burger fail – Page 7 – Tasty Burgers

Location: 377 Church Street, Toronto
Website: http://www.brownbagsandwiches.ca/

Some Eastern philosophies state that there should always be balance; if there is good in the world, there must be bad to balance it out. So it goes, then, that if a burger joint as delicious as Holy Chuck or The Burger’s Priest exists, there must also exist a place that is as bad as those restaurants are good. Enter Brown Bag Sandwiches.

No, this is not a dedicated burger joint. It is a sandwich shop — however, they do have a kitchen and a griddle and all of the tools they would need to make a delicious burger, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to expect something halfway decent. Moreover, the hamburger is the first item on the menu, so it’s clearly not something that only exists to pad out their selection. It’s front-and-centre, and therefore fair game for scrutiny. And scrutinize I shall.

I got the burger as a combo with a can of soda and a very generous order of fries, and it came up to about ten bucks, so it’s reasonably priced.

I ordered my combo, waited a few minutes for the burger to be ready (there are a handful of tables in the small restaurant for those who want to eat in), then asked for my hamburger to be topped with pickles, tomato, and chipotle mayo.

The burger is oblong, presumably to accommodate their choice of bread. It’s a little bit unorthodox, but I suppose that there is no rule that says a hamburger must be round.

You’ve no doubt gathered as much from the opening of this review, but this was not a good hamburger. In fact, I would say that it was a terrible hamburger. I’m not even sure that I need to write this review; if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I believe that the picture above communicates all that needs to be said about this burger. It looks gross, to put it bluntly, and it tasted just as bad as it looks.

It’s a meatloaf burger. Though this isn’t my favourite style of hamburger, I have no problem recognizing a good meatloaf burger when I see one. Again, this was not a good burger. For one thing, it was way overcooked, and the too-lean, impossibly dense beef was egregiously dry. Sucks-the-moisture-out-of-your-mouth dry. Sahara Desert dry. Dry.

Even by the standards of a meatloaf burger it was overseasoned, obliterating whatever beefy flavour the meat might have once had. Then there was the very crusty, toasted bun; this might work okay in some of their other sandwiches, but it was wildly inappropriate as a hamburger bun. It was completely overwhelming and far too substantial for the task at hand.

Any flavour that the chipotle mayonnaise might have had was annihilated by the strong patty, so I can’t speak to its success as a condiment. The tomato and pickles were fine.

The burger actually reminded me a lot of the hamburger I had at BBQ Express. This is not a flattering comparison, to put it mildly. I should also note that my dining companion had the fried chicken sandwich and was similarly unimpressed, so the quality of the food (or lack thereof) was not restricted to the hamburger.

The one redeeming quality of the meal were the French fries. Though they were a tad overcooked, they were crispy, well-seasoned and delicious. They came with a side of ketchup, which they make in-house, and which was pretty fantastic. Bright and tomatoey, and far less sweet than typical ketchup, it proved to be surprisingly addictive when combined with the above-average fries.

Location: 1240 Bay Street, Toronto
Website: None

I’ve seen things done to burgers. Bad things: frozen burgers, overly-spiced burgers, too-lean burgers, burgers ground too finely, burgers with filler, burgers with bad quality meat… I thought I had seen it all. I was wrong.

BBQ Express is one of those places I’ve walked by many times, though it took the prospect of reviewing it for this blog to actually walk in. It’s a tiny place; there’s basically just enough room to stand there and order.

They advertise a homemade burger, so I ordered it thinking “how bad could this be?”

Then something happened I don’t think I’ll ever forget. The woman who took my order moseyed on over to the grill, opened a foil bag with a stack of pre-cooked hamburgers, and slapped one on the grill.

I stood there in shock. Did I really just see that? Is that really a pre-cooked hamburger, cooked who-knows-when? Is she actually going to reheat that and serve it to me?

My pulse quickened. Fight or flight kicked in. A voice in my head screamed “Run! Run now and never look back!” And if it hadn’t been for this blog, there’s no way I would have eaten that hamburger. I would have politely given the grill lady some excuse, and I would have high-tailed it out of there.

The things I do for you.

I got my hamburger topped with pickles, tomato and mayo, and I walked across the street to sit outside and eat my meal.

I took my pictures of the uncut burger, then, as I am wont to do when I’m reviewing a burger for this blog, I cut it in half so I could take a picture of the burger’s innards. Cutting into the burger, it was immediately clear that something was wrong. The hamburger was suspiciously difficult to cut in half. The meat was tough, almost like trying to cut through a steak.

Hesitantly, I took a bite. The burger was — surprise, surprise — unusually dry. It was also tough and leathery with an almost jerky-like texture around the edges.

This was also a meatloaf-style burger. It wasn’t too strongly-spiced, though this was one instance where I actually would have preferred for the beef to be disguised by other flavours; the beef had a funky, vaguely unpleasant flavour.

The only reason I’m not going to give this burger zero stars is that I actually managed to finish the whole thing, so I guess it wasn’t completely inedible. But then that probably speaks more to my gluttony than to the general quality of this burger. Seriously: this was a terrible, terrible hamburger. I’m pretty sure I’ve had worse in my lifetime, though I’m having a hard time thinking of any right now.