Gourmet Burger Kitchen (gbk)

Gourmet Burger Kitchen (gbk) are a chain of burger restaurants with a focus on using fresh ingredients and creating the 'best burgers in town'. I visited the Soho branch to find out if this was true.

Although you are walked to your table by a member of staff this is certainly more of a cafe than a restaurant. Once seated you are then expected to get up again and place your order at the till and pay in advance.

gbk branches seem to have a uniform-look so this was as good an example as any. The artwork on the walls featured a lot of smoking so I guess the back of the room was the smoking area before the smoking ban arrived in 2007. The whole experience had a 'corporate' feel and if you had never heard of gbk before you would know you were in a chain restaurant.

On the positive side, Coke is served by the bottle instead of the can and there are tomato-shaped ketchup dispensers on the tables.

Burgers are big - even the 'small' - and are served with a skewer holding it all together. This was the main problem I'd heard from friends: how to eat a gbk burger as they are so big. My companion and I decided to deconstruct our burgers and use a knife and fork.

The food tasted fresh and was well-presented but the prices, £7-£10 for a burger, seemed a bit misplaced to me. My companion felt sure he could get as good a meal, at a venue with more personality, from pub food.

gbk burgers are not cheap but they are tasty and were certainly popular when I visited for an early weekday dinner.

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