American cheese – Tasty Burgers

Oklahoma Burgers

Published on October 29, 2022 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 10 Kingsbridge Garden Circle, Mississauga
Website: https://www.oklahomaburgers.ca/

I wasn’t even sure that I was going to write about this place for this blog. Tasty Burgers has been on hiatus since the beginning of the pandemic, and I still hadn’t decided if/when I wanted to bring it back.

But you know what? Oklahoma Burgers serves a four star burger, and it needs to be recognized as such. I had no choice. Tasty Burgers must come back.

Oklahoma Burgers

Because yes, spoiler alert: the burger at Oklahoma Burgers is amazing, and you need to eat it immediately. If you’re a regular reader of this blog? Eat it immediately. If you’re not a regular reader of this blog? Eat it immediately.

Stop doing whatever you’re doing and eat it immediately, is what I’m saying.

Oklahoma Burgers

As soon as I saw the glorious photos and videos on the restaurant’s Instagram page, I knew I’d have to check the place out. I mean, look at this. And this. And this. Come on.

The place itself is a bit odd. They share a large, semi-fancy-looking space with a few other restaurants. It’s waiter service, and when you sit down you get a handful of menus and you can order whatever you want from the various restaurants (including a tasty-looking BBQ joint that I might have to come back to check out).

Oklahoma Burgers

They serve Oklahoma-style onion burgers, which is a variation on the smashed burgers that are so popular throughout the GTA, but with the addition of a whole bunch of thinly-sliced onions smashed right into the patty.

Those onions complement the patty perfectly. Most of them get sweet and tender — not fully caramelized, but close enough to be super tasty — and some get dark, brown, and crispy. It’s an absolutely delightful combination.

Oklahoma Burgers

The burgers are cooked like a slider, with the fresh, squishy buns being placed on the patties as they cook, which allows them to get perfumed with beefy goodness, further emphasizing the burger’s tastiness.

You can get it as a single or a double; I got the double, and it was a perfect ratio of meat, onions, cheese, and bun. You can’t really tell from the photos, but the patties were cooked to a perfect medium, and were abundantly, profoundly juicy. This might be one of the juiciest, greasiest burgers that I’ve ever had, and it is glorious. The amalgam of melty American cheese, flavourful beef, and sweet/crispy onions is the stuff dreams are made of.

Oklahoma Burgers

It’s topped with “burger sauce,” but aside from a mild mustardy flavour, all I could taste was the beef, cheese, and onions. Please note: I’m not complaining. This feels like the type of burger where I’d normally be looking for pickles or something acidic to cut through the richness — but here, it totally works. The burger’s rich decadence is almost overwhelming, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

As for the fries, they’re fairly standard battered fries. They’re crispy and tasty, but honestly? Just order another burger on the side. Don’t waste your time.

1.5 out of 4

St. James’s Gate

Published on March 2, 2020 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 5140 Dundas Street West, Etobicoke
Website: https://sjgtoronto.ca/

I’ve been at this for almost a decade now, so for the most part, these reviews basically write themselves (what’s that? The reviews all feel like I’m writing them on autopilot? Yeah, that’s fair). But burgers like the one they serve at St. James’s Gate — good, but not noteworthy in any way — are probably the toughest to review.

It’s a solid burger. It exists. There’s nothing majorly wrong with it. I don’t know.

St. James's Gate

The Royale with Cheese, according to the menu: “Twin four ounce brisket burgers stacked with melted American cheese, Havarti, secret sauce and bread and butter pickles.”

Is it the best burger I’ve ever had? No, absolutely not. Did it offend me in any way? Also no. It’s good.

St. James's Gate

I will say that the two types of cheese are a nice touch; I’ve never seen the Havarti/American combo on a cheeseburger, and I was skeptical. I thought it might be too much. But they’re both nice and gooey without being overly assertive. It works.

Another bonus: I’m pretty sure that the patties were grilled, which is a nice change of pace from the griddle-smashed patties that you’d expect to find in a burger like this.

St. James's Gate

Otherwise, the patties are fine. They’re slightly too dense and tough, but they’re nice and juicy, which helps to balance things out. And while there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about the flavour of the beef, it’s fine. It’s inoffensive, and there’s so much other stuff going on here that it doesn’t really stand out as a huge issue.

The other toppings, including the tangy secret sauce, are all about what you’d expect, and the bun — though slightly too toasty and crispy — suits the burger well.

St. James's Gate

As for the fries, they’re quite good. Unlike the burger, they’re actually quite a bit better than okay.

3 out of 4

Ronto’s Burger

Published on October 27, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 772 College Street, Toronto
Website: https://www.rontos.ca/

Generally speaking, if a burger joint exists in the GTA, I want to review it. It makes no difference to me whether I’ve heard good things / bad things / nothing about it. My impossible goal is to review every burger place in Toronto, though obviously that’s an epic task that I’ll never complete.

So the fact that I hadn’t heard a single thing about Ronto’s Burger certainly didn’t deter me from checking it out, though it did make me skeptical that it was going to be particularly great.

Ronto's Burger

As it turns out, I shouldn’t have been skeptical; Ronto’s Burger is surprisingly fantastic.

I ordered the namesake Ronto’s Burger: “One beef patty, Ronto’s sauce, lettuce, cheddar cheese, tomato, onions.”

It’s a griddled six ounce patty; it’s slightly more substantial than the typical smashed burger that’s so common in the city, and the added substance is quite nice.

Ronto's Burger

The patty is really good; it’s got a pronounced crust from the griddle and it’s abundantly juicy despite being cooked to well done. The texture is right where it should be, with coarsely ground beef that hasn’t been overhandled. It’s great.

It’s not the beefiest tasting patty I’ve ever had, but the beefy flavour is definitely there, and it’s quite satisfying. I wish it hadn’t been cooked all the way to well done — it’s ever-so-slightly tough — but considering how good it is otherwise, that’s a minor complaint.

Ronto's Burger

Though the menu calls the cheese cheddar, it’s clearly American, which definitely isn’t a bad thing. It’s gooey, salty, and perfect for this type of burger.

The Ronto’s sauce wasn’t my favourite, however. It’s fine — it’s actually quite tasty. It’s the usual zesty, Mac-Sauce-esque concoction, but it’s a bit too zesty for its own good. It overpowers the beef, which is a shame when the patty is this delicious.

Ronto's Burger

The nicely toasted, soft and fluffy bun is mostly perfect, aside from being slightly too wide for the patty.

As for the fries, they’re generic battered, frozen fries, but they’re well prepared and tasty enough for what they are. They come with a little container of Ronto’s sauce for dipping; that stuff works much, much better with fries than on the burger.

3.5 out of 4

Cabano’s Comfort Food

Published on August 18, 2019September 1, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 75 St. Nicholas Street, Toronto
Website: http://cabanos.ca/

I just counted, and my list of hamburgers to try for this blog currently sits at 154. Suffice it to say, it’ll be a while before I get to all of them. If you’ve left a comment or sent me an email suggesting a burger I should try and I haven’t gotten there yet, that’s why.

I’ve been hearing good things about the burger at Cabano’s since they were located in Vaughan. I’ve been meaning to check the place out for years.

Well, I finally got there, and yeah — it was worth the wait. The burger didn’t rock my world, but it’s very, very good.

You can either get the no-frills cheeseburger, or the Cabano burger, which is a double cheeseburger that comes topped with Cabano sauce, lettuce, onions, and fried pickled jalapenos.

I got the Cabano, and it’s a quality burger; it does pretty much everything right, and very little wrong.

The patties are smashed and griddled, because of course they are. This is Toronto. If you attempt to cook a burger in any other style and serve it in a restaurant, the police are going to show up at your house, roll you up in a carpet and throw you into a river.

They’re cooked all the way to well done, which can sometimes be an issue, but absolutely isn’t here — they’re basically perfect. They have a nice crust from the griddle (though only on one side), and the texture is absolutely outstanding. They’re tender and abundantly juicy. Perfect.

They have a pleasant but mild beefy flavour; that’s the one area where the burger is lacking. Because the patties were otherwise so superlative, I was looking for that nice strong beefy hit that you get from truly top-shelf hamburgers, and it wasn’t quite there.

It didn’t help that the patties were overwhelmed by the gooey American cheese. I’m not sure how many slices they used — Two? Three? — but it was too much. The cheese was clearly the dominant flavour. It easily overpowers the mild beef.

Otherwise, the toppings were great. The Cabano sauce was the typical tangy mayo you’ll find in so many burgers, and the chopped onions and lettuce work quite nicely (I’m normally not a fan of raw onion, but these were mild enough to not offend).

The fried jalapenos, however, are the highlight. They’re crispy and a little bit spicy, with a nice vinegary bite that helps cut through the burger’s richness.

The bun — a Martin’s Potato Roll, I think, which are becoming delightfully common in the GTA — was quite good as well.

As for the fries, they weren’t great. They tasted lightly battered, which I’m not crazy about. They were also undercooked. Considering how good the burger was, they were shockingly shoddy.

3.5 out of 4

Grill Gate

Published on June 9, 2019June 16, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 832 Sheppard Avenue West, North York
Website: https://grillgate.ca/

Grill Gate serves the type of burger I should love. If nothing else, it’s actually different than the smashed-and-griddled cheeseburgers that have become the city’s de facto burger style over the last decade or so. That alone is kind of delightful.

And for the most part, what they’re serving here is tasty. I ordered the simplest option, the Gourmet Cheezeburger, which comes with a mix of American cheese and mozzarella, special sauce, and onion chips.

Grill Gate

As you’d guess from the name of the restaurant, it’s grilled rather than griddled, which is a refreshing change of pace from pretty much every other burger in the city. The eight ounce patty has a nice heft to it, and holds up to the grilling quite nicely — there’s a good amount of char and a pleasant smoky flavour from the grill, which is quite enjoyable. The patty is cooked all they way to well done, but still reasonably juicy.

So what’s the problem? It’s a meatloaf burger, and a very meatloafy one at that. The spicing here is front and centre. It doesn’t taste like a hamburger to me; not even a little bit.

Grill Gate

Actually, in this case, I shouldn’t call it a meatloaf burger; the way it’s spiced, it would be more apt to call it a kofta burger. It tastes a lot like a kofta kebab. Which isn’t the worst thing in the world — I quite like kofta kebabs! But you can’t put one on a bun and call it a hamburger. It’s tasty in a completely different way.

Other than that, it’s decent enough for what it is. It could be juicier, and the meat is a bit too tightly packed and tough, but it’s not bad. There is, of course, zero beefy flavour — the spices are absolutely the star of the show.

Grill Gate

The cheese isn’t bad. A mixture of American and mozzarella is a bit odd, but mostly, it works. It’s a bit plasticky, even by the standards of American, but it’s also gooey and satisfying.

Then there’s the special sauce and the onion chips, and to be completely honest, I have no idea what they tasted like. I forgot to take note of them (this is my first burger review in several months, so I guess I’m a bit rusty), and neither stood out to me at all. It’s possible they weren’t there. It’s also possible they were overwhelmed by the very assertively spiced patty. I’m not sure.

I liked the bun. It was weirdly crispy on the bottom, but other than that it was nice and fluffy. It looks a bit big, but the bun-to-patty ratio was perfect.

Grill Gate

As for the fries, they’re great. They’re battered fries, which I’m normally not crazy about, but these are surprisingly tasty. They were perfectly fried — they might have been the crispiest fries I’ve ever had, but they never tipped the scales and became overly crunchy. They’re also topped with a zippy, parsley-infused sauce that compliments them perfectly. They were easily the highlight of the meal.

2.5 out of 4