How Clatter started
In 2019 Marnie Voss and Tolu Adeyemi, two friends who had spent years cooking in other people's kitchens, bought a second-hand griddle and rented a pitch in a south London car park. The plan: make one burger properly. The sound the first patty made hitting the steel gave us our name.
The queue arrived within a month. The first restaurant, in Shoreditch, opened in 2022. In four years we have grown to ten, from London to Glasgow, without changing the recipe.
The smash
A smash burger isn't a gimmick, it's chemistry. We roll a ball of fresh beef, put it on a griddle at around 260 degrees and press it flat with a heavy steel press for ten seconds. The sudden contact with the metal creates a deep, lacy crust (the Maillard reaction, if you were wondering), while the inside stays juicy because it only cooks for about sixty seconds. Flip, cheese, bun, done.
| Step | What happens | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Ball | 70g of fresh beef, 80/20 fat, never frozen | - |
| Smash | Pressed flat on the 260 degree griddle | 10 seconds |
| Sear | Left alone to form the crust | 50 seconds |
| Flip and cheese | Cheese melts into the lacy edges | 20 seconds |
| Build | Toasted bun, pickles, onions, sauce | 15 seconds |
Where it comes from
- Beef: fresh, never frozen, from Pennine Grass Beef Co-op, a group of family farms in Cumbria and the Yorkshire Dales.
- Potatoes: Fenland Spud Growers in Lincolnshire, skin-on and cut in our kitchens.
- Buns: baked every morning for us by Tinker's Bakehouse in Leicestershire.
- Cheese: Dunsmore Dairy makes our American-style cheese slices and our smoked cheddar.
- Chicken: free-range, from farms assured by the Red Tractor scheme.
The beer
Burgers want beer. In 2024 we started working with Hollow Pond Brewing, a small independent brewery in Staffordshire, on a range made for the menu: a crisp lager, a juicy pale, a punchy IPA and a roasty stout, plus a 0.5% for the drivers. Their brewers visit our kitchens, taste the menu and tweak recipes with us. Meet the range on the beers page.
The people
Every Clatter is run by a general manager who started on the griddle. Interested? See our jobs.
This is a demo shop. Clatter, its founders, suppliers and brewery are fictional.
Hungry now?
Order for collection or delivery from your nearest Clatter.