Location: 18 Rambler Drive, Brampton
Website: http://www.quickiesfast.ca/

So the other day I was watching Top Five Restaurants on the Food Network; they were counting down the best burgers in America, and I was getting hungrier and hungrier (sometimes the picks on a show like this can be questionable, but every burger in that episode made me want to quit my job and jump on a plane).

I think by burger number two I had decided that I was going to need to have a hamburger for lunch the next day — sadly, I work in Mississauga, which isn’t exactly a burger-lover’s paradise. It doesn’t help that I’ve already reviewed the few burgers that are actually worth eating out here (as far as I know, at least).

Which is how I ended up at Quickies, maybe the sketchiest place I’ve visited for this blog — and I’ve been to a lot of sketchy places, particularly out in the wilds of Mississauga and Brampton.

I’m not even going to sugar-coat it: the restaurant is flat-out gross. Everything looks like it was in desperate need of renovation about a decade ago, and there was a visible layer of grime on pretty much every surface. Most of the things I touched — the tray, a ketchup bottle — were slick with grease. At one point I dropped my phone while taking pictures of the burger, and when I went under the table to retrieve it, I saw that it had landed next to a dust-caked, cobwebbed French fry that appeared to have been under there for weeks if not months.

After I left, I felt like I didn’t just need to wash my hands, I needed to wash everything. I needed one of those jailhouse fire-hose showers.

It’s the type of place where, if I weren’t already planning to write about it, I would have taken one step through the door, looked around and walked right back out.

The menu features a four ounce single, and an eight ounce double. I went with the single, and had it topped with pickles, tomato, and mayo. The burger was six bucks as a combo with a drink and a very generous portion of fries, so if nothing else it’s crazy cheap.

This being an old-school burger joint in the GTA, the burger was, of course, grilled. There’s really not a lot to say about it — it’s a frozen burger, and though it’s a small step above some of the real bottom-of-the-barrel frozen burgers that I’ve had, it still had that overly processed “is this a hamburger or is it a hot dog?” taste and texture that typifies cheap frozen burgers.

The bun was nicely toasted and suited the burger fairly well, aside from being a bit too big, and the toppings were what you’d expect.

As for the fries, they actually weren’t too bad, surprisingly enough. Given that the place smelled quite strongly of stale grease (oh, did I not mention that the place stunk? Because the place stunk), I had very low expectations for the fries. And though some of them were bordering on undercooked, for the most part they were crispy and tasty, with none of the rancid oil flavour I had feared.