Share
9th July 2025
09:33am BST
Robin Gill’s voice carries the easy lilt of someone who grew up within earshot of Dublin Bay, though his culinary career has largely unfolded across the Irish Sea. In London, he’s the mind behind acclaimed restaurants like Darby’s and The Dairy. Venues marked by Michelin-pedigree cooking and an embrace of convivial neighbourhood dining. But on the phone from a sunlit terrace sipping coffee, Gill is talking not about duck-fat potatoes or the fine points of wine service, but burgers.
“I’ve always loved burgers,” he says with a laugh. “I used to like these Granby burgers cremated to death. They were 12p from Londis. I’d cover them in like, a horrendous, unhealthy amount of ketchup.” He cringes, affectionately. “Thankfully my tastes have evolved.”
Despite decades spent refining dishes with technical precision in kitchens like working in the butchery section of Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons or Don Alfonso 1890, Gill has never lost his affection for the burger. What he calls “the endlessly satisfying cornerstone of comfort food.” It’s that very affection that brings him back to Dublin for his first official foray into burger-making: a collaboration with the city’s beloved Dash Burger.
And he doesn’t mince words about why.
“I honestly think they’re the best burgers in the world,” he says. “Every single time. I’ve had countless Dash burgers. What Barry [Wallace, Dash’s founder] is doing and all the team there is phenomenal.”It’s an endorsement that carries weight coming from someone whose palate has been shaped by the rigours of haute cuisine and seasoned by the Michelin Man.
It’s hard not to think of The Menu when you’re talking to a Michelin-respected chef about burgers. The comparison practically writes itself: the fine-dining genius, disillusioned by tweezers and tasting menus, rediscovers joy in a perfect burger. But when I bring up the film, Robin Gill simply hasn’t seen it. So no matter how suave my extrapolations could be this collab isn’t a comment on the Michelin caste system. This is no cinematic metaphor, just genuine affection for burgers. Unlike The Menu’s brooding Chef Slowik, Gill isn’t spiralling into existential despair, he loves his tweezers, he’s just having some fun with a classic
For Gill, the appeal of the burger lies in its “accessibility”. It is fundamental simplicity: bun, patty, cheese, sauce, pickles. Burgers are basic. They’re stalwarts. They unify country to country and cross class boundaries.
When asked why he thinks burgers resonate across the globe, his answer is almost philosophical. “They’re democratic,” he says. “There’s a reason they’re a worldwide phenomenon.”
Burgers are such a substantial part of contemporary culture we have famous fictional burgers. From The Krusty Burger to the Crabby Patty they help ground fictional worlds in our reality and vice versa. Since the very end of 1953’s How To Marry A Millionaire, the burger has come to represent the simpler side of life as it did for Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable in this classic. When Samuel L. Jackson takes a bite of a traditionally crafted burger in Pulp Fiction the entire audience is endeared to him because we have all had a burger like that.
As foods go, burgers are a great uniter. They’re also a canvas. You can make a burger with or out of most anything. That said, people hate when you take the piss with a burger. They can tell when you’ve added golden truffle oil that you’re just looking to stunt. The burger is the food of the people, and they’ll let you know what they think of your interpretation.
“You’ve got to be really careful to be true to the original dish and not to play with it too much,” Gill says. And he is right. Humanity went through a phase of creating burgers bigger than peoples heads but the sheen wore thin on those quickly and people came back to the original. The classic. The quintessential. “Bun, patty, cheese, sauce, pickles. The magic is in the ingredients and the execution,” says Gill.
Dash Burger is a Dublin destination that has built a cult following for its award winning ‘LA-style smash burgers’, (a term Wallace invented himself). They were firmly established as the burger lovers burger bar well before TikTok became smash burger central. This collaboration with Gill is far from their first. They have previously teamed up with vagabond chef Niall Davidson of Allta to bring Dublin a miso burger that still lives in the memories of his regulars. As well as that Wallace has hosted the father of the contemporary burger movement George Motz many times.
The chance to collaborate with such a burger nerd offered Gill a welcome challenge: how to honour the elemental pleasure of a burger while nudging it just enough to make it his own.
“It’s really fun to do something that’s slightly out of my comfort zone,” he says. “I’ve spent years doing Michelin food... A burger is about impact.”
Gill’s limited-edition burger is an exercise in exacting detail. Built on a luxuriously fatty Wagyu blend, the patty will be cooked medium-rare and charred to smoky perfection. The cheese is Ogleshield, “gooey, nutty, smoky”, and has been chosen for its melt and its mild funk. Pickles are house-made for the right zip of acidity. The milk bun is custom-made by Niall Wynn of Proper Order and No Messin’ Bakery, designed for a pillowy softness that won’t disintegrate in hand. And the crowning flourish is Gill’s own XO sauce, usually reserved for pork chops or scallops at Darby’s.
As sauces go this one is as flamboyant in nature as it is simple in name,“Loads of shallots, ginger, garlic, dried shrimp, dried kombu seaweed, and some soy sauce,” he says. “It’s big, big, big flavours.”
“There’s a balance,” he explains. “I’m breaking a few rules with this one, but I still have confidence that it’s tasty. Nothing goes on there unless it makes sense.”
The collaboration also marks a kind of full circle for Gill, personally and professionally. Raised in Glasthule, he cut his teeth in Dublin kitchens like La Stampa and Brasserie Na Mara in Dún Laoghaire, before moving to London with friends Paul McNerny and Ed Daly. It’s a meandering tale with the intensity of direction we’d typically associate with rivers. They went door to door with nothing but ambition and a dog-eared physical copy of the Michelin Guide. “The Oak Room was the last place I went,” he recalls. “And the only place that said yes.”
The Oak Room under Marco Pierre White was “as rigorous as a monastery,” he says. “The first three or four months were brutal. Eighty-hour workweeks. You realise very quickly how outmatched you are.” He remembers how kitchen camaraderie formed in hardship: “We’d compare stories and laugh about how badly we were going down on our sections. Eventually, you start getting a hold of it, and then it becomes enjoyable.”
From there came stints in kitchens all over the city that would shape his sensibility. One rooted in classical discipline as well as a fearless embrace of flavour. But throughout, the same values endured.
“It’s about precision” and “ It’s always been about ingredients first.”
That spirit is alive in his project with Dash. The burger was developed through weeks of dialogue with Barry Wallace, obsessing over patty thickness, cheese melt, pickle acidity, and bun texture. “We really worked through every component,” he says. “This burger is a conversation between both of our styles.”
It’s also a homecoming of sorts. Gill still returns often to Dublin, where his mother remains, and where his 11-year-old son now looks forward to playing with cousins when he visits. Usually he doesn’t mix business and home visits. Maybe a panel or two, but this looks to be the start of something he won’t go on the record about yet. The lilt in his mocking gives the impression he has some whimsical wizardry in the works. Fans should be advised to keep a weather eye on the horizon (social media) for more information in due course.
“There’s something lovely about coming home to cook something like this,” he says. “It feels... full circle.”
And while Gill has spent a career pairing dishes with rare wines, the burger calls for something else. “Beer, definitely,” he states with an edge of awareness that the offerings on the day will be beer focused. “But lately?” he meanders, “Whiskey highballs. Redbreast 12 is my go-to.”
On Saturday, at Hen’s Teeth in Dublin 8, Gill will stand behind the grill alongside Barry Wallace and the Dash team, handing over carefully assembled burgers to locals, and whoever pops in for the chance. “Plenty of napkins,” he warns. “It’s going to get messy.”
