It opened in 1972, when Britain did not know what a burger was, and it has been in Covent Garden ever since
Maxwell’s opened in 1972 and claims, with a decent case, to be London’s first proper burger restaurant.
Consider what Britain was like in 1972. There were no burgers. There was, in the national understanding, a thing called a beefburger which came frozen, in a box, and was grey.
Into that country somebody introduced an American char-grilled burger with a bun and a proper patty and things on it, and people did not know what to do, and then they did, and here we are.
What has happened since
Everything. Britain has spent the last fifteen years in a burger arms race of genuinely absurd intensity – the smashed patty, the aged beef, the brioche, the truffle mayonnaise, the dry-aged Dexter, the twenty-two-pound double with a queue outside.
And Maxwell’s has been sitting in Covent Garden the entire time, doing what it has been doing since 1972, on a 4.3 from two and a half thousand people, while every trend in the category has arrived, peaked and closed around it.
The Prat’s food desk regards this as the same manoeuvre we identified at Rules, which has ignored every culinary movement since 1798 on the grounds they would pass. They did. They keep doing.
The 4.3
Which is not a high number, and it is worth being honest about why.
Maxwell’s is not the best burger in London. It has not been the best burger in London for some time, and it is not really trying to be, and the reviews reflect exactly that: people arrive expecting a destination and find a solid, cheerful, slightly dated American diner in the middle of Covent Garden.
What they have found, in fact, is the original, still standing, still busy, still feeding families and tourists and people who have been coming since they were students, and there is a value in that which does not appear anywhere in a star rating.
The location
Right on the piazza. Which means, as we established at the Admiralty and the Horse and Guardsman, that the business model is partially positional and always will be.
It also means Maxwell’s has watched the entire transformation of Covent Garden from the front row – from the market closing and the area nearly being demolished in the 1970s, through the derelict years, to whatever this is now.
Covent Garden in 1972
Worth remembering, because nobody does.
The fruit and vegetable market – the thing the whole district was built around, the thing in the film, the thing that had been there for three hundred years – closed in 1974 and moved to Nine Elms.
And the plan, seriously proposed and very nearly executed, was to demolish large parts of Covent Garden and put in a conference centre and roads.
It was stopped by a campaign. Buildings were listed at the last minute. The area survived, went derelict for a while, and then became what it is now.
Maxwell’s opened two years before the market closed. It has watched the entire thing.
Verdict
Not the best burger. The first burger. Twenty to thirty pounds, cheerful, reliable, and in the same room it has been in since Edward Heath was Prime Minister.
Go, and order it, and note that it is the same thing it was, which is the whole point and always was.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
