The Beefy Boys
The clue is in the title, for it all started with backyard BBQs – beer, smoke, fire and ping pong. We’ve all been there; it’s just we haven’t all ended up running restaurants and having our burgers hailed as among the best in the world.
A year ago, I headed to The Beefy Boys restaurant in Hereford to find out what all the fuss was about. I struggled to articulate anything at all at the time, as I was too busy demolishing a burger called the Oklahoma Onion Boy – meat, cheese, onions and a squirt of mustard, no sauce, no toppings. Dead simple, dead delicious. I then followed it up with The Dirty Boy – double American cheese, dirty mayo, beef dripping, onions and bacon – for, after all, research is key and when in Herefordshire it is churlish not to eat as much beef as possible.
Both burgers naturally feature in an insanely vivid, visceral and witty book, The Beefy Boys: From backyard BBQs to world-class burgers.
The Dirty Boy burger description is, well you’re unlikely to find it in a Delia Smith cookbook, put it that way.
“If this burger was a date, it would be the sort of burger your family and friends would be warning you against going out with – the sort of burger that will show you the time of your life, but before you know it, it’s asking to borrow some cash, smoking in the house and leaving the shower in a complete state. You’ll have your mother telling you that burger’s no good and your friends telling you to ditch it, but you keep going back to it because sometimes you just want something really and truly dirty.”
Uncanny. That’s exactly what I was trying to say in Hereford, but my mother taught me not to speak with my mouth full.
This is more, much more, than a list of delicious burger recipes, although with the exquisite, succulent quality of the pictures by Peter Lowbridge, several of the pages in my copy are already missing and my mouth has paper cuts.
When I interviewed Anthony ‘Murf’ Murphy last year he told me of his journey alongside three childhood friends – Daniel Mayo-Evans, Christian Williams and Lee Symonds – from, well, backyard BBQ to world-class burgers. ‘That would make a great book,’ I said, unaware it was already in the planning, but eager to take the credit.
And here it is, and it is joyous. We learn about how The Beefy Boys built a burger empire from the patty up and now with three restaurants in Hereford, Cheltenham and Shrewsbury, as well as a food truck on the road to events. However, be wary of getting them catering your wedding; your partner will skip the honeymoon and elope in the burger truck.
Burger of the Year, Burger Chef of the Year, appearances on BBC’s Saturday Kitchen and The Hidden World of Hospitality with Tom Kerridge, chapters continue to be written – not bad for what The Beefy Boys call “the very definition of a drunken BBQ that seriously got out of hand.”
Missing from the credits at the end of the book is the careers officer at Murf’s school who told him: ‘If you don’t buck your ideas up, you’ll end up flipping burgers for a living.’
We learn the history of patties – hat tip to Genghis Khan apparently – the tools for the job (a cloche for steaming is a must) and a guide to burger cooking, indoors and out, and how to build just about every combo and style imaginable. The book throws in a brisket masterclass too.
We learn of their triumphs at Grillstock in Bristol and the influence of regular BBQ magazine contributor, Jon Finch, and Ben Merrington – ‘it’s your fault’ – and the World Food Championships in las Vegas, Orlando, Alabama, New Orleans and Texas.
“Jon and Ben are absolute legends. Without them, a lot of us would not be where we are today. You changed the food culture in this country,” the boys write in the book.
Well, The Beefy Boys have changed the burger culture in this country. Buy their book; read it and eat.
By RUPERT BATES
The Beefy Boys: From backyard BBQs to world-class burgers, published by Quadrille.
Photography: Peter Lowbridge.