Location: 1900 The Queensway, Toronto
Website: http://canyoncreekrestaurant.ca/

Just once, I’d like to go to a casual chain restaurant  and get a burger that’s actually really good.  I mean, that’s not such a tall order, is it?  A good burger isn’t all that difficult to make.  Just start with decent quality beef that’s reasonably fatty, and you’ve won half the battle.  Alas, the burgers at places like this tend to either be just okay, or outright bad.

This being a restaurant that specializes in meat, I thought that perhaps it could be the one to buck the trend.  I ordered the Canyon Burger and hoped for the best.

The menu describes the burger as coming topped with “crisp leaf lettuce, vine ripened tomato, dill pickle, red onion, Canyon aïoli on a fresh sesame bun baked in-house daily.”

Well, it’s not bad, I’ll give it that.  But sadly, it does not rise above its casual chain restaurant brethren; it’s merely okay.

The biggest issue here is that the grilled, well done patty is — like an absurd amount of Toronto-area burgers before it — made with beef that is too lean.  It’s dry.  I just…  I can’t even muster up the motivation to get particularly worked up about this anymore.  If you live in Toronto and you like burgers, you will be getting your mouth dried out by too-lean hamburgers.  Often.  Sadly, it just comes with the territory.

Aside from that, it’s not bad.  The quality of the beef is obviously pretty decent, as the burger has a decent amount of beefy flavour.

As for the toppings and the fresh-baked bun?  They’re fine.  It’s all pretty ho-hum, though you could certainly do worse.

The lightly battered, shoestring fries were okay.  Battered fries aren’t my favourite, and they were a bit on the crunchy side, but like the burger I have had worse.