Food review: Brooklyn Craft, Shrewsbury - Three stars

You’ll have to travel to Birmingham for the best burger in the region.

On Fridays and Saturdays, a small unit beneath railway arches in Digbeth is thronging with aficionados. Burgerlicious patties are served in high-rising buns made by the former award-winning Ludlow baker Peter Cook. Special sauces, pickles and all the trimmings – including a lettuce that was especially made for the purpose – are paired with cheese, bacon and other add-ons as burgers are pimped to the max.

The provenance of ingredients at Original Patty Men is sensational. The highest quality British beef and lettuces and heritage tomatoes grown just down the road at Westlands are smashed alongside craft beers and triple cooked skin-on fries that are coated in an original spice mix. Patty pimps and purveyors of filth, the boys behind OPM are a step ahead the game. Their restaurant offers American comfort food in a restaurant that has a contemporary wood and metal design.

Back in Shropshire, we’re still catching up. And though Brooklyn Craft is arguably the best of the bunch among Shrewsbury’s burger bars, it still has some distance to go if it’s to catch the market leaders.

Like OPM, it is simply furnished. The restaurant looks out towards the town’s train stations and a bunch of pubs and shops – it’s like eating in a goldfish bowl – but that’s par for the course when it comes to burger joints. Service is simple, at best. Staff stand behind the counter, offering a better-than-MacBurgerKing-but-not-as-good-as-a-restaurant experience, meaning things can be a little wonky. I wasn’t sure whether the waitress who served me was being efficient or brusque; it all felt a little awkward truth be told.

On a grey and wet Wednesday, I stopped off for an early evening burger. I had the run of the place to myself – the woman behind the counter was moaning that there’d been too few customers. Her service was OK, though not great. She took my order and dutifully brought it to a thick wooden bench, in the window, forgetting my drink. “Can I get you anything else?” she asked. “Yes, my drink, please.”

The food’s half decent. Patties are served so that they’re nicely scorched on the outside, offering a little crunch and plenty of caramelised flavour, while being juicy and ever-so-slightly pink within. My 5 Boroughs was topped with bacon that was deliciously crisp and blue cheese that added an aromatic cheesiness to the whole caboodle. The pickles and salad added ballast and texture while sauces dribbled over the edge and ran down my fingers, the way sauces in all filthy burgers should.

The fries were served voluminously on a chopping board. It looked as though the frying guy had literally tipped a whole packet into the fryer before scattering them on the board for me. Needlessly generous, even on the hungriest night, they were reasonably crisp and had been doused with Brooklyn Craft’s spice mix.

I spared my stomach the pain of a calorific milk shake – something to do with a report on Freak Shakes on Radio Five Live that afternoon – and made do with the artery-clogging burger. Delish.

I don’t understand the craze for ultra shakes. They are essentially cream, sugar and a chocolate bar in a glass. And who wants that? Stick your face in a nose bag full of Tate & Lyle topped with a bottle of gold top and a bar of Cadbury’s if you must, there are more interesting things to eat and drink.

I was also sensible enough not to be sucked into the Brooklyn Craft Kilo Challenge, which is presumably something to do with eating a kilogramme of burgers and getting it free. Nice – providing they offer a free stent too and a year’s supply of statins. Brooklyn Craft does a decent job, though could do more. In many ways, it’s a bit like its website – half decent but with too many errors – guys, proofread your website before it goes live and make sure the commas are in the right place. And maybe use pictures of the actual food that you serve rather than ones that look very unlike what’s on offer – it’s lazy and people notice these things.

And what’s with the plastic cutlery? Spending a few quid on knives and forks that give customers a better experience and fall into line with Sir David Attenborough’s no-unnecessary-plastic mandate is a million times better than offering people horrible, shiny, silver plastic knives and forks.

Shrewsbury has a thriving fast food scene. In recent times, there’s been a move away from refinement towards comfort – with some notable exceptions: step forward Lion + Pheasant, The Walrus and a small number of others.

These days, restaurants are catering to people who want to pop in, chill out and eat up. A number do a really, really good job – just up the road from Brooklyn Craft is the exceptional Dough & Oil, which is good enough to give London’s best pizzerias a run for their money. But other than that, standards are fine without being good enough to challenge the best in the region or, indeed, the UK.

It’s great for the town that there are independent burger joints like Brooklyn Craft, of course. Far better that we get small independent restaurants taking a chance and bringing colour and life to the town than an endless row of multi-national chains offering the same old, same old with too many preservatives, additives and God knows what else. Brooklyn Craft ought to be congratulated for rolling the dice and giving it a go; it’s done a pretty decent job in its first couple of years of trading and seems set fair.

The bill was a tenner, decent value for good bar food that is just above others in the county’s gourmet burger market. Fast food is evolving, however, and they need to up their game a little to attract more customers and turn themselves into a must-visit destination.