Eating Out review: Salt gourmet burgers of Darlington

Two lines on a test on Saturday morning showed that my heavy cold was, in fact, Covid. The Government website says there are currently no Covid restrictions in place although “you should try and stay at home”, so I began to search for takeaway options.

Back in the lockdown of 2020, ordering good food felt like scoring drugs. You were given a specific time to call and place your order. Then you were given precise instructions for your pick-up.

At the allotted hour, you drove through deserted streets and parked at a pub back door where other shifty people were hanging around, waiting for a man, ready to move at a moment’s notice.

Suddenly, the back door of the car opened, an unseen person thrust a package onto the backseat and – on one occasion without an audible word as if they were holding their breath – slammed the door shut. We were off.

By 2023, there has been an explosion of delivery agents taking out the drudgery of having to go and pick up your own food – some of them may even eat it on your behalf.

The ordering websites, though, are middle men who take a large bite out of the restaurants’ profits, so many are devising their own ways of getting in their own takeaway online orders.

Salt, in Darlington’s Grange Road, has a separate Tapp Takeaway website that enables you to select a time for collection and which sends messages direct to the kitchen for confirmation.

Salt is a knowingly trendy streetfood place. Its website is garish pink and yellow, and its logo is written in an overlapping typeface reminiscent of the Goodies in the 1970s – it is so hot and happening that it can afford a little retro.

It does gourmet burgers. No, burgers are yesterday. It does smashed patties: balls of minced steak that are smashed onto the hotplate to increase the surface area and encourage a “maillard reaction”, named after a French chemist who in 1912 discovered how amino acids and sugars react tastily when heated, or browned, together – as every hipster burger-flipper knows.

Each burger is given a name that an old fogey like me cannot possibly understand – why a “My dad is bald” burger? – and it is adorned with all manner of calorific additions from around the world. American, Lebanese, Korean, Argentinian and Japanese words collide – katsu, panko, birria, rendang – on the menu to create an exciting and imaginative read.

I sent Petra, my wife who had tested clear, into the busy restaurant – which is so under illuminated it is difficult to spot – to collect while I put my feet up in front of Strictly.

Salt is next to a bathroom shop in Grange Road

Salt missed our collection slot by about seven minutes, but had wrapped each burger in tinfoil with a little sticker indicating what it was.

Theo, our son, had gone for a “The First Time” burger: two smashed patties with cheddar, pickles, mayo, onions, ketchup, tomato and lettuce and a rasher of smoky, streaky bacon (£14.50).

Petra, who would not normally entertain the thought of going out for a burger, chose what we think was the only vegetarian item on the menu: “The G.O.A.T”. It was described as a “big thicc owld slice of baked goats cheese, crispy sweet potato shoe string fries & caramelised onion chutney” (£14.50).

And I had chosen “Mike Bage is a Grass”, which featured Chimichurri aioli, barbacoa beef and cheddar on my smashed patties (£15.50).

While compiling this article, I have discovered a lot about Louis Camille Maillard (above), the French physiologist whose “coefficient of Maillard” is every bit as useful for diagnosing kidney disorders as his reaction is for browning burgers, but I have not been able to say for certain who Mr Bage is and whether he is a little loose lipped. It is to be hoped that this burger is not libellous in any way.

But my Mike Bage (above) was superb: so smooth it took no effort to eat.

Chimichurri is a south American sauce of herbs, garlic and perhaps a little chilli. It was like a delightful dollop of herby butter had been added to the burger, and it went nicely with the melted cheese but still somehow left enough room for the taste of the pulled beef to be evident. It did, though, compromise the stability of the bread bun, but it all tasted great.

Theo demolished his The First Time (above) approvingly, every single bit of it, even the tomato and the pickles that he usually takes out in McDonalds.

And Petra really enjoyed her G.O.A.T. (above). It was a good, thick disc of goat’s cheese that went well with the sweetness of the onion chutney. It had a crunch from the “crispy sweet potato shoe string fries”, shoelace-sized scrapings that were really interesting – a sprinkling over my super-smooth burger would have given it an extra dimension, as well.

Each burger came with a box of fries which had several choices of toppings. Theo had the cheese and chive sprinklings, and I went for shavings of Gran Padano, an Italian cheese, with toasted rosemary.

For a couple of pounds extra, you can upgrade to fully loaded fries, so I imagined these toppings would just be cursory, but my bits of cheese and rosemary coated the whole box and, with a few rocks of salt, tasted really good.

A little pot of trendily enhanced ketchup would have completed what was an excellent takeaway.

There aren’t many compensations for catching Covid, but the discovery of a decent gourmet burger, carefully constructed, is definitely one.

The details

Salt
20, Grange Road, Darlington, DL1 5NG
Phone: 01325-262520
Website: saltdarlington.co.uk
Takeaway orders: salt-darlington.tapptakeaway.co.uk/

The Ratings
Service: 8
Food quality: 8
Value for money: 8