London’s Most Trustworthy Burger Chain Heads Up North [Updated]

Honest Burgers will open restaurants in Manchester and Liverpool. The London chain — 26 restaurants strong across the capital, Cambridge, Reading and Bristol — will open in Manchester Hall as soon as this summer, as reported by Manchester Evening News, with a Liverpool site in the 2019 pipeline according to MCA.

Amidst downturn, trouble and trend-adjacent strife for its competition in the burger mid-market, Honest Burgers is bucking the trend by striking out of London; out of a city that has nurtured and loved the brand since its launch in Brixton in 2011. Another direct competitor, Dishoom, is also making the move: following the opening of a fifth restaurant in Kensington late last year, the Bombay-influenced “Irani Café” will open in the same building later this year.

With crowdfunding masterchef Gary Usher looking at a site in Hackney following success in Chester, the Wirral, Liverpool and south Manchester, perhaps — and finally — the dialogue between two of the country’s biggest food cities is starting to get louder. London, unsurprisingly, enjoys an outsize monopoly on the representation of culinary culture in the UK: as its restaurants look to the rest of the country, perhaps attention will too cast a wider gaze on the UK at large.

Eater London has contacted Honest Burgers for comment. Check back soon for more.

Updated 13.08.2018, 09:27, with news of a 2019 Liverpool opening.