Tasty Burgers

Stack

Published on December 2, 2012August 3, 2014 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 3265 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: http://stackrestaurant.ca/

Like The Stockyards, Stack is BBQ joint run by people who have clearly put a great deal of care into the burger selection on their menu. If their website is to be believed, they initially planned on specializing in burgers, but ultimately decided to shift their focus to southern-style BBQ.

It’s clear that they could have made Stack a burger joint and done just fine — these are burgers done (mostly) right.

There are some interesting looking burgers on the menu, but in keeping with my preference when I’m reviewing a place, I kept it simple with the Stack Classic, which comes topped with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and onion.

I also asked for mayonnaise on the side, which turned out to be a wise move; the creamy, flavourful mayo is infused with roasted garlic and is clearly made in-house — this ain’t no Hellmann’s, that’s for sure. It was good on the burger, but even better as a dipping sauce for their amazing fries.

Like at The Stockyards, the burger is griddle-cooked and seasoned with little more than salt and pepper (as it should be). Sadly, like at The Stockyards (and pretty much every other burger joint in Toronto), the beef in the burger is a little bit too lean, resulting in a burger that’s a bit drier than it should be. Thankfully, there is still some juiciness here, so it’s certainly a minor offender in Toronto’s ongoing quest to completely dry out my mouth with well-done, too-lean patties.

Aside from the dryness issue, this is an outstanding hamburger. The well-done, loosely packed patty had a good amount of crust from the griddle (though not quite as much as at The Stockyards or Burger’s Priest).

It’s also clear that Stack is using beef that is well above average, as this was one of the most richly beefy burgers I’ve had in quite a while. Eating it, I had something of a eureka moment: oh right, this is how a burger is supposed to taste.

The fresh sesame seed bun complimented the burger perfectly, as did the toppings (particularly the aforementioned fresh mayonnaise — if you find yourself at Stack, ask for this mayo).

As I mentioned earlier, the fries were crazy delicious. Perfectly crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, with an amazingly robust flavour, they were almost ludicrously good when dipped in that delicious garlicky mayonnaise.

Bier Markt

Published on November 18, 2012December 2, 2012 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 199 North Queen Street, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.thebiermarkt.com/

Bier Markt is an upscale Toronto-area chain, akin to Milestones or Earl’s. They’ve recently expanded into the west-end with an Etobicoke location, which is the one that I checked out. I went on a Sunday afternoon and they had a musician performing live, which thankfully wasn’t too loud, as I didn’t particularly feel like having to yell and strain to hear my dining companion (how much of an old curmudgeon am I, exactly?).

The menu features two burgers: the Classic Burger, and the T-Bone Burger, which is made with Kobe beef. The T-Bone Burger is 24 dollars (!), so I went with the Classic Burger, which isn’t cheap itself at 15 dollars.

No, this place isn’t exactly the best deal in the city.

I wasn’t in a beer mood, so I just went for a soda, but the place has an impressive beer list (over 150, according to the website), which is probably one of its bigger selling points.

The burger comes topped with lettuce, tomato, onion (which I removed), and pickles, with two small ramekins of ketchup and mustard on the side.

The grilled burger was (of course) cooked to well done, and had a pleasantly beefy flavour. Clearly, they’re using above-average meat. As well, the burger had some char from the grill, which added a good amount of flavour and texture.

Sadly, there’s a big caveat here: what should have been a great burger was marred by excessive dryness.

Of course, cooking a burger to well done never helps in the juiciness department, but even then it’s clear that the beef Bier Markt is using is far too lean. The menu specifies sirloin, which if true does explain a lot. Sirloin is an exceptionally lean cut of beef, and thus is completely inappropriate for use in a hamburger.

I’m tempted to go off on a rant about how a hamburger needs a decent amount of fat to be really good, but I think I’ve done that in at least half of the reviews I’ve written for this blog, so I’ll just point you to the archives. Seriously: I love Toronto, but an alarming amount of people here just have no conception of what makes a hamburger great. It’s frustrating, but what can you do? Ultimately it’s an American food, and we’re not in America.

As for the rest of the burger: the toppings were all quite good, and the fresh brioche bun complimented the patty perfectly.

All the components were there — good toppings, good quality beef, good cooking technique, and a nice, fresh bun. If only they were using fattier beef, this could have been an amazing burger. C’est la vie.

Oddly, the burger came with “root vegetable crisps” on the side instead of fries. They were essentially like thickly-cut chips, and were a bit bland, but were satisfyingly crunchy and kind of addictive.

The Works

Published on November 4, 2012November 18, 2012 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 2245 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.worksburger.com/

Though it’s been around in Ottawa for over a decade, The Works has only recently made its way into Toronto, opening a location on the Danforth earlier in the year, and more recently, in Bloor West Village. There are supposedly more locations on the way; if my recent experience at the Bloor West location is any indication, this is definitely, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing.

Unlike many (most?) of Toronto’s burger joints, The Works is a full service restaurant, so don’t expect to pop in for a quick bite.

The menu is full of choices, with six different patty choices, three buns, and over 70 customized burgers, with toppings ranging from standard fare like bacon and various cheeses to more bizarre selections like mac and cheese and peanut butter.

Scanning right past the novelty items on the menu (peanut butter!), I landed on the Plain Jane, and asked for it topped with my usual mayo, tomato, and pickles.

Most of the burgers seem to be in the 12 dollar ballpark, which does seem bit pricey; that does, however, include a side, so it’s pretty much in line with what other places are charging.

The grilled burger came out looking nicely charred and attractive; I took a bite and was heartened to discover that it tasted just as good as it looked. It’s not a great burger — but it was a very, very good one.

For one thing, the well done burger was actually reasonably juicy. It could have certainly been juicier — the meat was still, like pretty much every other burger in Toronto, a bit too lean. But it was far from dry, and I guess that’s all you can really hope for in this city.

The loosely packed patty, seasoned only with salt and pepper, also had a nicely beefy flavour, and a decent amount of crust from the grill.

The soft, fresh bun complimented the burger perfectly, and the toppings were fine (though the burger did come out with onions instead of pickles, a mistake that was quickly rectified).

It’s not exactly a burger I’ll remember forever, but it was one that was very well executed on every level.

As for the fries, they were a tad soggy, but were otherwise perfectly cooked and quite tasty.

On The Bun

Published on October 21, 2012March 23, 2018 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 5030 Maingate Drive, Mississauga
Website: None

I actually found out about On The Bun via an email from a reader of this blog, though whether he was just an anonymous customer or the owner of the joint is a matter of some debate. It doesn’t affect my review either way, but it is clear that I wouldn’t have discovered the place if it weren’t for that email; it’s brand new, and there is nary a trace of it on the internet.

It’s an unusually large restaurant (I don’t think finding a seat will ever be an issue here), and there was only one other customer when I visited on a Saturday afternoon. Clearly, word has yet to get out.

I ordered the hamburger combo with fries and a drink, which is a pretty good deal at less than ten bucks. The restaurant has a fairly typical setup — you order your burger, wait, then pick from the toppings behind the glass. I went with tomato, pickles, and mayo, and noticing that they didn’t have any plastic knives, asked for my burger to be cut in half.

That’s when something unusual happened: the owner of the place (who was manning the register and cooking up the burgers solo), noticing me taking pictures and asking for my burger cut in half, sussed out my identity as a blogger. That was a first. Thankfully it happened after my burger had been prepared, so I don’t have to worry that he paid my burger any special attention, knowing that I’d be reviewing it (not that I’m exactly the Toronto Star, but I suppose this will be the first word on the place on the internet).

He did, however, send over an order of masala fries, but that was the extent of any special treatment that I received.

That being said, hopefully you’ll trust the impartiality of my opinion when I say that it was a solid burger. It’s nothing I’d go crazy over, but you could certainly do worse.

The burger is cooked on a griddle, and unlike another Mississauga burger joint, Burger Factory, it has a decent amount of crust. This is always a good thing.

The beef itself had a decent flavour; it’s not the beefiest hamburger you’ll ever eat, but it’s reasonably flavourful. I think it’s seasoned with something other than salt and pepper (I couldn’t put my finger on what), but it’s subtle, so it’s not a big deal.

The meat had a slightly odd texture, like it was perhaps ground too finely. However, the well done burger was also quite juicy, which I definitely appreciated, and which was enough to allow me overlook any textural nitpicks.

The bun, on the other hand, is harder to overlook: dense, over-sized, and vaguely stale, it completely threw off the beef-to-bun ratio, and was constantly threatening to overwhelm the burger. In my conversation with the owner, he mentioned that he was eyeing a new bun supplier, which is definitely a good thing.

As for the fries, they were crispy, greasy, and delicious; they actually reminded me quite a bit of chip truck fries. The masala fries, with their addictively curry-tinged seasoning, were even better.

Union Social Eatery

Published on October 7, 2012October 7, 2012 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: http://www.unionsocial.ca/
Website: 6986 Financial Drive, Unit 6, Mississauga

While trying to figure out what burger to review next, I checked out Urbanspoon’s list of the top-rated burgers in Mississauga (an unimpressive list to be sure — if you think Toronto has a lack of really good burger joints, go to Mississauga and prepare to be horrified). The number three spot on that list was Union Social Eatery, a restaurant I hadn’t heard of. Though a high Urbanspoon ranking is generally a questionable gauge of quality, I decided to check the place out.

It’s basically a family-friendly pub, with an all-over-the-place menu that ranges from pub standbys like wings and nachos to Pad Thai and swordfish steaks.

The restaurant’s family-friendly status was in full display when I went, with a birthday party full of screeching, excited kids sitting a stone’s throw away from my table. That was a bit grating, but I can hardly fault the restaurant for that.

What I can fault the place for was the glacial service. There was exactly one waitress serving the entire restaurant, which was fairly busy for a Saturday afternoon. Naturally, this resulted in service that wasn’t exactly speedy. The waitress did her best given the circumstances, but the management never should have put her in that position.

So it wasn’t the best dining experience ever. Slow service + whooping, hollering children = me contemplating suicide.

But let’s talk about the food. When the waitress was finally able to make her way to my table, I ordered the U.F.O. (Union’s Fresh Original) Burger, which is advertised as coming with “ancho BBQ sauce and all the trimmings.” Though I generally find barbecue sauce to be a little bit overwhelming for a hamburger, I decided to get the burger as is.

A little while later (okay, a long while later), the burger came. “All the trimmings” turned out to be lettuce, tomatoes, and red onion (which I removed). There was also some kind of mayo/mustard-based sauce.

I’ve gotta hand it to the place, though my expectations weren’t too high, this was actually a pretty solid burger. Let me get the bad out of the way first: the grilled burger was cooked all the way to well done and then some, hitting the upper reaches of how much you can cook a hamburger before it hits the point of no return.

Miraculously, despite the hamburger’s borderline-overcooked, fully gray interior, it still managed to be quite juicy — meaning that the beef actually had a reasonable fat content. Too-lean beef is the norm in the GTA, so for this alone I was tempted to wander back into the kitchen and shake the chef’s hand.

The loosely packed patty also had a very pleasant, mildly beefy flavour. It wasn’t the beefiest burger I’ve ever had, but considering the caliber of the last few burgers I’ve reviewed, it was practically a revelation. It also had a bit of flavour from the grill, but not so much to overwhelm the beef.

The condiments, too, were pretty good. Though I feared that the barbecue sauce would overpower the burger, it was sparingly brushed onto the patty and gave the burger a mild tang while still making sure that the beef was the star of the show. The mayo, too, added creaminess without over-asserting itself.

The lettuce and tomatoes were fine, and the fresh, buttered-and-toasted bun complimented the burger quite well.

As for the fries, they were crispy, with a fluffy interior, and were kind of perfect.

I should note that the quality of the burger and fries doesn’t necessarily translate to all of the items on the menu; my dining companion had one of the flatbreads and was underwhelmed, commenting that it tasted like something he could have thrown together at home with leftovers.