Early in 2010 I got into burritos in a big way. Not the lazy messes pseudo-Mexican restaurants cover in sauce and serve on a plate with cutlery, but burritos presented San Francisco Mission style, freshly made to order from a huge variety of ingredients packed tightly into a tortilla and wrapped in foil as nature intended. With the depreciation of my sense of taste I have to rely more and more on textures to enjoy food and, from this perspective, the humble burrito is pretty much the perfect meal for me.

In my research into this fairly niche market I discovered a thriving community of people devoted to various cuisines, dishes and styles of cooking who all write eloquently and enthusiastically about their obsessions. There’s LondonBurrito with its oh-so-helpful Google Map I could use as a checklist; The Chili Foundry which is devoted to showcasing absurdly hot sauces and filming the (often unpleasant) results; and then there’s Young & Foodish.

Daniel Young is a food critic and has been involved in organising group visits to restaurants serving exemplary dishes, but perhaps he’s most well-known for his list of top ten burgers. At the beginning of the year I, along with five friends, attended a meat-up at Bar Boulud at the Mandarin Oriental. The burger I had there was one of the nicest things I’d ever put in my mouth and it was shortly afterwards that my friend Ian and I resolved that 2011 would be The Year of the Burger. Taking inspiration from Daniel’s list, we’d scour London burger outlets with the aim of creating our own top ten list.

For both cost and health reasons we tried to spread out the trips but with more and more places to visit there were a couple of times during the year where we had no choice but to cram in four or five burgers in successive days. One of these occasions happened to coincide with 11th November and so I duly termed it RememberMince Day. I wondered whether it could become an annual event where we paid tribute to the cows that had died for our burgers. It could be quite moo-ving.

We ended up dining at and rating a total of 23 restaurants together, but here’s our finalised top ten, and the date of most recent visitation:

1. Hawksmoor, Seven Dials (July 26th)
2. The Duke of Wellington, Marylebone (November 23rd)
3. Bar Boulud, Knightsbridge (November 11th)
4. Goodman, Mayfair (July 11th)
5. The Admiral Codrington, South Kensington (June 30th)
6. Honest Burgers, Brixton Village (November 11th)
7. Bob Bob Ricard, Soho (September 20th)
8. Lucky Chip, Netil Market (November 12th)
9. Bread St. Kitchen, City (December 5th)
10. The Meatwagon, Peckham (July 24th) 

It was a fantastic excuse to visit some of London’s finest restaurants, and I think we both have a lot more appreciation of what entails a decent burger, but my wallet and stomach have to both be thankful that the list is complete. Some burgers surprised us by simply being bad - the Harrods burger being terribly overcooked and bland, a burger from a highly-rated organic pub in Barnes being served in a supermarket bun - but I think the main eye-opener was discovering the London street food scene; exquisite dishes served by passionate individuals at an incredible price. Also they photograph a lot better than places with artificial light.