Tasty Burgers

Frankie’s

Published on September 23, 2012 by Michael Nusair7 Comments

Location: 994 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: None

Frankie’s has apparently been around for 35 years. I say apparently because I had never heard of it before a few weeks ago, and it certainly appears to be a new restaurant. However, a review at blogTO (which is, oddly, the only thing that pops up when you Google this joint outside of sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon) claims that it is a years-old neighbourhood standby. Okay, if you say so, blogTO. I should really make some calls and do some research, but that sounds like a lot of work. What do I look like, a journalist?

Anyway, a place this mediocre really isn’t worth that much thought or effort. The restaurant’s sign hilariously proclaims that these are the “world’s best burgers.” They’re not even Queen Street’s best burgers.

The menu offers two different types of hamburgers: the Frankie’s Original, which the menu describes as having “100% Canadian beef and Frankie’s secret spices,” and the specialty burgers, advertised as being eight ounce burgers made from “Canadian chuck.”

I found it very odd that they advertised the cut of beef that went into the specialty burgers and not the Frankie’s Original, and I was leaning towards getting a specialty burger over the who-knows-what’s-in-it Frankie’s Original; however, the specialty burgers were all so condiment and topping-heavy that I thought I’d never even be able to taste the beef. So I went with a Frankie’s Original topped with my usual selections (pickles, tomato, and mayo).

A note about the restaurant itself, which is waitress service, so you’ll be sitting there a while: they have TVs on with the volume up. This isn’t a problem. They also have a working jukebox. This is a problem. I have no problem with a jukebox in theory, but when you’ve got the music coming from the jukebox on one side, and the noise coming from the TV on the other, it can get a bit cacophonous. A note to the owners of Frankie’s: please pick one or the other.

The service was relatively fast, at least. The hamburger is, as advertised, a meatloaf burger — though it is thankfully not too strongly seasoned. This allowed the flavour of the beef itself to come through, which, in this case, wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The beef had a fairly typical low-quality beef flavour: vaguely funky, and somewhat unpleasant. Though I’ve had worse, it certainly wasn’t anything I’d want to have again.

The patty also had an oddly mushy texture despite being cooked to well done; I’m thinking that the meat had been too finely ground, and perhaps even had a filler of some sort.

As for the toppings, the pickles were fine, but the tomatoes were mealy enough to warrant removal from my hamburger, and the mayo was not mayo. It was either Miracle Whip or some house-made concoction; it was cloyingly sweet and completely overwhelming. I scraped off as much as I could from the bun and the patty.

The fries were okay, but they were a little bit soggy and very greasy, with a stale oil flavour. It’s likely that they’re using oil that is not quite hot enough, and that needs to be changed.

Burger Brats

Published on September 11, 2012January 13, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 254 Adelaide Street West
Website: http://burgerbrats.ca/

Burger Brats opened about a year ago and was almost immediately forgotten about. In a city where almost every new restaurant that opens downtown gets a ton of buzz, this concerned me a bit. Still, I’ve been anxious to try the place, and I recently got my chance.

I came here on a Sunday for lunch just after the place opened, and it was completely deserted and remained so until I left. I won’t hold this against it; Sunday afternoon is obviously not exactly a restaurant’s prime time, particularly here in the entertainment district where the bulk of the business probably comes from late-night drunken revelers.

I glanced at the menu posted on the wall, and quickly settled on the Burger Brats Classic, which is advertised as coming with “fresh lettuce, ripe tomato, red onion, pickles, mustard, and mayo.” I opted to go onion-free, but otherwise ordered the burger as-is.

I ordered the burger as a combo with fries and a soda, and it came up to just under ten bucks, so it’s not a bad deal.

After a few minutes, my burger was ready; I took a seat and dug in.

The first thing I noticed is how dry the burger was; impossibly dry. It’s the kind of burger that sucks all the moisture out of your mouth. It’s quite a jaw workout, that’s for sure.

It was cooked past well done, which is a bit puzzling given the fact that I was the only customer in the joint, and thus had the cook’s full attention. If a place is busy, you can kind of justify an overcooked burger from an overloaded, overworked kitchen. It’s still an unforgivable offense, but you can kind of justify it.

Here I clearly had the cook’s undivided attention, so there is no explanation for the overcooked burger other than that they wanted it that way. Puzzling.

The beef had a fairly neutral, not altogether unpleasant flavour, and a bit of smokiness from the grill. And though I feared that it might be a meatloaf style burger, this was thankfully not the case.

But man, it was so dry, and impossibly dense — it was way too tightly packed, which means that the patty has been over-handled, and is yet another sign that the person in charge of the burger cookery doesn’t really know what they’re doing.

Another disconcerting element about this burger: the horrifying abundance of crunchy, gristly bits of cartilage and who-knows-what-else. Not just one or two; they were interspersed throughout the entire burger. Again, something is going seriously wrong in the burger preparation department.

The toppings were fine, though it was a bit over-condimented (what, condimented is a word, isn’t it? Well it is now). I think in the future I’ll stick to my tried and true combo of tomato, pickles, and mayo when I order a plain burger.

As tends to be the case at mediocre burger joints, the burger was too small for the bun. A hamburger patty shrinks when cooking, and any restaurant that puts more than two seconds of thought into their hamburger will realize this and account for it when they’re shaping the patties. Yet again, there is a clear lack of care in the burger cookery at Burger Brats.

Seriously: this place baffles me. How do you bungle the burger so badly at a burger joint? This isn’t some random neighbourhood restaurant with a half-assed burger buried deep in the menu for variety’s sake. This is a place whose sole purpose is to sell burgers. That’s it. That’s what they do. And they serve this? Inexcusable.

Even a place that serves frozen burgers I can kind of understand. I don’t like them, but I can understand why a place might want to sell them: they’re very cheap, and they’re very easy. But Burger Brats is obviously going to the trouble and expense of making their own hamburger patties. So why not put in a little bit of extra effort to get it right, and a little bit extra expense to actually get above-average quality meat? Why not do a little bit of research on what blend of cuts makes the tastiest hamburger patty, and what percentage of fat will yield the juiciest burger? Because I guarantee that the folks at Burger Brats have not done this.

I sound upset. I am. It’s so easy; with just a little bit more work, Burger Brats could be serving something worth eating. Something good. Maybe even something better than good. But they’re not. They’re serving an inferior product and there’s absolutely no reason they need to be doing so other than laziness and ignorance. It upsets me. I’m sick of eating sub-standard burgers when making a good burger is so damn easy.

Deep breaths, Michael. Deep breaths.

Let me talk about something good about this place. The fries were delicious. Crispy on the outside and gloriously fluffy on the inside, they were pretty damn tasty. They were also sparingly seasoned with some kind of flavoured salt that complimented them quite well. If I were ever forced to come back here, I’d just get a large order of fries and forego the burger altogether.

Lick’s

Published on August 19, 2012May 17, 2014 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 1585 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.lickshomeburgers.com/

If you live in Ontario (and since you’re reading this blog, I’m assuming you do), odds are that you’ve been to Lick’s. They’re fairly omnipresent, and they’ve been around for ages. At one time, a visit to Lick’s meant the promise of above-average burgers in a casual, fast-food style setting. Though they’ve always served meatloaf-style burgers (not my favourite), they were, at one time, pretty darn good. Their success was justified.

That was a long time ago.

I’m not sure about the exact moment of their decline, but it probably would have been at some point around when they started selling frozen Lick’s-branded patties in supermarkets. These frozen patties, I would imagine, are the same ones they serve in their restaurants. And like all frozen patties, they’re not very good.

At the very least, the employees weren’t singing. For those of you fortunate enough to have never been subjected to this aural assault, the employees at Lick’s used to sing ’50s pop songs while they cooked up the burgers and fries. Loudly. And very far off key. It was unpleasant enough that it made me second-guess going to Lick’s, even back when it was good. Thankfully, they seem to have ended this policy, as my ears have been unmolested on my last couple of visits.

I ordered a homeburger combo (their standard hamburger) with fries and a soda, waited, picked out my toppings from behind the glass, and sat down.

What’s there to say about the current Lick’s hamburger? It’s a frozen burger and it tastes like a frozen burger. I could end the review right there, but I will say a few words.

It’s a strongly salty burger with that distinctive rubbery chewiness you’d expect from a patty of its ilk. To its credit, it does have a slightly beefier flavour than you’d expect, though it is mostly drowned out by the hot dog-esque chewiness/saltiness and the other spices.

I ordered the burger with pickles, tomatoes, and Guk, a mayonnaise-based sauce that Lick’s also sells in supermarkets. The sauce is fine, though its flavour is overwhelmed by the strong patty. The toasted sesame seed bun was fresh, and complimented the burger well.

The fries, like the burger, have gone downhill. Though they were once above average, they’re now pale and lifeless — bland and vaguely unpleasant. I ate a few and felt no need to subject myself to more.

Royal Meats Barbeque

Published on August 12, 2012 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 710 Kipling Avenue, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.royalmeats.ca/

I debated whether or not to even write this review. Royal Meats serves a burger that is, without question, untraditional. There’s a quote from an interview with Aaron Sorkin, of all people, that seems apropos:

Waitress: Our soup today is New England–style clam chowder. And a tuna burger is also available.

A tuna burger? That’s a phony hamburger.

Waitress: It’s really very nice!

You can’t just smash anything into a patty shape and call it a burger, a turkey burger, a tofu burger, a tuna burger.

Aaron Sorkin has a point (which is a sentence I never thought I’d write on this blog); I’m willing to accept that the burgers at a place like Goody’s or Woody’s are legitimate burgers, despite my belief that a true hamburger should be nothing but ground beef seasoned with salt and pepper, because they are at least made entirely out of beef. The ersatz burgers at Royal Meats, however, with their mixture of veal, pork, onions and other spices, are much harder to accept as a legitimate hamburger.

So the question is: do I review it? Is it hamburgery enough to warrant inclusion in this blog? If it were a tuna burger or a turkey burger, the answer would be much more straightforward; those are clearly not hamburgers, or at the very least are in a very different category than the burgers I review on this blog.

The Royal Meats burger, on the other hand, is close enough to a legitimate hamburger to straddle the line between faux burgers and the real deal.

But if it looks like a burger and it’s called a burger, then I suppose it’s fair game to judge it like a hamburger.

Royal Meats is a Balkan place, which helps to explain the unorthodox burger. They’ve got two of them on the menu: half pound, and one pound. I ordered the half pound, was given a pager that would go off when the burger was ready, and sat down. Several minutes later, my burger was ready; I got it topped with lettuce, tomato, and the house sauce– a reddish white spread that tastes of onions, peppers, and some kind of soft cheese.

Whether or not it’s a hamburger is up for debate, but it is tasty, there’s no doubt about that. Veal is generally fairly mild, so most of the flavour here comes from the pork, as well as the onions and seasonings mixed into the burger. It tastes more like a sausage flattened into a patty shape than a hamburger, but it’s definitely satisfying for what it is.

It’s also quite juicy, with a nice texture and a decent amount of flavour imparted from the grill. The bun, too, differs from a traditional hamburger. Called a lepinya bun, it’s denser and chewier than your typical hamburger bun, with a yeasty flavour that’s reminiscent of sourdough. It suits the burger well.

As for the unique house sauce, it would overpower a traditional burger, but this burger’s more assertive flavours easily stand up to this aggressive spread.

The lightly battered fries are clearly frozen, and they have a processed flavour that is strongly reminiscent of Pringles. They were decent enough, though I felt no need to finish them.

Going back to my original quandary, I now wonder how to rate this burger. Taken on its own merits, it probably deserves three out of four. It’s good. But as a hamburger, it’s kind of a failure (if it is a hamburger at all). This being a hamburger blog, I’m compelled to give this burger my lowest passing grade: two-and-a-half out of four.

Hero Certified Burgers

Published on July 29, 2012July 29, 2012 by Michael Nusair5 Comments

Location: 25 The West Mall, Toronto
Website: http://www.heroburgers.com/

Baffling. That’s the only word that comes to mind in response to Hero Burgers’ expansion and continued success. I’ve been meaning to review this local chain for a while now, but I’ve been putting it off because I had it a couple of times a few years ago, and I remembered it being pretty bad.

“Pretty bad,” as it turns out, doesn’t even begin to describe the horrors of what they serve at this place.

I visited the location in the Sherway Gardens food court (and if you ever find yourself here, The Construction Site — a grilled cheese place — is a bit over-priced but pretty darn tasty). They have a four ounce, a six ounce, and an eight ounce hamburger. Knowing that I would probably want as little of this burger as possible, I went with the four ounce. I selected my toppings (pickles, tomato, and Hero Certified Sauce), received a number, and waited. A few minutes later I had my tray and took a seat.

The first thing I noticed is how odd the patty looks; pallid and wrinkly, it’s clear just looking at it that it’s a frozen burger. It looks like the most unappealing frozen burger you’ve ever seen, only with its deficiencies multiplied ten-fold.

I cut the burger in half, and again, it was obvious that something was amiss. Thanks to this blog I’ve cut through quite a few burgers, and I’ve never felt anything like this; it was rubbery and tough, like trying to cut through a piece of calamari. Any idea that I might be pleasantly surprised was completely out the window at this point. Even still, I was unprepared. I took a bite and grimaced.

It’s the worst burger I’ve ever had.

I’ll say that again, because it bears repeating: it is quite literally the worst hamburger I’ve ever had in my entire life, and I say that as someone who has eaten a lot of burgers in his lifetime.

I’m not even sure where to start. The texture, I suppose. It was horrific. Chewy and rubbery in the worst way imaginable, it was completely alien from anything even remotely resembling real, fresh beef. All frozen burgers suffer from some degree of chewiness, but never this bad. It was disgusting, to be perfectly blunt.

Then there was the taste. Zero beefiness, and not even much saltiness — not much of anything, other than a rancid, turned-meat flavour. My dining companion took a bite and described it as fishy, and I can’t say I particularly disagree. Again: disgusting.

Seriously, take a closer look at this burger:

That is not how ground beef is supposed to look.

The toppings were fine, and the bun was a little bit too dense but mostly fine, but it’s all completely moot; this burger could have featured the greatest, most delicious bun and toppings of all time and it still would have been a complete wash. I was hungry, and for the first time in the history of this blog (and in my life, I’m pretty sure) I couldn’t finish my hamburger. I didn’t want to finish it. It was so gross.

I honestly didn’t believe it was possible for a burger to be this bad. When I was able (and willing) to eat the entire burger from BBQ Express, I assumed that there would simply never be a burger so bad that I couldn’t finish it. I assumed that even the worst burger in the world had some nugget of desirability, some small appeal, even if only in its deepest reaches.

I was wrong. There is nothing appealing about the burger at Hero Certified Burgers. It is where dreams go to die. It is a shriveled disc of pure despair, from which all hope is forever lost. If there is a hell, then it is what they serve there, all the time, no exceptions.

It’s bad, basically. Inedible. It should be avoided under all circumstances.

Not that it matters, because you should never go to this place for any reason ever, but the fries were pretty good. They were crispy on the outside and nicely fluffy on the inside, though it’s obvious that they prepare the fries in the same oil that they use for the onion rings — oil which hasn’t been changed in a long, long time. How am I so sure? The fries tasted like onion rings. Not just a little bit like onion rings; blatantly so. It was bizarre, but surprisingly tasty (though since it is merely the result of Hero Burgers’ incompetence — seriously, change the oil every now and then — I can’t even give them credit for it).