cheeseburger – Page 9 – Tasty Burgers

Bar Reyna

Published on December 18, 2016December 3, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 158 Cumberland Street, Toronto
Website: https://www.barreyna.com/

If you’re charging over twenty bucks for a hamburger, that burger had better be damn good. It had better be foolproof.

The burger at Bar Reyna is 21 dollars. It is not foolproof.

Their burger is labelled Big A’s burger and fries (is that a play on “big ass”? An actual guy named Big A? What, no one cares?). I’ll let the menu describe it: “brisket + ribeye / sweet potato bun / muenster / caramelized onions / lettuce / tomato / chipotle aioli.”

There isn’t a single element here that particularly works.

They actually asked me how I wanted the burger cooked, which is always a delightful question. I asked for medium rare, and I know I wasn’t misheard, because the waitress proudly proclaimed “medium rare hamburger” as she set my plate down. It was closer to well done.

It was still actually fairly juicy, which was nice, but the texture was off; it was way too finely ground, and a bit mealy. It also had pretty much zero beefy flavour — considering the hefty price tag, it’s not unreasonable to expect that they’ll be using top-shelf beef. If they were, it certainly didn’t taste that way.

Then there were the toppings, which were mostly okay, though between the very sweet caramelized onions and the equally sweet “chipotle aioli” (which tasted exactly like thousand island dressing), it was sweet overload. I will say, however, that the muenster cheese was pretty much perfect — it had a subtle cheesy flavour and a perfect amount of gooey meltiness. I’m really not sure why you don’t find it on cheeseburgers more often.

But I’m not even going to sugar-coat it: the bun was the absolute worst. The texture was closer to a stale biscuit than a traditional hamburger bun. It was incredibly dense and so thoroughly inappropriate for a burger that I’m legitimately curious if the restaurant just made some kind of mistake and used the wrong bun. It had zero give — normally, when you pick up a hamburger, the bun absorbs most of the pressure from your fingers and leaves the insides of the burger undisturbed. But here? The bun was a solid, unyielding mass. As soon as I picked it up, the patty and all the toppings started squishing out of the sides. It was game over once I took a bite. I had to eat the majority of the burger with a fork and knife. Like a monster.

The shoestring fries, on the other hand, were really good. They were cut super thin, which can sometimes result in fries that are too crunchy, but the fries here still managed to retain a decent balance of crunchiness and creaminess. They were seasoned with smoked paprika as well as salt, which gave them a unique flavour and a bit of a kick.

1.5 out of 4

Oliver and Bonacini Cafe Grill

Published on November 20, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 33 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: https://www.oliverbonacini.com/Yonge-Front.aspx

The last burger I tried from an O&B joint was thoroughly forgettable, but when I found myself at Café Grill, I figured, sure, why not? I’m here, the burger is here, let’s do this.

(And I did debate whether I should even be reviewing more than one O&B restaurant, or if all their locations count as one big chain. But since each menu seems to be completely different, I think they’re all fair game.)

Though I approach each burger I eat hoping for the best, I sort of figured the burger here would be much like the one I had from O&B Canteen — passable, but mediocre.

As it turns out, I was longing for the comparative delights of “passable, but mediocre.”

The Café Grill calls their hamburger the Smashed Ground Chuck Burger, and it comes topped with “housemade BBQ sauce, bacon, cheddar, iceberg lettuce, special sauce.”

I rant about overly dry patties all the time on this blog, and I really don’t feel like doing it again right now. I’ll just say this: the griddled patty was punishingly gray throughout and was devoid of anything even resembling moisture. It was also really substantial, making each mouthful a bit of an ordeal.

It actually tasted pretty okay, but since it had the approximate texture of a bunch of mashed-up saltines held together with glue, does it matter?

And though the bun was a bit over-toasted and more dense than it needed to be, the toppings were all tasty enough. But again: dry saltines. Glue. Agony.

Oh, and it also cost 19 bucks, putting it on the more expensive end of burgers in the GTA.

As for the thickly-cut fries, they were quite good. Nothing too special, but they were solid French fries.

1.5 out of 4

The Federal

Published on November 6, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1438 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Website: http://thefed.ca/

This was actually my second attempt to try the burger at the Federal — the first time, it was so busy that I wound up at Royale’s Luncheonette instead (which turned out to be a pretty pleasant surprise).

It was actually really busy again, so I think it’s safe to say that you have to be prepared to wait if you want to try this place. But you know that expression about the wisdom of the crowd? Yeah, that definitely applies here. Turns out there’s a reason the Federal is so busy.

Their burger is dubbed the Four Guys burger, and is described as “griddle-smashed beef, bacon, pickles, american cheese, caramelized onion, lettuce, mustard, special sauce.”

With a really good burger, all it takes is one bite to know that you’re dealing with something special, and that was clearly the case here. One bite, and yeah, there was that really distinctive flavour you only get from really good quality beef. That’s a flavour that’s way harder to come by in Toronto than you’d think. It’s a face-punch of beefiness that immediately tells you that you’re in good hands.

The texture of the beef was pretty great, too — though it could have used a bit more crust from the griddle, the medium well patty was otherwise stellar. It was coarsely ground, loosely packed, and was nice and tender without ever tipping the scales into soft or mushy territory. It was great.

But it’s actually really impressive that the burger’s beefy flavour managed to be as prominent as it was, because there was so much going on here. Between the sweet caramelized onions, the salty bacon and cheese, the vinegary pickles and mustard, and the tangy special sauce, the burger was kind of a mess. A tasty mess, don’t get me wrong, but there’s definitely more going on here than I typically prefer.

It’s hard to fault the burger too much, though; my problem with a heavily-topped burger is usually that the flavour of the beef has been overwhelmed. But here, that great beefy flavour is front and centre, minimizing that issue to an impressive degree.

The soft, toasted bun had enough substance to hold up to all those toppings, but was light enough to stay in the background, which is exactly where it should be. So yeah, all around a pretty impressive burger.

I came at brunch, and instead of fries the burger came with a side of potato rosti and a really simple salad. The rosti had a great layer of crispy goodness on the outside and was nice and creamy within; however, I don’t think it was seasoned at all. It was pretty bland.

3.5 out of 4

Belfast Love Public House

Published on October 9, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 548 King Street West, Toronto
Website: http://donnellygroup.ca/belfast-love/

Despite an ostensive Irish theme, Belfast Love’s menu is pretty much all generic upscale pub — thin crust pizzas, fancy salads, the obligatory chicken and waffles (at what point did chicken and waffles graduate from an occasional novelty to something that’s 100% obligatory for every restaurant with an unfocused menu like this one?). And there’s a burger on the menu. Because of course there is.

Well, a cheeseburger, to be specific. “House ground chuck, American cheese, iceberg lettuce, tomato, mustard mayo.”

It looked good, I’ll give it that. And I liked the toppings — the melty American cheese, the fresh tomato, the crunchy iceberg lettuce, and the mayo/mustard combo all worked quite well. The patty itself, on the other hand…

I’m always afraid that, the longer that I do this, and the more and more that I obsess over the minutia of what makes a burger great (and vice-versa), I’m becoming increasingly out of touch with how normal people (i.e. people who don’t think about things like grind coarseness and beef-to-bun ratios on the regular) experience a hamburger.

So it was nice when my dining companion echoed my sentiments on this burger exactly, confirming that I’m not being an overly picky weirdo (at least not in this particular case).

Because no, this was not a good hamburger. The texture of patty was downright weird — dense, with an oddly chewy, vaguely sausagey texture. I suspect they’re mixing salt in with the ground beef, which tends to make the texture of a hamburger sausage-like.

It probably didn’t help that the griddled patty was cooked to well done and then some, but I suspect that even perfectly cooked, this would have been a funky patty.

The taste wasn’t much better. Whatever flavour the beef might have had was completely annihilated by the downright insane amount of pepper. It was so peppery; it was nuts. Literally the most peppery-tasting hamburger that I’ve ever had. I don’t know if the pepper was mixed in with the beef along with being used as seasoning on the patty, but the flavour was everywhere. It permeated every bite; there was nothing else.

The bun was fine, though it was slightly too dense, and cold throughout despite being toasted.

As for the fries, they were great. Easily the highlight of the meal. Not too thick, not to thin, perfectly cooked, just the right amount of salt… good stuff.

1.5 out of 4

Hidden Burger

Published on September 25, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 22 Front Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.hiddenburger.ca/

If nothing else, Hidden Burger certainly lives up to its name. Tucked away in the Bottom Line, a sports bar near Union Station, there’s absolutely no signage for the place outside, and even when you get into the bar, it’s not immediately apparent that you’re in the right place. It’s only when you walk through the place and go around a corner that you finally see it.

It strikes me as a thoroughly odd strategy to literally hide your restaurant and make random walk-ins completely impossible, but then what do I know about such things? It’s either a genius marketing move or completely insane.

It’s mostly a take-out place, with only a few stools to sit across from the register. They’ve got an admirably simple menu, with a cheeseburger (single or double), a veggie burger, and a weekly special, along with the requisite French fries. I went with the cheeseburger, which comes topped with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and red onion.

It’s a griddled burger, which ideally gets you a tasty, dark brown crust on the patty. Often, the griddle isn’t quite hot enough and the crust isn’t particularly there. But I actually had the opposite problem here, which I can’t say I’ve ever encountered in a burger cooked in this style. The crust was coal black; it was burnt and it tasted burnt, with an acridly bitter flavour pervading every bite. That griddle must have been insanely hot.

The patty was, not surprisingly, quite overdone, with a completely gray interior that was cooked all the way to the peak of well done. It was actually still vaguely juicy, which was nice, but suffice it to say, it needed way less time on the griddle (and it was black on both sides, which makes me think it may have been intentional, as baffling as that seems).

The patty was also a bit too tightly packed and dense, but aside from that the texture was okay.

The flavour was decent enough (aside from the bitterness, of course). There was some mild beefiness, which is always nice.

As for the toppings, they suited the burger well, though the slice of American cheese wasn’t all the way melted, which is kind of crazy given how hot the cooking surface must have been. And the soft, squishy bun suited the burger perfectly.

The fries were the resounding highlight. They were great — super crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside. They were particularly good with the optional jalapeno aioli, which costs 50 cents and is worth every penny.

2.5 out of 4