bacon – Tasty Burgers

Burgers n’ Fries Forever

Published on January 5, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 182 Ossington Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://burgersnfriesforever.com/

I mentioned in my last review that smashed-and-griddled burgers are a dime a dozen in Toronto. On one hand, that’s a bummer — there so many other varieties of hamburger, but you’d basically never know it judging by the city’s burger joints.

On the other hand, there are a bunch of really great choices out there for a smashed burger. Which means we no longer have to settle for anything less than great.

Burgers n' Fries Forever

This definitely wasn’t the case a few years ago. If you look at my very first review, for Johnny Rockets back in 2011 (which no longer exists in Ontario outside of a location in Windsor), you’ll notice that I cut it a lot of slack — this style of burger was still something of a rarity in the city.

Today, on the other hand? If you’re serving a smashed-and-griddled burger: be great or GTFO.

Burgers n’ Fries Forever is not great.

Burgers n' Fries Forever

I got the BFF², which is a double cheeseburger that comes topped with lettuce, tomato, red onion, beef bacon, and BFF sauce.

Though the patty actually looks really impressive, with a nice amount of crust, it has a bunch of issues that hold it back from being much better than okay.

The biggest problem is the texture: the grind is way too fine and it’s too tightly packed. You can tell just by looking at it. If the cross-section of a burger patty is a uniform slab of gray, you know you’ve got problems. A burger should have crags and crannies. It should have texture. If it’s basically just one monolithic slab of beef that’s trying its best to re-form into a steak, it’s going to be a bummer to eat. It’s going to be tough.

And yes, it was tough. It was vaguely juicy, but it was still a tough chew.

Burgers n' Fries Forever

The flavour was okay, at least, if nothing particularly special.

The toppings were a bit of an issue, too. The cheese was cheddar rather than American; that’s not my favourite (I find it a bit too overwhelming), but that’s more of a personal preference thing. Your mileage my vary. It was nice and gooey, so no complaints there.

The beef bacon was iffy. I don’t have anything against this variety of bacon (in fact, the best burger I’ve had recently featured beef bacon), but the stuff here was chewy and tough to bite through.

The BFF sauce was lost among the burger’s other flavours. I couldn’t even tell you what it tasted like. Everything else was fine, including the sweet, fluffy bun.

As for the fries, they were the clear highlight. They were perfectly cooked, with an addictive crispy/creamy contrast and a really great flavour. The combo comes with a dipping sauce; I went with the kimchi mayo, which complimented the fries very well.

2 out of 4

Gladiator Burger & Steak

Published on October 14, 2018October 14, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 6039 Erin Mills Parkway, Mississauga
Website: https://www.facebook.com/GladiatorBurgers/

Here’s a complaint I’m pretty sure I’ve never made before: the burger at Gladiator Burger has too much beef. It’s too beefy.

Is that even a thing? I feel like Peter in that episode of Family Guy where he lies about going to the doctor and claims he was told he was “in too good of shape.” That’s not a thing, is it?

I ordered the Gladiator Burger: “two beef patties, beef bacon, two slices Canadian cheddar cheese, caramelized onions, tomato, lettuce, pickles & Gladiator aioli.”

The menu says that the patties are six ounces each, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were actually closer to eight. They’re enormous.

I actually had a surprisingly hard time cutting it in half, because the burger was almost as tall as the plastic knife. The knife went about 80 percent of the way in. It was nuts.

Too much beef or not, however: it’s a very good burger.

Gladiator Burger

The patties had a decent amount of crust from the griddle and a mild but satisfying beefy flavour. The texture was great; the grind was nice and coarse, and they weren’t too tightly packed.

They were cooked all the way to well done, and I wish they were a little bit juicier, but they were quite good. They were top-notch patties.

It’s clearly too much beef, though. It should have either been a single, or had two smaller patties. It’s good quality beef, but it would have needed to be phenomenal for me to want that much of it. It’s overwhelming. It’s the equivalent of ordering a triple (or a quadruple) at a regular burger joint. It’s excessive.

Everything else was solid. The crispy beef bacon (which I’m pretty sure was deep fried) was satisfying, the cheddar was nice and melty (though American would have been preferable), and the griddled onions suit the burger perfectly. The Gladiator aioli was the standard tangy mayo.

The bun was quite good as well, holding up nicely to the enormous burger without being too dense or substantial.

I should reiterate that it was a really, really good burger; it’s easily the best burger in Mississauga, though that’s not exactly a tall mountain to climb. I just wish there were a little bit less of it. I won’t say that I was not entertained, but I could have been more entertained (what, did you think I was going to get through this whole review without a strained Gladiator reference? Come on). It’s also a bit pricey at almost twenty bucks for a combo — but then it’s like a pound of decent quality beef, so I guess the price makes sense.

As for the fries, they had a mild stale oil flavour, but were otherwise really good.

3.5 out of 4

Northern Maverick Brewing Co.

Published on April 29, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 115 Bathurst Street, Toronto
Website: https://northernmaverick.ca/

I told myself I wasn’t going to trust Toronto Life again after the great frozen burger fiasco of 2015 (a quick recap: they included a frozen, industrially-produced burger in their list of the 25 best burgers in the city back in 2015 and made smoke come out of my ears like a cartoon character).

But when they specifically mentioned the greatness of the burger at Northern Maverick Brewing Co. in their recent list of the best new restaurants in the city, I couldn’t ignore it. That’s like catnip for me. I can’t resist. I’m physically incapable.

(They also recently published my list of the ten best burgers in the city, so I guess they’re not all bad.)

I like Toronto Life, but they should clearly stop trying to recommend burgers, because they are terrible at it.

The burger here was an absolute disaster. The menu certainly makes it sound good: “dry-aged house ground chuck, housemade bacon, house smoked cheese, house pickle” (they sure like the word “house,” don’t they?).

I’m going to start with the bun, because holy crap that bun was so profoundly awful that I’m having a hard time believing that it even happened. Like, did I really eat that? Or was it some kind of bizarre nightmare?

I knew I was in trouble immediately, because I almost couldn’t even cut through it with the knife they provided. It was dense and impenetrable and horrible.

It made it really difficult to actually eat the hamburger — it was so dense and unyielding that it had zero give. You couldn’t compress it down even a little bit, and it’s big, so I had to open my jaw as wide as it would go, and it was barely enough.

The flavour was fine — it was slightly too sweet, but otherwise okay — but the texture was a complete disaster. It was closer to stale pound cake than to a traditional bun. It overwhelmed everything. It was the worst.

The patty, sadly, wasn’t much better. It had a decent beefy flavour and a nice amount of crust from the griddle, but it was immediately apparent that the beef they were using was way too lean, because the well-done patty was dry AF. I can’t remember the last time I had a burger that dry. Between that and the stupid bun, it required so much chewing.

The toppings were fine, at least. I was a bit worried that the smoked cheese would be overwhelming, but it was pleasantly mild and melty.

But it’s irrelevant. That bun. That patty. The horror.

Oh, and the fries were of the ultra-generic frozen variety, so how this place wound up on a major magazine’s list of the best restaurants of the year is truly baffling.

1.5 out of 4

Oliver and Bonacini Cafe Grill

Published on November 20, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 33 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: https://www.oliverbonacini.com/Yonge-Front.aspx

The last burger I tried from an O&B joint was thoroughly forgettable, but when I found myself at Café Grill, I figured, sure, why not? I’m here, the burger is here, let’s do this.

(And I did debate whether I should even be reviewing more than one O&B restaurant, or if all their locations count as one big chain. But since each menu seems to be completely different, I think they’re all fair game.)

Though I approach each burger I eat hoping for the best, I sort of figured the burger here would be much like the one I had from O&B Canteen — passable, but mediocre.

As it turns out, I was longing for the comparative delights of “passable, but mediocre.”

The Café Grill calls their hamburger the Smashed Ground Chuck Burger, and it comes topped with “housemade BBQ sauce, bacon, cheddar, iceberg lettuce, special sauce.”

I rant about overly dry patties all the time on this blog, and I really don’t feel like doing it again right now. I’ll just say this: the griddled patty was punishingly gray throughout and was devoid of anything even resembling moisture. It was also really substantial, making each mouthful a bit of an ordeal.

It actually tasted pretty okay, but since it had the approximate texture of a bunch of mashed-up saltines held together with glue, does it matter?

And though the bun was a bit over-toasted and more dense than it needed to be, the toppings were all tasty enough. But again: dry saltines. Glue. Agony.

Oh, and it also cost 19 bucks, putting it on the more expensive end of burgers in the GTA.

As for the thickly-cut fries, they were quite good. Nothing too special, but they were solid French fries.

1.5 out of 4

The Federal

Published on November 6, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1438 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Website: http://thefed.ca/

This was actually my second attempt to try the burger at the Federal — the first time, it was so busy that I wound up at Royale’s Luncheonette instead (which turned out to be a pretty pleasant surprise).

It was actually really busy again, so I think it’s safe to say that you have to be prepared to wait if you want to try this place. But you know that expression about the wisdom of the crowd? Yeah, that definitely applies here. Turns out there’s a reason the Federal is so busy.

Their burger is dubbed the Four Guys burger, and is described as “griddle-smashed beef, bacon, pickles, american cheese, caramelized onion, lettuce, mustard, special sauce.”

With a really good burger, all it takes is one bite to know that you’re dealing with something special, and that was clearly the case here. One bite, and yeah, there was that really distinctive flavour you only get from really good quality beef. That’s a flavour that’s way harder to come by in Toronto than you’d think. It’s a face-punch of beefiness that immediately tells you that you’re in good hands.

The texture of the beef was pretty great, too — though it could have used a bit more crust from the griddle, the medium well patty was otherwise stellar. It was coarsely ground, loosely packed, and was nice and tender without ever tipping the scales into soft or mushy territory. It was great.

But it’s actually really impressive that the burger’s beefy flavour managed to be as prominent as it was, because there was so much going on here. Between the sweet caramelized onions, the salty bacon and cheese, the vinegary pickles and mustard, and the tangy special sauce, the burger was kind of a mess. A tasty mess, don’t get me wrong, but there’s definitely more going on here than I typically prefer.

It’s hard to fault the burger too much, though; my problem with a heavily-topped burger is usually that the flavour of the beef has been overwhelmed. But here, that great beefy flavour is front and centre, minimizing that issue to an impressive degree.

The soft, toasted bun had enough substance to hold up to all those toppings, but was light enough to stay in the background, which is exactly where it should be. So yeah, all around a pretty impressive burger.

I came at brunch, and instead of fries the burger came with a side of potato rosti and a really simple salad. The rosti had a great layer of crispy goodness on the outside and was nice and creamy within; however, I don’t think it was seasoned at all. It was pretty bland.

3.5 out of 4