Shake Shack , Covent Garden

Shake Shack, 24 Market Building, WC2E 8RD

Concrete: £4

The UK's first Shake Shack opened in Covent Garden last month. One of several recent New York imports, Londoners, bloggers and critics have been queuing up to point out that it's not as good as [INSERT NAME OF ZEITGEISTY LONDON BURGER JOINT HERE]. They're right of course. Patty and Bun, Byron, MEATliquor/market/wagon deserve the credit for London's increasing maturity as a centre of burger innovation. But we're missing the point. Shake Shack isn't from the Brooklyn hipster heartland. No knowledgeable New Yorker would queue for hours for a Shake Shack burger. They're all up to their eyes in pig flesh at Pork Slope. 

The best thing about Shake Shack is not the burgers. It's the icecream that goes into their dense, chocolate milkshakes and the McFlurry-esque concretes. In New York, the queue is always shorter for the icecream. In London, there's no two-queue system. But there is a concrete with salted caramel sauce. It's full of Paul A Young chocolate, enough to give you a week-long sugar high. Don't queue for it. Go at opening time and have one for breakfast.