cheeseburger – Page 19 – Tasty Burgers

Home of the Brave

Published on November 17, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 589 King Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.thehotb.com/

Home of the Brave opened a few months ago, and word very quickly got out that it’s a place you should probably check out. They serve their take on classic American comfort foods like fried bologna sandwiches, BBQ ribs, and tater tots, in a trendy, hipster-friendly environment (read: it’s dark and loud). The burger isn’t on their regular menu — it is, however, on the late night menu (served after 11:00 PM) and it’s the daily special on Saturdays.

I didn’t even realize they had a burger on the menu, but as soon as I saw it I knew that I had to have it. Called The Altar Boy, it’s described as having “house ground beef, tartar sauce, house made processed cheese, tomato & lettuce.”

After a string of mediocre (or worse!) hamburgers, this was just what the doctor ordered: beefy, juicy, and seriously satisfying. It’s a bit busy; it actually reminded me quite a bit of the burger at Wallace & Co. Like that one, it’s a saucy, juicy mess with a little bit more going on than it probably should. And like that one, it’s really good.

I think the quality of the beef is better here than at Wallace & Co. The griddled, medium rare patty has a pretty solid beefy flavour (or at least it seemed to in the few less condimented mouthfuls I got).

The tangy tartar sauce is a little bit more assertive than I’d like, but it tastes good and mostly compliments the burger pretty well. Though they’re going to the trouble of making their own processed cheese, there’s so much else going on that you can’t really tell.

The fresh sesame seed bun has enough heft to hold up to the messy burger without ever tipping the scales and throwing off the beef-to-bun ratio. It’s pretty great.

It’s a shame that this burger isn’t on the regular menu. It’s kind of sad that a burger that they only occasionally serve here is head and shoulders above what they serve at a lot of burger joints (I’m thinking specifically of my most recent review, the mediocre-at-best Patty & Frank’s), but there you go.

The closest thing on the menu to fries are the tater tots — though with their creamy interior and cripy coating, they’re more like fried mashed potato bites than tater tots. But whatever they are, they’re pretty darn good.

The Buffalo cauliflower is also quite tasty. If you have to eat cauliflower, battered, deep fried, and dipped in house-made Buffalo and ranch sauces is probably the way to go.

(Image of the outside of the restaurant in the header photo courtesy of kiki’s B.F.F. I totally forgot to take that picture. Whoops!)

Super Mack

Published on October 20, 2013November 3, 2013 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 5960 Dixie Road, Mississauga
Website: None

Last time I referred to Urbanspoon’s list of the best burgers in Mississauga, I wound up at Union Social Eatery, which was actually pretty decent. Since I was looking for a burger to check out during my lunch break at work, I decided to give Urbanspoon’s list another shot.

Super Mack is another old-school burger joint / diner that looks like all the other old-school diners in the city; seriously, did every casual restaurant in the ’70s look exactly the same?

I came at around noon and it was fairly busy, which tends to be a good sign. Like with every other restaurant of this ilk, you order, wait for your burger to be ready, then pick out some toppings from behind the glass.

I ordered the Super Mack burger as a combo, which comes with a generous order of fries and a small drink for under ten bucks, so at the very least it’s a good deal.

The eponymous Super Mack is a double bacon cheeseburger, and it is enormous. They advertise the patties as being a quarter pound each, but I think they’re even bigger than that. It’s a burger with heft, no doubt about it.

The grilled, slightly overdone patties have a very pronounced flame-broiled flavour. It’s a meatloaf burger, though the spicing is more subtle than many that I’ve had. It still doesn’t have much of a beefy flavour, which is a shame; whatever flavour the beef might have had is pretty much wiped out by the smokiness from the grill and the spices mixed into the patty.

It also has a vague sausage-like texture; between that and the spicing, the whole thing could pass for a sausage sandwich (albeit a mild sausage — a breakfast sausage maybe).

The condiments were fine and the fresh sesame seed bun was above average and held up nicely to the very substantial hamburger. I guess by the standards of old-school burger joints like this it could have been much worse, but I can’t say I’ll ever be back.

As for the fries, aside from having a bit of a stale oil flavour, they were above average.

Chili’s

Published on August 11, 2013August 11, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

chilis
Location: 21 Colossus Drive, Woodbridge
Website: http://www.chilis-ontario.com/

I was actually kind of excited when Chili’s opened here back in 2009. It was a much darker time for a hamburger lover in the GTA; this was pre-Burger’s Priest, Holy Chuck, and the many other burger joints serving quality smashed and griddle-cooked burgers in Toronto. It was surprisingly difficult to find a decent hamburger cooked in this style. Almost impossible. Like I said, it was a dark time.

Chili’s serves through-and-through American food, and of course, this includes a classic diner-style griddled hamburger. Or at least, it did. Now? Not so much.

But when they first opened here, Chili’s served a pretty decent burger. It wasn’t anything too great, but this being 2009, a griddled burger made with fresh beef and without any onions or spices mixed in was a rare treat.

Fast forward to now. At some point, the higher-ups at Chili’s must have taken a look at their Canadian competition — dreck like Boston Pizza, Kelsey’s, and Montana’s — and realized that Canadians have very low standards when it comes to casual chain restaurants. So they switched over from making their burgers fresh to serving prefabricated frozen hamburgers.

On my most recent visit I ordered the bacon cheeseburger, and it was obvious just looking at it that it was a frozen burger. It was even more obvious when I tasted it: with its chewy, hot doggy texture and its generically salty, non-beefy flavour, there was absolutely no mistaking it for anything but a frozen patty. It was pretty bad.

The cheese and bacon were both fine, though they did nothing to disguise the off-putting patty. The bun, too, was fine (if a bit dense), but again — there is nothing that can disguise that patty.

The burger came with a side of fries that were perfectly okay, but a bit ho-hum.

To me, the unfortunate changeover from fresh to frozen burgers sends a fairly clear message to Canadians. Chili’s is basically saying “Yeah, we could spend a little bit extra and make our hamburgers with fresh beef, like we used to. But you people will eat whatever garbage we put in front of you, so why should we?” And when you look around at the casual chain restaurant landscape, they might just be right. We will eat whatever garbage they put in front of us; there’s just no other way to explain the baffling success of the execrable Boston Pizza, among others.

(Images of the inside and outside of the restaurant above captured from this video on YouTube. For some reason it completely slipped my mind to take these pictures myself. Whoops!)

Wallace & Co.

Published on July 1, 2013 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 299 Wallace Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://www.facebook.com/299WALLACE

I was browsing blogTO the other day when I saw, among their most recent reviews, a picture of a big, fat burger. I read up to “a fat ball of chuck is griddle-fried” and I was gone so fast that I’m pretty sure I left a dust outline where I was sitting.

The small restaurant has a sketchy, old-school diner vibe, with minimalist decor and a griddle — manned by a row of scruffy, bearded chefs — behind the counter.

I scanned the menu too late to notice that they make their own homemade sodas; I had already ordered a plain old ginger ale like a chump. Dear Wallace & Co. waitstaff: a little heads-up about this would be nice.

Of course, being here to review the burger, I went straight for the Dirty Burg, which comes topped with “cheddar, house bacon, fried onion, coleslaw, BBQ aioli, yellow mustard.” No, they aren’t shy with the toppings; not surprisingly, there is way, way too much going on here. The vinegary coleslaw and mustard in particular completely dominate the hamburger’s flavour profile.

All the other toppings are fine, but the strong vinegary bite of the coleslaw and the mustard make it pretty much impossible to discern too many other flavours.

The beef, however, helps to mask most of the hamburger’s shortcomings. A fairly substantial patty of fatty, wonderfully juicy beef that is nicely griddled and not overcooked makes me all-too-happy to suffer through an over-condimented hamburger. Though it’s not the beefiest meat I’ve ever had (in fact it has a disappointingly mild beefy flavour — which, of course, I was only able to discern in the few mouthfuls I got of the beef alone), it still had a decent enough taste. And man, it was so juicy.

Seriously: ask for extra napkins. It’s a saucy, juicy mess of a hamburger that fully justifies its Dirty Burger moniker. Between the fatty, loosely packed patty and the quickly disintegrating bun, it was a race against time for me to be able to finish this with my hands and not have to pick up a fork and knife.

And though the soft, fresh brioche bun had a bit of a hard time holding up to the burger and all of the toppings, it was still pretty great and definitely an above average hamburger bun. With a burger this messy, even the hardiest of buns would struggle to maintain its structural integrity, so it’s hard to fault the bun in this case.

As for the fries, they were crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside; they don’t come with the hamburger, but they are definitely worth ordering.

Blue Goose

Published on June 16, 2013 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 235 Queens Quay West, Toronto (Harbourfront)
Website: None, but they do have some info on Twitter

I’ve eaten a lot of burgers over the course of my lifetime. This is actually the 50th hamburger that I’ve reviewed since starting this blog back in 2011. I’ve also eaten my share of un-reviewed hamburgers over the last three years, and of course, I was a fairly profligate burger-eater pre-Tasty Burgers. I’m going to guess that I’ve eaten a thousand hamburgers in my lifetime, and I’m going to say that this is a fairly conservative estimate.

This is all to say that when I make the statement that a particular hamburger is the best hamburger I’ve ever eaten in my entire life, this is not a statement I take lightly. So please, imagine that I have the gravitas of Morgan Freeman and the seriousness of Edward R. Murrow when I say this: The burger that I just had at Blue Goose is quite possibly the best hamburger that I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.

MY ENTIRE LIFE.

Blue Goose was actually started by Blue Goose Pure Foods, a producer of various types of “farm to fork” organic meats. Knowing that the restaurant was started by a company that takes its meat seriously, I had high hopes.

It’s based out of a shipping container on the Toronto Harbourfront (along with Sully’s Honest Dogs and Lobster Roll), which is odd. But who knows, maybe shipping containers are the new food truck. This is actually the second group of shipping container-based eateries to grace our city (the first being the Scadding Court ones near Kensington market — including Wiggle Room, a burger place I’ve been meaning to check out).

For obvious reasons, these ones are only sticking around until the end of the summer, so if you want to check out this burger (and trust me, you want to check out this burger) you’d better not dilly-dally too much.

Though I had high hopes from the get-go, I knew I was probably in for something special when the girl behind the grill began to prepare my hamburger. She pulled out a glorious ball of pink and white ground beef, and as soon as I saw it my eyes widened with joy. A Toronto establishment which knows that the words “lean” and “hamburger” should absolutely never be used in conjunction with each other is a rare treasure indeed.

She placed the beef on the sizzling griddle, smashed it down and seasoned it liberally with salt. No other spices, no onions, no garlic, just great quality meat, salt, and searing heat. Perfection.

And make no mistake, this is great quality meat. Amazingly rich and almost obscenely beefy, it’s abundantly clear that Blue Goose is not kidding around when it comes to the quality of their beef. When I rally against overly-busy meatloaf burgers, this is why. Because I know that when you start out with really good meat and cook it properly, you can end up with an amazingly complex, incredibly satisfying flavour that you don’t want to mess with.

As for the refreshingly non-lean, fatty beef? Yes. It was so rich, so juicy, and so incredibly delectable. The beef was also — as it should be — coarsely ground and loosely packed, and had such a great texture. Seriously: perfection.

Look, I know this is all coming off as insanely hyperbolic, but what can I say? I loved this hamburger.

It has quite a few toppings (cheddar, caramelized onion, pickle, lettuce, and tomato); this would normally perturb me, but here all the ingredients work together such perfect harmony that I wouldn’t change a single thing. The cheddar comes perfectly melted and adds a creamy tang without ever threatening to overpower the beef. The richly unctuous caramelized onions compliment the meat quite fantastically. And the lettuce, tomato, and pickle help to give the burger balance and cut the richness of the onions, cheese, and beef.

The toasted sesame seed bun was fine. It was probably the only element of this hamburger that wasn’t knock-me-back amazing, but there was certainly nothing wrong with it and it complimented the burger well.

They serve a single burger, and a double. I started with the single, and it was so damn good that I did something that I’ve never done before: I went right back and ordered another one. A double this time (well, I split it with my dining companion — I’m not that gluttonous). These are not wimpy patties, so the double was fairly enormous, but I think I liked it even better. This one had a higher proportion of beef to the other ingredients, and was thus even more richly beefy. It was outstanding.

As I think should be pretty clear by now, this hamburger is absolutely essential. If you’re anywhere near the GTA and you have even a passing interest in burgers, you owe it to yourself to check it out. I’ve only given out four perfect ratings since starting this blog: Burger’s Priest, Holy Chuck, Allen’s, and White Squirrel Snack Shop. This one beats them all.

Go eat it. Now.