I try a gourmet burger from Crafty in St Martin’s, Leicester

Ordering a hearty meal from Crafty in Leicester via Uber Eats, I was expecting great things. A few days earlier, I was covering the court and one of the lawyers there told me I had to try it.

I’ve been to the downtown restaurant in St Martin and knew it was a nice little place – all the windows, friendly staff and great smells coming from the open kitchen. Wanting to try as many as possible, I ordered way more food than I could possibly eat.

I ordered the Krispie Klucker Chicken Burger, which was the highest rated burger on Uber and sounded pretty spectacular – fried chicken breast with pickles, lettuce, BBQ sauce, chipotle mayo and American cheese, tucked into a large muffin bun.

READ MORE: The Olive in Belvoir Street, Leicester, takes me back to the Mediterranean – almost

It looked and smelled amazing. Like many gourmet burgers, there was no point in trying to eat it with my hands. The huge piece of chicken in the burger almost spewed onto the table – as it often does. It was going to be a knife and fork job.

And when I made my way through it, my first thought was that it tasted almost healthy – all that salad and pickles gave it a real freshness. I love a big hash of processed food as much as the next junk food eater, but this burger, with its juicy piece of fried chicken, had a clean, wholesome air about it.

The burger came with its own massive portion of chips, which I barely touched as I had also ordered an equally massive portion of Texas Fries – mixed with lots of bacon bits, cheese, spring onions, jalapenos and gravy barbeque. When I opened the cylindrical box, which had been brought a mile across town on a bicycle, everything had condensed into a short cylinder of compact grub.

But after breaking it up a bit with my fork, it was a great mix of flavors with just the right amount of melted cheese to stick it together a bit, making sure every forkful you ate had a little bit of everything. And it had a good kick from all the peppers.

All this would have been more than enough for an evening meal, but in the interest of thorough journalism I had also ordered a portion of Pork Poppers – half a dozen massive cubes of fried pork belly.

This part of the meal didn’t look all that healthy. Some of the pieces were fatter than lean, as you’d expect on the belly. The pork chops are cooked overnight, coated in panko breadcrumbs and fried.

They tasted great and the meal came with little pots of barbecue sauce and mayo. To make things interesting, I tried the pieces in different ways – unsoaked, just the mayo, just the grill, or both.

Anyway, I’m too full to write about the food. Crafty does some amazing things. Try them.

Verdict

The burger and fries were £15 and the two sides were £8 each so it’s definitely not at the cheap end of the gourmet burger market. But it’s real food, interestingly cooked. And if you go for a seated table, it’s a great place. 5/5