burger fail – Page 6 – 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.

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.)

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.

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).

C & Dubbs

Published on June 16, 2012June 17, 2012 by Michael Nusair9 Comments

Location: 1706 Dundas Street East, Mississauga
Website: None

I knew it was a bad sign when, while taking my order, the rotund man behind the register grabbed a handful of his apron, brought it to his mouth and let loose a hacky cough. To be fair, I do not believe that this man was handling any food (though he did pour the soft drinks). Still, that’s not something that you want to see.

It was another bad sign when my dining companion asked for mayonnaise on the side and was informed that this would cost him fifty cents. Really? You’re going to charge fifty cents to pour mayonnaise into a tiny cup instead of onto a burger?

Neither of these points have much to do with the quality of the food, but they do illustrate a certain attitude that I think is reflected in the lack of care that C & Dubbs puts into their menu.

The restaurant offers a hamburger and an eight ounce homeburger. I ordered the latter item, thinking that this might just be the better of the two. I sat down, waited about five minutes for the burgers to be ready, then picked out my toppings from behind the glass. As usual, I went with pickles, tomato and mayo.

Though the burger, labeled a “homeburger,” is presumably homemade (or at least they’d like you to think that it is by sticking the word “home” in the name), it sure doesn’t taste that way. If this is a homemade burger, then they have done an absolutely superb job at mimicking the taste and texture of a frozen patty.

I strongly suspect that it is frozen.

It’s not even a particularly good frozen burger, even by the dubious standards of an industrially-produced patty. The taste is devoid of anything even remotely resembling beefiness, with a nebulous, vaguely unpleasant flavour that I’m honestly having a hard time describing. It’s not very strongly spiced, which is normally a good thing, but here it just means that there’s not much else to hide the off-putting mystery-meat flavour.

It also has that spongy, sausagey texture that you associate with frozen burgers — but worse than usual, if you can believe it. The texture is strongly analogous to that of a hot dog; in fact, the whole thing bore more than a passing resemblance to a less salty version of a hot dog, which is just as unappealing as it sounds.

Based solely on the taste and texture, this could have been emu meat and I don’t think it would have made much of a difference. Any taste or texture that this beef once had has long since been pulverized out of it.

The bun was fresh and complimented the burger well, and the toppings were fine. But even the best bun and the highest-quality toppings cannot overcome such a horrible patty.

The fries, though unsalted and a bit on the soggy side, were reasonably crispy, with a really creamy interior and a nice flavour. They were quite greasy, but not overwhelmingly so. I think it goes without saying that they were the highlight of the meal.

UPDATE: To satisfy my curiosity, I decided to call up the restaurant and find out if they actually make any of their burgers in-house. “We don’t do that,” the man replied. “They’re frozen.” Can’t say I’m surprised.