Reviews – Page 36 – Tasty Burgers

The Burgernator

Published on March 3, 2013March 4, 2013 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 269 Augusta Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://theburgernator.com/

Whatever else you can say about The Burgernator, whoever is in charge of their marketing/branding/design has done a top-notch job. A great amount of care has obviously gone into the look and general theme of the place, including a well thought out web and social media presence. The restaurant is slickly designed, with their manifesto proudly displayed on the wall. Said manifesto promises that their never-frozen patties contain “a custom blend of freshly ground chuck,” and that they want to “rid the city of half-hearted and overcooked burgers.”

The burgers are smashed and griddle-cooked, in the style of Burger’s Priest and Holy Chuck, two of my favourite burger joints in the city. Suffice it to say, by the time I had ordered and sat down to await my hamburger, I was excited. Another great, griddle-cooked burger in Toronto? Yes please.

I ordered the Lieutenant Burger, which comes with two four ounce patties, cheddar cheese, Burgernator sauce, lettuce, tomato, and pickles. The restaurant is set up so that you order at the register, sit, then wait for them to bring you your food.

The burger arrived glistening and full of promise. It didn’t appear to have much crust, a hallmark of a really good smashed burger, but I was still ready for greatness. I cut the burger in half for the requisite photo and peeked inside. My heart immediately sank. One look at the gray, textureless slab that was the burger’s cross-section, and I knew the truth. The odds of this being a great hamburger suddenly seemed distressingly low.

You don’t have to be a burger expert to know that something is amiss here; this is not how a burger is supposed to look.

Alas, this is also not how a burger is supposed to taste. As you can tell just by looking at it, the beef is way, way, way too finely ground and tightly packed, resulting in a dense, unpleasantly chewy burger. The sad part is that it’s actually fairly juicy, but it’s negated by how insanely dense it is.

A good burger should feature beef that is coarsely ground, loosely packed, and has a certain amount of texture to it. This was just a solid, unforgiving mass of mediocre meat.

And yes, the beef is kind of mediocre. While it certainly didn’t taste bad, it had a vaguely off-putting flavour that I found somewhat unpleasant. Some nice crust from the griddle might have helped, but as mentioned earlier, there wasn’t much in that department. It was perfectly edible, but when the nicest thing you can say about a hamburger is “I was able to eat it without questioning my will to live,” then you know you’ve got problems.

The cheddar suited the burger just fine, though there is a reason why American cheese is the standard for a fast food-style burger like this — it adds a mild tang and a welcome creaminess without overwhelming the meat. But that’s a matter of preference, and while I certainly prefer American for a cheeseburger, the cheddar here was fully melted and perfectly okay.

The Burgernator sauce, on the other hand, was cloyingly sweet and really did not do the hamburger any favours. The rest of the toppings were standard stuff, save for the pickles which were weirdly tasteless.

The bun was a little too dense and bready. Which is weird, because despite its density it did a fairly disastrous job of holding up to the burger. I was able to eat my hamburger with just a little bit of maneuvering towards the end; my dining companion, who ordered one of the more substantial burgers on the menu, wasn’t so lucky. His bottom bun almost immediately disintegrated, forcing him to eat the majority of his burger with a fork and knife. Like an animal.

The fries, too, were disappointing. They were pale and undercooked; limp and unappealingly chalky. They did, however, come with a rosemary mayo dipping sauce which was surprisingly tasty.

As I left, I noticed the following inscription by the door:

Incorrect.

Jack Astor’s

Published on February 10, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

jack
Location: 1900 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.jackastors.com/

This is going to be a short one. It’s hard to write all that much about a burger that so conclusively straddles that middle ground between good and bad, and that is exactly where this burger falls. “Meh” is pretty much the perfect word to describe it.

Jack Astor’s is a casual chain restaurant, and as expected from a restaurant such as this, there are burgers on the menu. I wasn’t expecting much, and I got pretty much exactly what I expected: a perfectly edible hamburger that is almost instantly forgettable.

I ordered “The Classic,” which is their no-frills burger topped with lettuce, tomato, red onion (which I removed), and mayo.

The burger was fine. This being a chain place, I had feared that they might serve a frozen burger or a meatloaf burger, but this was thankfully not the case.

There are a couple of fairly significant issues that keep this burger firmly in the “meh” category. First, and most predictably, the burger is too dry. I know I sound like a broken record here; apparently wanting a hamburger to be juicy in Toronto is an unreasonable request, which is actually kind of maddening. But no, I’m not going to get into another rant about overcooking and acceptable fat percentages. Not for you, Jack Astor’s. Not for you.

And yes, the burger is overcooked, which just compounds the dryness issue. The grilled patty is a bit over-charred, resulting in a burger that is a bit too crunchy in spots. It’s also a little bit too tightly packed and dense, which makes it a tough chew.

The second issue is that it’s a bit bland. The beef is obviously not the greatest, and while it tastes okay, it doesn’t taste like much. Add in the fact that if it was seasoned with salt and pepper, I couldn’t taste it, and you’ve got a pretty bland burger.

Otherwise, the toppings were fine, and the fresh brioche bun, though slightly over-toasted, suited the burger well.

All in all, it’s not a bad hamburger — it’s just aggressively unmemorable.

As for the fries, though a tad on the soggy side, they were otherwise quite good.

Allen’s

Published on January 27, 2013 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

allens
Location: 143 Danforth Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://www.allens.to/

There are a handful places that I’ve been meaning to review since I started this blog, that for one reason or another, I just haven’t gotten around to yet. Until today, Allen’s was on top of that list. Widely regarded as one of the heavyweights in Toronto’s burger landscape, no Toronto burger blog is complete without a visit to this particular pub.

Allen’s has been around since the late ’80s, and thus predates the recent burger craze by many, many years. Allen’s has been pumping out burgers since the chefs at a place like Burger’s Priest were still reading Nintendo Power and learning their ABCs. Unlike most old-school burger joints in this city, however, Allen’s serves fantastic hamburgers. Better than fantastic. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It’s clear just looking at the menu that Allen’s is serious about their hamburgers. There’s a whole paragraph in the menu dedicated to the provenance of the beef and the care they take in making their hamburgers (their use of high quality beef, butchered on site is why they are allowed to circumvent Toronto’s so-called law requiring hamburgers to be cooked to well done). Of course, anyone can put a bunch of superlatives in their menu and still serve a crappy burger. Deeds, as they say, speak louder than words.

When I ordered, I was asked how I wanted the burger cooked, which always delights me: I’m partial to hamburgers cooked to medium rare, so I find the endless parade of well-done-and-beyond patties served by Toronto’s burger joints to be a bit wearisome. I’m okay with burgers cooked to well done (I couldn’t run this blog if I weren’t), but in my opinion the flavour of beef begins to diminish when it’s cooked much beyond medium. That’s not to mention, of course, the dryness issue.

The burgers served here are pub style: grilled, and much larger and more substantial than the griddled, fast food style burgers of a place like Burger’s Priest.

It’s a fantastic burger. Juicy, nicely seasoned with just salt and pepper and with a richly complex beefy flavour that easy rivals any hamburger I’ve eaten in this city (or anywhere else, for that matter), it is dangerously close to burger perfection. It’s the type of burger that surprises you with every bite, because it’s so damn tasty. It’s the type of burger that makes you more and more sad as you eat it, because you know it will eventually be finished. It’s the type of burger that you wish all burgers could be.

I do have some small quibbles, which are mostly cosmetic. Grilled burgers tend to bulge in the middle, a phenomenon that is easily combated by placing a small dimple in the centre of the uncooked patty (go here for a detailed analysis on why this happens). They are clearly not doing that here. A burger like this also needs to be shaped a bit wider than the bun to compensate for shrinkage, another small oversight that could improve this burger. As it stands, there was a decent amount of bun overhang, which left me with some bread left on my plate after the patty itself was finished.

These are small issues that won’t prevent me from proclaiming this to be one of the best burgers in the city, but they are issues nonetheless.

The aforementioned sesame seed bun, aside from being a little bit too wide for the burger, was fresh and suited the patty well. The burger comes with mustard, relish, pickles, tomato, lettuce, and onion — all on the side. Which is good, because this is a burger that really doesn’t need a whole lot of condimenting. My recommendation would be to leave most of that stuff on the side; a hamburger this tasty doesn’t need much else.

It doesn’t come with fries (or any other sides, for that matter), so I ordered some. Like the burger, they’re pretty damn good. Thick cut fries like the ones they serve here are tougher to pull off; they wind up, more often than not, a little undercooked and dense in the middle. These fries, however, were perfectly crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. They’re unsalted, but a salt grinder is provided.

Did I mention that the hamburger they serve at Allen’s is a very strong contender for the best burger in the city? I did? Well let me say it again: this is a very strong contender for the best burger in the city. Eat it. And if you already have, eat it again, because it is awesome, and you deserve more awesomeness in your life.

Barque Smokehouse

Published on January 13, 2013February 28, 2013 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 299 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://barque.ca/

I’ve eaten a lot of bad burgers for this blog, but I don’t think any has disappointed me as much as the one from Barque. Though I hadn’t heard a whole lot about their burger, I’ve heard pretty much nothing but good things about the restaurant itself, and certainly went in with high hopes for their hamburger. One of the best burgers I’ve had recently has been from Stack, another Southern-style BBQ place with a burger on the menu. I had hoped for similar greatness from Barque.

Spoiler alert: this wasn’t a great burger. Heck, I would have settled for good. But this wasn’t even that.

Before I get to the hamburger, let me talk about the service, which was surprisingly poor. I showed up at around one on a Sunday afternoon and the place was packed, so they are clearly doing okay, despite the lacklustre service and food. We wound up sitting at the bar, which wouldn’t have been my choice, but was fine.

Less fine was the way we were completely ignored after our order was taken for the entire 45 minutes it took for our food to come. Even less fine was the fact that I received a beef brisket sandwich with a salad on the side, despite the fact that I ordered a burger and fries. So my dining companion and I wound up taking turns watching each other eat.

But this is a burger review, so let me talk about the burger. As horrible as the experience was up to that point, I was completely ready for it to be redeemed by an amazing burger. Sadly, no such redemption was in the cards that day.

I came during Barque’s brunch service, so I ordered the Brunch Burger, which is described as being topped with “Caramelized onions, gruyere, pickles, onion ring.” It’s a bit more topping-heavy than I typically like for a burger that I’m reviewing, but I’m okay with making an exception every now and then.

It’s a meatloaf burger, and though the seasoning wasn’t particularly strong, it was still enough to completely wipe out whatever beefy flavour the (presumably low quality) beef might have once had.

Much, much more problematic was the burger’s downright repulsive texture, which was puzzlingly and off-puttingly mushy despite being cooked to well done and fully gray throughout. I have no idea what was going on there — perhaps the meat had been ground too finely, or perhaps it was the stuff they mixed in, but the hamburger was inarguably a textural disaster.

As for the toppings: though I typically like caramelized onions on a burger, here their soft texture only emphasized the patty’s mushiness, and was highly unwelcome. Same goes for the melty gruyere cheese. The onion ring was fine, as was the fresh brioche bun, but there isn’t much that would have been able to save that weird, squishy patty.

The fries, too, were kind of puzzling. They were completely dried out and crunchy, and bore a striking resemblance to a larger version of Hickory Sticks. I’m honestly not sure if this was intentional or if they were simply overcooked. They weren’t awful, but I didn’t have any particular desire to eat more than a handful.

I should probably note that when the bill came the hamburger had been comped, so at least they were willing to acknowledge that the service was fairly disastrous.

(Image of the sign in the header photo courtesy of alanosaur on flickr. I was going to take the photo on my way out, but I guess I was in such a rush to get out of there that it completely slipped my mind.)

South St. Burger Co.

Published on December 30, 2012January 1, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

south
Location: 1020 Islington Avenue, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.southstburger.com/

South St. Burger Co. is a fast casual burger chain (“fast casual” denoting a fast food restaurant with — supposedly — better food than a place like McDonald’s or Burger King, and prices to match). I want to like South St. — I really do. I can appreciate that they’re a chain with loftier goals than, say, Hero Certified Burgers, who use the absolute cheapest, most odious frozen patties they can find.

South St. proudly proclaim that they use only fresh beef, and kudos to them for that. Sadly, although this is a step in the right direction, there is more to making a good burger than simply using fresh beef.

The restaurant has a pretty standard set up — you order your burger, wait for it to be ready, then pick from the toppings behind the glass.

Actually, those toppings warrant mention: though I went simple with just mayo, tomato, and pickles, they have a fairly impressive selection, including different types of mayo (garlic, wasabi, or curry), relishes, and chutney.

I actually remember liking this place a lot more when it first opened — I think the quality used to be higher. On top of this, South St. came to Toronto slightly before the burger trend hit this city hard, when a place serving fresh, non-frozen, non-meatloaf burgers was much more of a novelty.

The grilled, well done burger is very, very dry. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll note that they’re clearly using beef that is way too lean. The patty is very tightly packed and very dense, making the whole thing a bit of a jaw workout.

It’s also clear that the beef just isn’t that great, as it has that vaguely unpleasant taste that you associate with lower quality beef.

The bun was nothing too special, but it was fine, and the pickles, tomato, and mayo were pretty standard. I suspect to make a South St. burger worth eating, you need to be really aggressive with their more unique condiments. My dining companion got a variety of toppings on his burger, and he enjoyed it.

As for the fries, they’re made by New York Fries, and are expectedly good. I asked for the curry mayo and the garlic mayo on the side for dipping, which I would strongly recommend. The curry mayo in particular was quite delicious, and really kicked up the already tasty fries.