Milk Burger is a burger and Champagne restaurant in Notting Hill, where Executive Chef Jorge Paredes applies the standards of a Michelin-starred kitchen to food you eat with your hands. Paredes was previously Executive Chef at Sabor under Nieves Barragán, then Head Chef at OMA and AGORA, and OMA won its first Michelin star during his time there.
The restaurant comes from hospitality entrepreneurs Alina Kosichkina and Dima Zakhodiakin, who built a portfolio of 32 restaurants in Kyiv - including their first burger restaurant, back in 2013 - before relocating to London after the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Both live locally, and the site has some fitting history: it was home to a burger restaurant for nearly 20 years before closing during the pandemic.
Paredes’s approach is simple produce cooked with precision, or as he puts it, a burger ‘doesn’t give you anywhere to hide’. The Bone Marrow and Truffle Burger leads the menu, with a Spicy Smash burger and a Cuban sandwich alongside. Puddings keep things nostalgic, with soft serve and a Fried Cherry Pie. Champagne gets equal billing with the food, backed up by wine and cocktails, so a burger and a glass of fizz is very much the intended order.
The interior is by David Archer, the designer behind Chiltern Firehouse and The Standard, who also lives in the area. It plays on contrasts: one dining room is small and enclosed, done out in burgundy tile and stainless steel, while the other is airier, with soft timber and pale blue. The two-tone theme carries through to the details, right down to the printed burger papers and matchboxes.
Milk Burger serves all day without closing between lunch and dinner, so it works as well for a late lunch as it does for a Friday night.