Location: 1249 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.therhino.ca/

My visit to The Rhino was completely unplanned — I was in the area, I wanted to check out a burger, and hey, that place looks like it serves a hamburger.  No recommendations, no research, just a random pop-in.

My dream in situations like this is that the burger will turn out to be amazing, and that I can announce a hidden gem to the world.  I mean, anyone can go and review a place that everyone’s talking about.  Who cares?  Finding a restaurant that people wouldn’t have heard of otherwise — that’s a service to the world.

That absolutely, positively isn’t what happened here, but hey, I can keep dreaming.  One day.

The Rhino burger: “hand-pressed ground beef patty, lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickle, brioche bun. Served with fries or house salad.”

It’s not good.  And it’s not good in such a boring way that I don’t even particularly feel like talking about it.  It’s the usual bad burger trifecta: the beef is too finely ground, it’s packed too tightly, and it’s too lean.  It’s crazy dry.  I normally eat a burger as it comes, but in this case I just couldn’t stomach it.  I had to put on copious amounts of mustard (which I typically find to be way too assertive as a burger topping) just to give it some moisture, and to give the bland, personality-free beef some flavour.

I will say that the medium well patty is perfectly grilled, which gives it a great amount of smoky flavour.  Not enough to save it, of course — but it that element was nice nonetheless.

And the fresh brioche bun was quite good (not that it particularly matters).

As for the fries, they were delicious, with a delicate exterior crispiness and a perfect amount of fluffiness.  They were seasoned with big, flaky grains of salt that added more texture and nice pops of flavour.  They were top notch.