Wagyu beef sliders and Lanson Extra Age champagne

Steak isn’t the first ingredient you might think of pairing with champagne but if it’s ground wagyu beef, served in a bun with a quality glass of fizz in a glitzy Park Lane restaurant you might just have to force yourself.

Of course it may just have been the feelgood factor that made the marriage work. The restaurant was Wolfgang Puck’s Cut and the sliders one of his signature dishes (served as an amuse rather than a starter or main).

The champagne was also a bit out of the ordinary - an extra-rich bottling Lanson created for the restaurant trade which is blended from older vintages from grand-cru and premier cru vineyards - so in effect a vintage champagne but not from a specific year. There was definitely an umami thing going on with the beef, the cheese and the fizz.

It also went really well with a warm lobster club sandwich reinforcing my conviction which I wrote about a couple of months ago that you should drink great wines with fun food.

Although the Extra Age is mainly focussed at the trade it’s currently on offer in a gift box at Ocado for £44.99, £44.49 if you buy 2 bottles from drinksdirect.co.uk or £51.95 from champagnedirect.co.uk - not at all a bad price for a wine of this quality.

I ate (and obviously drank) at the restaurant as a guest of Lanson

Shake Shack burger and 2008 Quintarelli Primofiore

About the last thing you'd expect at the launch of a new burger joint is to be served a £59 bottle of wine. But then Danny Meyer, more famous for his New York fine dining spots, is no ordinary restaurateur.

And if he's asking whether I'd like to try his Quintarelli Primofiore, a premium blend of Corvina and Cabernet, with one of his Shake Shack burgers, well, who am I to refuse?

It was great with the burgers as you’d expect, the fresh acidity providing a perfect counterpoint to the juicy meat and gooey cheese. One of those matches which is more than the sum of its parts.

Surprisingly the wine was not just there for the launch but actually appears on the Shake Shack drinks list along with a selection of more affordable reds including a Malbec and a Zinfandel.

The burger I liked best though - and suspect I'll end up going back for - was the ‘shroom burger - a decadent, deep fried, portabella mushroom stuffed with cheese. (Though obviously not on a 'fast day'.) That would pair well with the Quintarelli too but I think I'd settle for the rather more modest Shack Red which is made for the chain by California winery Frog's Leap. Or, even better, a shake or a float . . .

If you can't face the queues at Shake Shack (which is in the piazza in Covent Garden) just try the same combination at home. A classic cheeseburger and an Italian red. It works.

Sliders and juleps

Although you can drink wine with a burger I’m coming to the conclusion that beer and cocktails are a lot more fun and, particularly with the modern American-style ales, have the sweetness to deal with the multiple flavours of today’s adventurous toppings.

That, of course, applies to sliders as well - mini burgers which are becoming a popular part of the current burger craze in London - as I discovered on a visit last week to the newly opened Slider Bar at The Player in Soho* which is run by the highly rated Lucky Chip*

You can order any two so I skipped the more straightforward Double Cheese Burger in favour of the El Chappo (aged beef patty, smoked bacon, roasted jalapenos, blue cheese and aioli) and the Royale wit Cheese (aged beef, applewood smoked bacon, tomato, onion, ketchup and mustard). Both went really well with the fragrant, herby Rye and Rosemary Julep I ordered (Sazerac rye, rosemary, mint, sugar and sweet vermouth) - though not so much with the weird frothed up frozen tub of Orangina on the side - a bizarre piece of product placement. The sliders and chips are great though.

High end drinks like champagne and cocktails and fast food seem to be quite on trend at the moment as you can see from this recent post on Bubbledogs and my delicious cocktail pairing at Dabbous.

*whose website appears to be down at the moment but also operates out of the Sebright Arms.

Piggie burger and Pinot Noir

Pigs and Pinot is a well established combination that is the focus of an annual celebration at Charlie Palmer’s Dry Creek Kitchen at the Hotel Healdsburg and after reminding myself of the combination last week at Daniel Boulud’s new London outpost Bar Boulud I can see why.

I had his famous ‘Piggie Burger’, a conventional burger topped with pulled pork in a cheddar crusted bun with a glass of soft velvety Austrian Pinot Noir Kurzberg 2007 from Nittnaus and it was perfect. It would also have worked, had I had a glass earlier, with the splendid range of charcuterie that is a feature of the restaurant. (As it was I had a classic Pinot Blanc from Henri Bouges which worked perfectly well.)

At the moment they don’t have the wine flights the New York counterpart has but hopefully that will follow.