fast food – Page 3 – Tasty Burgers

Fatburger

Published on June 8, 2014July 22, 2014 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 10 Disera Drive, Unit 120, Thornhill
Website: http://www.fatburgercanada.com/

Fatburger is the latest American burger chain to open their doors in the GTA. Five Guys is pretty well entrenched at this point, we just got Hwy 55, and Carl’s Jr. is right around the corner. I’m still waiting for Steak ‘n Shake, Shake Shack, or In-N-Out (fat chance on that one), but we’re doing pretty well as far as fast food burger choices go.

The setup is somewhat similar to Five Guys, but instead of calling out your number when the food is ready, they bring it to your table.

Unlike Five Guys, they have a bunch of elaborately topped burgers on the menu; I went with the Original Fatburger, which comes with lettuce, tomato, mustard, relish, onion (which I skipped, because nuts to onions) and pickles.

Like pretty much every burger joint opening in the GTA these days, the patty is griddle-cooked. There was some signage on the table proudly proclaiming that they “use the leanest beef around,” which had me concerned that the patty was going to be yet another overly dry burger (just go through the archives if you’d care to read me railing against the tragically common issue of overly lean beef and dried-out burger patties).

Thankfully, the well done burger was actually fairly juicy, so the sign is clearly not particularly accurate — and this is one case where I’m very happy for a restaurant’s claim to be completely untrue. Lean burgers are nothing to be proud of, or to aim for.

The patty actually has a pretty great texture; it’s loosely packed, coarsely ground, and fairly juicy. A more pronounced crust from the griddle would have been nice, but it wasn’t entirely crustless.

My biggest issue is that the flavour of the beef itself was a bit lacking. It definitely wasn’t bad, but it had that distinctively muddled, not-entirely-appealing flavour that you get from so-so quality beef. It was fine, but it is a bit of a shame; with slightly tastier beef, this could have been a top-tier hamburger.

The burger was more busily-topped than I normally like, but since the flavour of the beef wasn’t exactly stellar, I was actually pretty happy to have a handful of condiments to smooth things out. This is not a burger to get plain; in fact if I ever go back I’ll likely opt for cheese as well.

The toppings were all pretty standard, and were fine. The most noteworthy was the lettuce; it’s a round, whole slice of iceberg that gives the burger a satisfying crunch. I’ve had lettuce served like this at burger joints in the States, but I don’t think I’ve ever had it in Toronto. I like it.

The bun was slightly on the dense side, but it was fresh and suited the burger fairly well.

As for the fries, they were pretty bad. They were McCain (the clearly marked boxes were in full view), and tasted like the blandest, frozeniest frozen fries that I’ve ever had.

Fresh Burger

Published on December 15, 2013December 15, 2013 by Michael Nusair6 Comments

fresh
Location: 9206 Leslie Street, Richmond Hill
Website: http://www.fresh-burger.com/

It’s always unfortunate when a restaurant flirts with greatness — comes so very close — but just can’t quite get there. Fresh Burger is, sadly, such a place. And they’re close; they really are. But they bungle one key element. Alas, greatness is just out of their grasp.

Fresh Burger sells classic American-style hamburgers a la Burger’s Priest, Holy Chuck, or Five Guys, which involves placing ball of fresh ground beef on a hot griddle and smashing it into a patty. It’s a style of burger cookery that was almost impossible to find anywhere in the GTA even a few years ago, and which has now become increasingly abundant. This, as I’ve mentioned before, warms my heart.

(A note about the picture — they provided plastic forks but not knives. I probably should have just asked them to cut the burger in half for me, but instead I attempted to cut my burger in half by turning my fork upside down and using the stem. As you can tell from the mangled remains, this was not my best idea ever.)

I’m just going to get the bad news out of the way first, because this is a restaurant that otherwise has so much going for it. The beef they use is too lean. If you’ve read many of the other reviews on this blog (or if you eat a lot of burgers in the GTA), you’ll know that this is a distressingly common issue in the city.

In this case, the problem is advertised right on their menu: they use ground sirloin to make their burgers, which is an exceptionally lean cut of beef, and which is pretty much the last thing you want to be making a hamburger out of.

A note to all burger joint owners: Lean burgers = dry burgers. A good hamburger needs at least 20% fat content, if not a little bit more. Hamburgers are not, and never will be, health food. Fat is your friend.

The hamburger was cooked all the way to well done, par for the course at GTA burger joints. If you’re going to salvage a lean burger, you really shouldn’t cook it too far past medium. A well done burger made with lean ground beef is one hundred percent guaranteed to be dry. That is not my opinion; that is fact.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that the hamburger at Fresh Burger was quite dry. Happily, this is the only misstep for an otherwise above average burger.

Most notably, even if the meat is too lean (and it is), it’s definitely above average in quality, with a rich beefy flavour. The coarsely ground, loosely packed beef has a really great texture which actually helps mitigate the dryness quite a bit — it’s dry, but thanks to the the satisfying texture, it doesn’t feel nearly as dry as many other offenders in this category.

Another plus: the patties have that great, dark brown crust that you can only get by cooking a burger on a really hot flat-top griddle.

The menu is fairly bare-bones, with either a cheeseburger or a double cheeseburger to choose from. I went with the double, but the single is probably the better choice with a burger as lean as this.

The burgers come topped with pickles, onion, tomato, lettuce, secret sauce (a mayo-based Mac-sauce-esque concoction), and nicely melted American cheese. Classic toppings for a classic, fast-food-style burger.

The fresh, squishy bun has just enough heft to hold up to the patties and condiments; like the toppings, this is a perfect fit for a classic burger such as this.

As for the fries, they weren’t anything I’d get too excited over, but they were above average and quite tasty.

Fresh Burger is frustrating. One small change could instantly transform it from a very good burger into a great one, and place it on a shortlist of the GTA’s best burgers. But it is what it is, and despite my one fairly substantial reservation, it’s still quite tasty and certainly worth eating.

Master Steaks

Published on December 1, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 5895 Dixie Road, Mississauga
Website: http://mastersteaks.com/

The burger at Master Steaks, in theory, should be great. You’d think it would be. The place doubles as a butcher shop, serves mostly steaks, and boasts about their burgers being freshly ground. Promising, right? It all seems like it should add up to an above average burger. Seems, in this case, being the operative word.

Despite its steakhouse leanings, Master Steaks is set up like a fast food joint; the menu’s posted up on the wall, and once you order it’s no more than a few minutes before a tray with your food is in your hands.

I went with the Master Burger — a bacon double cheeseburger — and when it was ready I had it topped with my usual pickles, tomato, and mayo.

It only takes one bite for all that promise to sprout wings and fly right out the door.

For one thing, the grilled hamburger is an especially meatloafy meatloaf burger, with all the stuff they mix into the beef completely overwhelming the burger’s flavour profile. This being mostly a steakhouse, there’s a good chance that they’re using above-average quality beef, but with that slaps-you-in-the-face meatloaf flavour, who can tell? I’ve had meatball sandwiches with a more subtle flavour.

The meat is also a bit too finely ground, which gives the patty a bit of an off texture. And — surprise, surprise — it’s too lean, and the burger is subsequently on the dry side.

Seriously, Master Steaks: way to take my hopes and dreams, pin them to the ground and then beat them senseless. This burger should have been so good! What are you doing?

It’s a bacon cheeseburger; the mild cheddar cheese was fully melted and perfectly acceptable. The bacon, too, was fine. The bun was a tiny bit on the overly-bready side, but was okay. The mayo, however, was actually Miracle Whip (or something very similar), which really shouldn’t be interchangeable with mayonnaise despite looking identical.

As for the fries, they were undercooked. After tempting me with the prospect of a great steakhouse-quality burger and then serving me over-seasoned junk, why not kick me when I’m down, right?

Burger Brats

Published on September 11, 2012January 13, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 254 Adelaide Street West
Website: http://burgerbrats.ca/

Burger Brats opened about a year ago and was almost immediately forgotten about. In a city where almost every new restaurant that opens downtown gets a ton of buzz, this concerned me a bit. Still, I’ve been anxious to try the place, and I recently got my chance.

I came here on a Sunday for lunch just after the place opened, and it was completely deserted and remained so until I left. I won’t hold this against it; Sunday afternoon is obviously not exactly a restaurant’s prime time, particularly here in the entertainment district where the bulk of the business probably comes from late-night drunken revelers.

I glanced at the menu posted on the wall, and quickly settled on the Burger Brats Classic, which is advertised as coming with “fresh lettuce, ripe tomato, red onion, pickles, mustard, and mayo.” I opted to go onion-free, but otherwise ordered the burger as-is.

I ordered the burger as a combo with fries and a soda, and it came up to just under ten bucks, so it’s not a bad deal.

After a few minutes, my burger was ready; I took a seat and dug in.

The first thing I noticed is how dry the burger was; impossibly dry. It’s the kind of burger that sucks all the moisture out of your mouth. It’s quite a jaw workout, that’s for sure.

It was cooked past well done, which is a bit puzzling given the fact that I was the only customer in the joint, and thus had the cook’s full attention. If a place is busy, you can kind of justify an overcooked burger from an overloaded, overworked kitchen. It’s still an unforgivable offense, but you can kind of justify it.

Here I clearly had the cook’s undivided attention, so there is no explanation for the overcooked burger other than that they wanted it that way. Puzzling.

The beef had a fairly neutral, not altogether unpleasant flavour, and a bit of smokiness from the grill. And though I feared that it might be a meatloaf style burger, this was thankfully not the case.

But man, it was so dry, and impossibly dense — it was way too tightly packed, which means that the patty has been over-handled, and is yet another sign that the person in charge of the burger cookery doesn’t really know what they’re doing.

Another disconcerting element about this burger: the horrifying abundance of crunchy, gristly bits of cartilage and who-knows-what-else. Not just one or two; they were interspersed throughout the entire burger. Again, something is going seriously wrong in the burger preparation department.

The toppings were fine, though it was a bit over-condimented (what, condimented is a word, isn’t it? Well it is now). I think in the future I’ll stick to my tried and true combo of tomato, pickles, and mayo when I order a plain burger.

As tends to be the case at mediocre burger joints, the burger was too small for the bun. A hamburger patty shrinks when cooking, and any restaurant that puts more than two seconds of thought into their hamburger will realize this and account for it when they’re shaping the patties. Yet again, there is a clear lack of care in the burger cookery at Burger Brats.

Seriously: this place baffles me. How do you bungle the burger so badly at a burger joint? This isn’t some random neighbourhood restaurant with a half-assed burger buried deep in the menu for variety’s sake. This is a place whose sole purpose is to sell burgers. That’s it. That’s what they do. And they serve this? Inexcusable.

Even a place that serves frozen burgers I can kind of understand. I don’t like them, but I can understand why a place might want to sell them: they’re very cheap, and they’re very easy. But Burger Brats is obviously going to the trouble and expense of making their own hamburger patties. So why not put in a little bit of extra effort to get it right, and a little bit extra expense to actually get above-average quality meat? Why not do a little bit of research on what blend of cuts makes the tastiest hamburger patty, and what percentage of fat will yield the juiciest burger? Because I guarantee that the folks at Burger Brats have not done this.

I sound upset. I am. It’s so easy; with just a little bit more work, Burger Brats could be serving something worth eating. Something good. Maybe even something better than good. But they’re not. They’re serving an inferior product and there’s absolutely no reason they need to be doing so other than laziness and ignorance. It upsets me. I’m sick of eating sub-standard burgers when making a good burger is so damn easy.

Deep breaths, Michael. Deep breaths.

Let me talk about something good about this place. The fries were delicious. Crispy on the outside and gloriously fluffy on the inside, they were pretty damn tasty. They were also sparingly seasoned with some kind of flavoured salt that complimented them quite well. If I were ever forced to come back here, I’d just get a large order of fries and forego the burger altogether.

Lick’s

Published on August 19, 2012May 17, 2014 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 1585 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.lickshomeburgers.com/

If you live in Ontario (and since you’re reading this blog, I’m assuming you do), odds are that you’ve been to Lick’s. They’re fairly omnipresent, and they’ve been around for ages. At one time, a visit to Lick’s meant the promise of above-average burgers in a casual, fast-food style setting. Though they’ve always served meatloaf-style burgers (not my favourite), they were, at one time, pretty darn good. Their success was justified.

That was a long time ago.

I’m not sure about the exact moment of their decline, but it probably would have been at some point around when they started selling frozen Lick’s-branded patties in supermarkets. These frozen patties, I would imagine, are the same ones they serve in their restaurants. And like all frozen patties, they’re not very good.

At the very least, the employees weren’t singing. For those of you fortunate enough to have never been subjected to this aural assault, the employees at Lick’s used to sing ’50s pop songs while they cooked up the burgers and fries. Loudly. And very far off key. It was unpleasant enough that it made me second-guess going to Lick’s, even back when it was good. Thankfully, they seem to have ended this policy, as my ears have been unmolested on my last couple of visits.

I ordered a homeburger combo (their standard hamburger) with fries and a soda, waited, picked out my toppings from behind the glass, and sat down.

What’s there to say about the current Lick’s hamburger? It’s a frozen burger and it tastes like a frozen burger. I could end the review right there, but I will say a few words.

It’s a strongly salty burger with that distinctive rubbery chewiness you’d expect from a patty of its ilk. To its credit, it does have a slightly beefier flavour than you’d expect, though it is mostly drowned out by the hot dog-esque chewiness/saltiness and the other spices.

I ordered the burger with pickles, tomatoes, and Guk, a mayonnaise-based sauce that Lick’s also sells in supermarkets. The sauce is fine, though its flavour is overwhelmed by the strong patty. The toasted sesame seed bun was fresh, and complimented the burger well.

The fries, like the burger, have gone downhill. Though they were once above average, they’re now pale and lifeless — bland and vaguely unpleasant. I ate a few and felt no need to subject myself to more.