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Bang opposite Covent Garden station, Wahlburgers is the first UK outpost of a chain owned by the Wahlbergs: gym-swollen actor Mark and his exponentially less famous brothers Donnie (of New Kids on the Block) and chef Paul.
The food, though mostly served tepid, isn’t bad. The two smashed patties of a house double cheeseburger were full-flavoured and the ‘Wahl’ sauce tangy (though there wasn’t enough of it). Better was the Super Melt: a half-pound burger between Warburtons-style sliced white, slathered in American mustard. Unrefined to a fault but undeniably moreish. A bacon mac and cheese was simultaneously awful and grand in a wet, out-of-the-box Kraft dinner kind of way.
But the place is an atmosphere vacuum – a grim approximation of a US sports bar flecked in Bostonian green (which, over here, looks like a Shake Shack knock-off), decked out with screens showing videos of Mark and his pallid bros talking about goat’s cheese, or their mum, or something. It was also empty at peak time on a Friday evening.
Still, for serviceable junk food spitting distance from a major tourist tube, with delightful staff to boot, Wahlburgers is basically fine.