Canada – Page 32 – Tasty Burgers

The Drake

Published on April 7, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1150 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.thedrakehotel.ca/dining/

It occurred to me recently that, though I’ve mentioned Toronto Life’s semi-recent list of the 25 best burgers in the city on the blog before, I’ve never actually used its suggestions to determine my next review. I guess I have a hard time taking a list of the best hamburgers seriously that features an elk burger and a lamb burger (not to mention at least a couple of meatloaf burgers, and perhaps most egregiously, the mediocre-at-best Apache Burgers).

But I was struggling to figure out the next place I wanted to review, and I thought I may as well give Toronto Life a shot.

So I wound up at The Drake, a boutique hotel with a fairly popular restaurant on its first floor, and (of course) a burger on the menu — number 20 in the city, as per Toronto Life.

The Drake Burger is described as having “cheddar, Perth Bacon, Russian dressing, pickle + hand cut fries.”

Okay, Toronto Life, you win. I guess I should be taking your list a bit more seriously, because this was a pretty damn good burger.

It only takes one bite to realize that they’re clearly using very good quality beef. The patty has that distinctively satisfying beefy flavour that tells you that someone in the kitchen knows where to get the good stuff.

The grilled burger is a little bit too tightly packed, with beef that is slightly too lean. I’ve certainly had juicier burgers — but I can forgive a somewhat dry burger when it tastes this good, and when it at least has a bit of juiciness to it, which this does.

It’s also, sadly, a little bit busier than I’d like. Between the peppery bacon, the tangy thousand island, and the sharp cheddar, there’s a lot of assertive flavours competing for your palate’s attention. It’s a tasty combo, no doubt about it, but with a burger this good, I’m generally of the opinion that less is more. But of course, compared to the failure pile at The Samuel J. Moore, it’s positively heavenly, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

The fresh sesame seed bun did a good job of holding up to the burger and was quite good. Good too were the crispy, perfectly cooked fries. Actually, no. Like the burger, they were better than good. They were pretty great.

So yes, to quote Seinfeld, The Drake is great. How could you not like The Drake?

The Samuel J. Moore

Published on March 24, 2013June 29, 2014 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1087 Queen Street West, Toronto
UPDATE: The restaurant is closed, apparently. Can’t say I’m too surprised.
Website: https://www.facebook.com/TheSamuelJMoore

The Samuel J. Moore just opened a few weeks ago, and the early word is that they’ve got a burger worth eating. Obviously, I had to give it a shot.

I came at around noon on a Saturday during brunch service. I was hoping to get the regular hamburger off the dinner menu, but sadly, only the Brunch Burger was available.

Before I get into the less-than-great things about the place, I will say that the design of the restaurant is quite nice. Spacious, with a classy old-school diner aesthetic and lots of sunlight streaming in from the windows, it’s certainly a pleasant enough place to have a relaxing meal.

And when the burger came, it looked pretty darn good. This is a place that seemed to have it all figured out — or so I thought, until I actually took a bite.

The Brunch Burger comes topped with a fried egg, peameal bacon, smoked cheddar, and coleslaw. There are a lot of flavours here, and sadly, they never coalesce into anything particularly satisfying.

It looks good, though, doesn’t it?

But let me talk about the patty, because that’s really where this burger takes a wrong turn and never comes back. Finely ground,densely packed, overly lean, and cooked all the way to the tippy-top of well done, it’s a perfect storm of density and dryness.

The patty also has a distinct lack of beefiness that was so pronounced I felt compelled to ask my server if it was all beef, or some kind of beef/pork blend. It’s all beef, apparently, so I’m not sure how to account for its almost complete lack of beefy flavour. It didn’t taste bad, at least. It just tasted like nothing. Chewy, tough nothing.

Of course, I was only able to discern this in the bites I took of the patty alone, because this is a hamburger with a lot going on. The dominant flavour is the peppery, tangy coleslaw, which is surprisingly spicy and completely inappropriate as a topping for a hamburger. It might have been okay on its own, but as a condiment it is ridiculously overpowering and tragically misguided.

The somewhat dry, tough peameal bacon also didn’t do the burger any favours.

The fried egg, however, was perfectly cooked with a satisfyingly runny yolk. It couldn’t do much to save the burger, but it was nice. The fresh, toasted brioche bun was also pretty great, and definitely deserved to be part of a better burger.

And I guess there was cheddar in there, too, but with all the other stuff going on I honestly couldn’t even taste it.

The burger also came with a side of perfunctory hash browns and bland house-made ketchup. They were on par with the burger, which is to say not good.

Jack Astor’s

Published on February 10, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

jack
Location: 1900 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.jackastors.com/

This is going to be a short one. It’s hard to write all that much about a burger that so conclusively straddles that middle ground between good and bad, and that is exactly where this burger falls. “Meh” is pretty much the perfect word to describe it.

Jack Astor’s is a casual chain restaurant, and as expected from a restaurant such as this, there are burgers on the menu. I wasn’t expecting much, and I got pretty much exactly what I expected: a perfectly edible hamburger that is almost instantly forgettable.

I ordered “The Classic,” which is their no-frills burger topped with lettuce, tomato, red onion (which I removed), and mayo.

The burger was fine. This being a chain place, I had feared that they might serve a frozen burger or a meatloaf burger, but this was thankfully not the case.

There are a couple of fairly significant issues that keep this burger firmly in the “meh” category. First, and most predictably, the burger is too dry. I know I sound like a broken record here; apparently wanting a hamburger to be juicy in Toronto is an unreasonable request, which is actually kind of maddening. But no, I’m not going to get into another rant about overcooking and acceptable fat percentages. Not for you, Jack Astor’s. Not for you.

And yes, the burger is overcooked, which just compounds the dryness issue. The grilled patty is a bit over-charred, resulting in a burger that is a bit too crunchy in spots. It’s also a little bit too tightly packed and dense, which makes it a tough chew.

The second issue is that it’s a bit bland. The beef is obviously not the greatest, and while it tastes okay, it doesn’t taste like much. Add in the fact that if it was seasoned with salt and pepper, I couldn’t taste it, and you’ve got a pretty bland burger.

Otherwise, the toppings were fine, and the fresh brioche bun, though slightly over-toasted, suited the burger well.

All in all, it’s not a bad hamburger — it’s just aggressively unmemorable.

As for the fries, though a tad on the soggy side, they were otherwise quite good.

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.)

Stack

Published on December 2, 2012August 3, 2014 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 3265 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: http://stackrestaurant.ca/

Like The Stockyards, Stack is BBQ joint run by people who have clearly put a great deal of care into the burger selection on their menu. If their website is to be believed, they initially planned on specializing in burgers, but ultimately decided to shift their focus to southern-style BBQ.

It’s clear that they could have made Stack a burger joint and done just fine — these are burgers done (mostly) right.

There are some interesting looking burgers on the menu, but in keeping with my preference when I’m reviewing a place, I kept it simple with the Stack Classic, which comes topped with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and onion.

I also asked for mayonnaise on the side, which turned out to be a wise move; the creamy, flavourful mayo is infused with roasted garlic and is clearly made in-house — this ain’t no Hellmann’s, that’s for sure. It was good on the burger, but even better as a dipping sauce for their amazing fries.

Like at The Stockyards, the burger is griddle-cooked and seasoned with little more than salt and pepper (as it should be). Sadly, like at The Stockyards (and pretty much every other burger joint in Toronto), the beef in the burger is a little bit too lean, resulting in a burger that’s a bit drier than it should be. Thankfully, there is still some juiciness here, so it’s certainly a minor offender in Toronto’s ongoing quest to completely dry out my mouth with well-done, too-lean patties.

Aside from the dryness issue, this is an outstanding hamburger. The well-done, loosely packed patty had a good amount of crust from the griddle (though not quite as much as at The Stockyards or Burger’s Priest).

It’s also clear that Stack is using beef that is well above average, as this was one of the most richly beefy burgers I’ve had in quite a while. Eating it, I had something of a eureka moment: oh right, this is how a burger is supposed to taste.

The fresh sesame seed bun complimented the burger perfectly, as did the toppings (particularly the aforementioned fresh mayonnaise — if you find yourself at Stack, ask for this mayo).

As I mentioned earlier, the fries were crazy delicious. Perfectly crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, with an amazingly robust flavour, they were almost ludicrously good when dipped in that delicious garlicky mayonnaise.