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Real meals: Dirty Burger in Vauxhall

October 27, 2014

It’s pretty weird round my way at the moment: a sirocco of flight capital is blowing through, conjuring vast “luxury apartment” developments into being the way djinns are embodied by Arabian dust storms. The youngest and I went out for a little wander the other day and we were both intimidated by the tower cranes building themselves overhead. Each new parametrically designed and glassy moneymaker comes complete with an inbuilt restaurant – Riverlight, where a studio flat will cost you a modest £800,000, features a Korean joint, while St George Wharf, hard by Vauxhall Bridge, boasts the delightfully named Steax and the City. We eschewed this, rather than chewing on a steax (whatever that may be), but the problem of where to have lunch remained until the boy recalled that there was a branch of Dirty Burger on the far side of the railway viaduct.

I hadn’t heard of Dirty Burger before – hardly surprising, as there are only five of them: four in London and one outlier in Chicago (or perhaps it’s the other way round). When I got home I was informed by my spouse – who is rather more sophis­ticated than I am – that its name derives from so-called “dirty food”; a newish culinary concept that valorises grease, sugar, carbohydrates and all things bad for you. I suppose there was an inevitability about this particular détournement; such is the fecundity of late capitalism, which is ever seeking out shiny new things to turn into dirty old money.

I can understand the logic of opening a branch of Dirty Burger in Shoreditch, Whitechapel, even Kentish Town – but Vauxhall? Although the world spirit of gentrification is busily taking up residence here the fact remains that, as of now, the place is still what is scientifically termed a shithole. Vauxhall Cross isn’t just dirty – it’s positively filthy; the railway viaduct is encrusted in centuries of soot and grime, the bus interchange looms greyish in a permanently hovering cloud of exhaust fumes; on the ledges of the grotty old buildings alongside it, the anti-pigeon barbs are so encrusted with pigeon shit that they resemble stalactites and stalagmites. At any hour of the day or night you can happen upon street drinkers tumbling out of or into the homeless hostel, their beards and hair matted with vomit and White Lightning, while towards dawn sadomasochistic revellers reeking of amyl nitrate debouch from the Hoist, a nightclub of legendary unsavouriness.

Dirty Burger’s interior decoration shtick looked positively bizarre in such a context: sited underneath the arches adjacent to the Hoist, its grubby little nook is panelled with corrugated iron sheets, while the floor, the tables and counters appear to have been built with old railway sleepers. On Rodeo Drive or the rue Saint-Honoré, such postmodern referencing of the lives of the immiserated and securely absent might be amusing, but when you’re sitting in a little “terrace area”, contrived out of the spit-stained paving and assailed by the diesel flatulence of passing lorries, that joke – to quote the balladeer who brought us Vauxhall and I – isn’t funny any more. The men doing the flipping at Dirty Burger seemed lacking in the appropriate ironic detachment – they were just trying to make a living in the soiled old city like millions of others.

The boy had the Dirty Bacon Cheeseburger, fries and a chocolate milkshake; I had a tea, and watched him inhale about a week’s worth of calories in a handful of seconds. I asked him how his burger had been and he said the curious thing was, it wasn’t only the meat and cheese that were greasy, so was the bun. I meditated on this as grit pinged from the roadway into my smarting eyes.

I imagined a planning meeting at Dirty Burger’s HQ: clean-cut young women and men sat round an immaculate conference table, eyeing me suspiciously as I strode back and forth in my crinkle-cut suit. I jabbed a button on a laptop and the PowerPoint displayed an image of an indistinct, massy object. “Now pay attention,” I said. “This is a pseudobezoar, a solid bolus of food that’s been engendered in the gastrointestinal tract of an ordinary London office worker by feeding her a detritus of old coffee stirrers, lint and deep-fat-fryer waste.” I jabbed the button again and the image was replaced by a second one; now the massy object was in a greasy bun. “I give you the pseudobezoar­burger,” I announced, “the first commercially produced comestible to incorporate regurgitation into the cooking process.” A lean young man sat forward: “When you say ‘give you’ do you mean that literally?”

I laughed shortly, “Of course not – the pseudobezoarburger will retail at £7 …” The vision faded, and I was back at Vauxhall Cross looking at a bill for £15.75; it was a lot of filthy lucre for a dirty burger, especially given that – according to the garish decal pasted on the grubby phone box nearby – I could get a perfectly clean one at Burger King for £3.79, and for £1.99 I could re-up to a full meal deal. But then I suppose that’s the sort of cheapskate bum I am: always on the lookout for a cheap, safe bun.

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Will’s Latest Book

Will Self - Why Read
Will Self's latest book Why Read will be published in hardback by Grove on 3 November 2022.

You can pre-order at Amazon.co.uk.

Will’s Previous Books

Will Self - Will
Will
More info
Amazon.co.uk

  Will Self - Phone
Phone
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Shark
Shark
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Umbrella
Umbrella
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being A Prawn Cracker
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being A Prawn Cracker
More info
Amazon.co.uk
  Walking To Hollywood
Walking To Hollywood
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Butt
The Butt
More info Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Grey Area
Grey Area
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Junk Mail
Junk Mail
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Great Apes
Great Apes
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Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Cock And Bull
Cock And Bull
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  The Quantity Theory Of Insanity
The Quantity Theory Of Insanity
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Sweet Smell Of Psychosis
The Sweet Smell of Psychosis
More info

Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  My Idea Of Fun
My Idea Of Fun
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Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Book Of Dave
The Book Of Dave
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Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Psychogeography
Psychogeography
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Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Psycho Too
Psycho II
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Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Liver
Liver
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
How The Dead Live
How The Dead Live
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys
Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Dr Mukti And Other Tales Of Woe
Dr Mukti And Other Tales Of Woe
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Dorian
Dorian
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Feeding Frenzy
Feeding Frenzy
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Sore Sites
Sore Sites
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Perfidious Man
Perfidious Man
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  The Undivided Self
The Undivided Self
More info Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
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