Burger Lobster.. Bentley's?

Bentley's, 11 - 15 Swallow Street, W1B 4DG

2 course meal with wine: £55 per person

Trying to get a table at Burger and Lobster on a Friday night was, in retrospect, a terrible idea. Thankfully we phoned ahead or else we would have gone there without knowing that they already more people in the queue than they would be able to accommodate in an evening. That would have been Very Bad. Instead, we drank another bottle of wine and conducted a remote trawl of the surrounding restaurants - what did we do before mobile internet? There was a table at Bentley's, so there we went expecting to have oysters or steak but instead found lobster burgers were the special of the day... result.

Having had that extra bottle of wine, we fell upon the bread like carb-starved celebrities falling off the Atkins wagon. Alcohol soaking properties aside, it was very good - particularly the oat-flecked brown bread, which tasted faintly of treacle. We shared some starters, the best of which was either the Cornish fritto misto, with its amazing pot of gloopy gribiche-esque sauce, or the hot shells pictured above. I liked the little breaded oysters best, but largely because there's nothing like crispy oysters when you've had three bottles of wine before dinner. We all had the lobster burger because we knew that any deviation would only lead to food envy. The patty was hand cut and unusually delicate, the claw meat was juicy, and the garlic sauce was the sort that rips through your pores and lingers for days. In other words, it was perfect. 

With nice wine and coffee, it was £55 per head. Not cheap but not bad for a lobster burger in Mayfair. Unless the queue at Burger and Lobster diminishes by magic, I will be back.