Canada – Page 15 – Tasty Burgers

Doomie’s

Published on June 5, 2016June 8, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1263 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: http://doomiestoronto.com/

I honestly never thought that I’d be reviewing a veggie burger for this blog. I mean, I try my best to avoid reviewing hamburgers made with any meat other than beef, so a veggie burger seemed completely out of the question.

Then I saw some pictures of the Big Mac clone at Doomie’s. I kind of had to try it.

For the unaware, Doomie’s is an L.A. export whose M.O. is serving vegan versions of over-the-top junk food like chili cheese fries, chimichangas, and of course, hamburgers. “Vegan” and “health food” tend to go hand in hand, but I’m sure even vegans want to eat deep-fried junk every now and then.

I feel like I need to preface this review by saying that I went into Doomie’s with a completely open mind. I realize that I’m a bit of a burger snob, but good food is good food. If the veggie burger here were delicious, I’d be more than happy to sing its praises.

That being said? This might be one of the worst hamburgers that I’ve had in my entire life.

I ordered the Big Mac clone, which isn’t technically on the menu. The waitress jokingly pointed out that any resemblance to that particular burger is purely coincidental (since no one wants to incur the wrath of ol’ Ronald’s lawyers). But it’s available if you ask for it.

It looks impressive, I’ll give it that. Aside from the fact that the watery sauce was leaking from the burger like blood from a gut-shot corpse, it looked impressively like the real deal.

Eating it was a challenge. I’m not sure why the sauce was so thin, but it completely soaked through the bun and made the burger impossible to eat without a handful of napkins. And the parts of the bun that weren’t soaked through with sauce? They were either suffused with grease, or sogged up by mushy cheese (yes, mushy cheese — more on that in a bit).

Of course, eating this burger was also a challenge because of how gross it was. I mean, let’s not beat around the bush.

Those veggie patties are going to haunt my dreams. I just don’t think that food science is able to accurately replicate the taste and texture of beef. If you’re going to serve a veggie burger, your best bet is to not even try, and just serve something in a patty shape that tastes good.

Doomie’s, sadly, tries to replicate beef. The results are flat-out horrifying.

The veggie patties here have somehow managed to take everything I hate about frozen burgers, and magnified it tenfold. That rubbery, vaguely hot-dog-like texture you get from really cheap frozen patties is here in spades, but where this patty goes horribly wrong is the flavour. It just tastes off to a degree that’s downright surprising. I don’t even know if I can describe that flavour, other than to say that it tastes like you left a frozen patty out in the sun until it turned suitably rancid. It was flat-out disgusting.

Then there’s the cheese, which — though it actually tastes close enough to the type of processed cheese you’d find on a Big Mac — has that aforementioned mushy texture. Imagine taking shredded up tissues and soaking them with cheese-flavoured water, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect.

The other toppings were all fine, aside from the watery sauce (which, to be fair, tasted pretty close to the real thing). But when your burger features two patties as foul as these on unpleasantly sodden bread, the toppings are completely irrelevant.

As for the fries, they were battered — not my favourite — but for that style of fry, they were pretty good.

0.5 out of 4

Royale’s Luncheonette

Published on May 22, 2016May 22, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1418 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.royalesluncheonette.com/

I like surprises. Actually no; scratch that. I like pleasant surprises.

This was supposed to be a review of the burger at The Federal, but they were absolutely slammed, with a half hour wait. So we walked a few shops over and found ourselves at Royale’s Luncheonette, with absolutely no idea what to expect. I’m definitely looking forward to checking out the burger at the Federal, but man am I glad they were so busy on this particular day. Because spoiler alert: Royale’s was a very pleasant surprise.

It’s a tiny little place with just a couple of tables. The menu is posted on the wall, and you order at the counter. The burger is dubbed the Royale with Cheese. Given the name and rating system on this blog, I think you can guess that I approve of the reference.

It’s a fast-food-style burger done right: griddled patty, melty American cheese, shredded lettuce, pickle and tomato. It’s topped with a sauce that, if you’ve ever had a Big Mac, is going to taste very familiar.

I honestly wasn’t expecting all that much from this place, but I was surprised by how good it was. The patty had a good amount of crust from the griddle, and when cooked to a pleasing medium, retained an impressive amount of juiciness. It also had a nice, beefy flavour that easily cut through the zesty sauce. Beefy flavour? Juicy patty? Not overcooked? Why, I believe it’s time to do the dance of joy!

It wasn’t completely perfect, however. It was way too small for the bun — the circumference of the patty was probably about two thirds of the circumference of the bread, leaving you with a lot of bun overhang. That was a shame, as was the grind of the beef, which was ever-so-slightly too fine. But those are minor complaints for what is otherwise a superb burger.

The lightly toasted Wonderbread bun (I could see the bag in the tiny open kitchen) suited the very unpretentious burger quite well, as did the classic burger toppings — though I wish there had been slightly less of the Big Mac-esque sauce.

No fries on the menu, sadly (I doubt that the ridiculously tiny kitchen could even accommodate a fryer), but when the burger is this good, it speaks for itself.

3.5 out of 4

Piano Piano

Published on May 8, 2016 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 88 Harbord Street, Toronto
Website: http://www.pianopianotherestaurant.com/

At the end of 2015, Chef Victor Barry shut down Splendido, a fine-dining destination that served meticulously-prepared multi-course meals. It was frequently named one of the best restaurants in the city, if not the entire country.

Early this year, Barry renovated the space and relaunched as Piano Piano, focusing on much more casual fare like pizza, pasta, and yes — a cheeseburger. How could you not be excited by the idea of a hamburger prepared by one of the best chefs in the city? How??

Well, I was excited.

And then the burger came and I got even more excited, because it looked perfect. It’s pretty simple: two patties, two slices of cheese, lettuce, pickle, Dijonaisse. But look at it though. Those glistening patties, just the right size for the bun; the melty cheese; the dark, mahogany-brown crust from the griddle… it’s what cheeseburger dreams are made of.

Or at least, it looked that way.

My struggle to cut the burger in half made it distressingly clear that something was amiss. A good burger should be yielding and tender; cutting it should be like putting a hot knife through butter. This was more like trying to saw into a particularly tough steak.

This burger was so bad I almost can’t even believe it. Like, how can a chef who is presumably as talented as Barry put out anything so horrible, let alone something as simple as a hamburger? I can’t wrap my mind around it.

I will say that everything but the patty itself was pretty good — the gooey American cheese, the classic condiments, the fresh bun with just the right amount of sweetness and heft — it was all basically right where it should be.

The patty, on the other hand, was misguided on every level. More pulverized than ground, it was tightly packed, tough, and horrible. It also had an off-putting sausage-like consistency, possibly from having salt mixed in with the beef. Between the unforgiving density of the beef and the oddly rubbery texture, it just didn’t want to get chewed. It was kind of like eating hamburger-flavoured gum.

The taste wasn’t much better. It was overwhelmingly peppery, which turns out to be a good thing, because this is beef that needs to be disguised with whatever you can throw at it. It had a gamy, leftover meat flavour that was seemingly trying to compete with the texture to see which could be more awful.

Horrifying texture versus appalling flavour: whoever wins, we lose.

Oh, and did I mention that it costs twenty-two bucks? Because it costs twenty-two bucks. So not only is it gross, it’s probably one of the more expensive burgers in the city. It’s easily — hands down — the worst hamburger that I’ve ever had from a high-end place like this.

Actually, it’s one of the worst burgers I’ve had in quite a while.

I think this might be the point in the review where you assume that I’m being way too picky. It looks pretty good, you’re thinking. How could it be that bad?

Okay. Try it then. I dare you.

As for the fries, they were the polar opposite of the hamburger. They were amazing. Though they’re a bit more thickly cut than I generally prefer, they were the perfect combination of crispy exterior and creamy interior. Eating them with the hamburger is kind of like alternating between smelling a sweet, delicately fragrant flower with someone farting directly into your face.

1 out of 4

Hangry Burger

Published on April 24, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 435 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: http://hangryburger.com/

If you’ve ever wondered what the hamburger equivalent of a shrug is, look no further. Hangry Burger now exists to answer that question.

That’s the thing: it’s not a bad burger. There’s nothing offensive about it, and I didn’t dislike eating it. But it’s not particularly good. It’s just… it’s fine (you can’t see me right now, but I’m shrugging pretty hard).

This is going to be a pretty short review, because I honestly don’t have all that much to say about it. It’s hard to muster up all that much enthusiasm to write about a burger that’s so thoroughly middle-of-the-road.

I ordered the Hangry Burger, which is their no-frills choice, and had it topped with Hangry sauce, pickles, and tomato.

The patty had some colour from the griddle, though it was cooked all the way to well done and a bit dry. It was also too finely ground, giving it a mealier texture than I’d like — but I’ve certainly had worse. As for the flavour of the beef? Remember all that shrugging I was doing earlier? Yeah, I’m still doing it.

The toppings were fine, though if the Hangry sauce was anything other than plain mayo, I couldn’t taste it.

The bun, too, was fine, though it was clearly too big and dense for the simple single-patty option — the bun-to-patty ratio was way off. The fact that it was cold and untoasted probably didn’t help.

As for the fries, they looked good, but they were a bit overcooked. They were vaguely bitter, with a borderline burnt flavour.

2.5 out of 4

Cactus Club Cafe

Published on April 10, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 77 Adelaide Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.cactusclubcafe.com/location/first-canadian-place/

Cactus Club Cafe, like Earl’s and Joey before it, is the latest Western Canadian upscale casual chain to make its way to Toronto. A great burger from a chain like this is kind of like Bigfoot — some people claim it exists, but I haven’t seen any compelling evidence myself. But in his (mostly unfavourable) review of this place in the Globe and Mail, Chris Nuttall-Smith singled out the burger as “a wide, deliciously sloppy mess.” Okay. Sold.

There are actually two burgers on the menu — the Feenie Burger, and the Cheddar Bacon burger. As far as I can tell the two burgers are identical, save for the presence of mushrooms on the Feenie. But that burger (created by celebrity chef Rob Feenie) is the one referenced in Nuttall-Smith’s review, so that’s what I ordered.

There’s a ridiculous amount of stuff on the burger. Aside from the aforementioned mushrooms, it’s topped with aged cheddar, smoked bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickles, red relish, mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard. I’m actually kind of surprised that Feenie wanted to put his name on this burger, because it’s essentially like going to Harvey’s and asking for everything. It might be tasty, but it’s more like a random hodge-podge of stuff than a chef-crafted creation. In particular, the vinegary-sweet combination of the abundant ketchup and mustard are easily the dominant flavours here.

As for the mushrooms that apparently warrant Rob Feenie slapping his name on the burger? There’s so much else going on that I literally couldn’t even tell they were there.

Still, it’s a pretty good hamburger. The patty has a bit of crust from the griddle, and in the rare bites where you get a taste of the beef without too much else getting in the way, it has a pretty decent flavour. It’s also fairly juicy, with a nice coarse grind that hasn’t been overhandled. It makes me a bit sad that it’s completely overwhelmed by the voluminous toppings (Nuttall-Smith called the patty “somewhat irrelevant” in his review, which is apt), but tasty is tasty. Sometimes it’s best not to overthink it.

As for the fries, they were lightly battered, cardboardy, and personality-free. They couldn’t have been more obviously from a bag if they came with a big lighted sign that said “FROM THE FREEZER.”

3 out of 4