It’s a decade since the first Byron branch opened in west London and flipped the meat sandwich from junk food to high-quality restaurant dish. Now, with premium outlets all over the country, how much posher can the burger get?
It was while he was reading classics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, that Tom Byng first began a serious study of the American hamburger. After a long night of college carousing, the Old Etonian would often end up at the Silver Top, an elderly diner in the heart of Providence, which had been serving the same greasy, roadside staples since the 1930s.
In December 2007, a decade and a half after his US sojourn, Byng took everything he had learned about beef patties, buns and the restaurant business and opened the first branch of his burger empire, Byron, in west London. The British hamburger has never been quite the same. To date, Byron has served more than 24m burgers at 70 locations across Britain. Originally backed by Gondola Group, the owners of Pizza Express and Ask, in 2013 the business was acquired by Hutton Collins Partners for £100m.
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