessly married tongue to palate, requiring a multi-gulp remedy. I grabbed the shake and, facing the resistance of 2% milk, drained it in three gulps.
It was warm. I clutched my pearls and returned to the protagonist for another gloppy mouthful, sending off a prayer of thanks for the pickles—a buoy of brightness in a sea of processed cheese.
Street Burger? More like Sesame Street Burger. That thing had more weight, heft and empty fluff than Big Bird. And it set me back 17 dead presidents! Honest price indeed. Perhaps it was a callback to Ramsay’s roots in hotel banquet halls. Perhaps it was just mid. As I put the last morsel to bed, I couldn’t help but let loose a nostril sigh and imagine how far a little Cotswold would have gone.
On the whole, I’d liken this sticky little fella to hold music: A cheesy refrain lost to the static of a long-distance call between Ramsay and his private equity partners. Sometimes there isn’t a friendly receptionist after the long wait. Sometimes it’s just more American cheese. My best to you and yours.