Location: 2419 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: http://www.holeeburger.com/

Hole-E Burger Bar’s gimmick is that all their burgers are punched with holes pre-cooking.  Why?  To justify the name?  Their website claims that the holes allow the burgers to be “evenly cooked to perfection,” though common sense would dictate that the opposite should be true.  They also claim that they fill the holes with sauce; whether a burger really needs more places to cram sauce is questionable, but that’s probably a debate for another time.  Because in this particular case, the whole thing is moot (get it?  Whole thing??  Ah, get out of here, no one appreciates puns).

There were no holes in my burger.  Like, not one single hole.  So… that’s odd (or not odd at all, since a burger really shouldn’t have holes in it to begin with).  There were a few dimples where maybe some holes had once been, but it otherwise looked like a standard patty.

So without any oddball hole gimmicks to fall back on, how was the burger?  Not great.

I ordered the standard, plain burger, and had it topped with pickles, tomato, and mayo.  The well done patty is griddled, with a decent — if not exactly awe-inspiring — amount of crust.  It was also reasonably juicy, which is always a good thing.

But there were problems, the foremost being the downright weird texture.

You know when you eat a steak, and you accidentally get a mouthful of gristle, and you really have to chew it thoroughly before you can swallow? To a certain extent, that’s what every mouthful of this burger felt like. You’d chew and you’d chew, and you’d think you were done, but then nope — there was this tough, oddly ropey beef still hanging out in your mouth, refusing to get fully chewed.

It was bizarre, to put it mildly, and I really don’t even have a theory as to how it could have happened.  It was definitely too finely ground, but that alone can’t account for the textural weirdness going on here.  And my dining companion had the exact same issue, so this wasn’t just a one-patty issue.

The beef mostly tasted okay, but had a slightly off flavour.  It was also way over-peppered, but both of those complaints fade into the background when the texture of the burger is so wonky.

The bun and toppings were okay, at least, and the fries were pretty great.  The restaurant is also right next door to some really delicious cupcakes via the Cupcake Shoppe, so the outing wasn’t a complete bust.