Restaurant review - 7bone: I went to this Portsmouth burger bar - and it's up there with the best

We’d take great joy in matching our esteemed restaurants and cafes to countries… perhaps Monster Mick’s would be Brazil, ever-present and multiple-trophy winning. Five Guys would be the USA - burst on to the scene with promise, faded slightly but now a solid performer who can hold their own against most sides. Burger King: Romania - used to be exciting, now barely qualify. McDonald’s can be Cameroon - normally at the tournament, can lead to anticipation of excitement but in the flesh not very nice and actually quite boring. (For those with long meaty memories, 6oz Burgers of Osborne Road would be Zaire - attractive mavericks who no longer exist).

And so to 7bone, in Guildhall Walk. Where would they stand in the hall of fame? Semi-finalists or better? Or crashing and burning at the group stages?

The Dish Detective went after a wholesome afternoon visit to the almost-next-door New Theatre Royal with a three-year-old. The three-year-old was delighted to see television characters turned into on-stage puppets, and after getting used to the real life/screen collision laughed along uproariously with the rest of the pre-schoolers.

Afterwards, the little one needed feeding as the evening drew near and I felt it was just and proper to exercise an adult reward, so with a few steps we were inside 7bone.

It’s nicely done inside - a proto-industrial feel with some bare walls and plenty of metal on display.

Prepare to order via the app as well, even when sitting at one of their own tables - I appreciate that in some ways this makes the process of ordering quicker but I can’t help but feel that it takes a lot of the joy out of checking things on a menu, and indeed checking important aspects such as food allergies. As a first-time visitor unsure of how things worked I had to ask a member of staff anyway about whether food advertised on the paper menu was available to order as it didn’t appear online - it turned out that it was off the menu that day. The staff member was very friendly and I’m sure that they could have dealt with any query chucked at them, but hey people, please don’t forget the personal touch.

Anyway, app negotiated, we waited for our order. I’d gone for the Peter Green - which has a chilli burger, cheese, mustard and jalapenos in it. I didn’t ask why it bears that name; perhaps given that Peter Green is the founder member of a Fleetwood Mac it’s a cheeky doff of the cap / two fingers up to the well-known Big Mac. In any case, I didn’t ask and Google isn’t helping so I’ll settle on that. The names are feature of 7bone - a burger with truffle mayo and garlic mushrooms is a Robert Johnson - perhaps because it involves selling your soul to the devil? - and there is also the “All right all right all right” and the “Prince Charles is over-rated”.

The little one had set their sights on a hot dog - the aforementioned item on the kids’ menu that was not on that day - so I let them have an adult version. She had a “ball park”, which in its normal state would see onions and mustard as well as ketchup. Being three, just ketchup was fine and once it was cut up it was munched through contentedly.

As for the burger itself - 7bone’s good reputation is well won and deserved. The burger is well-aged and tender, the flavours work well, and the bun is fresh. A deal of any main and dirty side for £14.95 sees it come with cheesy fries, which in the way of the modern world are not dirty at all but rather nice. The three-year-old wolfs down the hot dog and says it’s great.

It’s not that cheap - the meal for two of us, sharing a £2.40 can of Sprite was touching £25, but it’s American fast food, done very well and looks unlikely to disappoint. I think we could be talking about Italy here… which is high praise indeed.