French fries – Page 23 – Tasty Burgers

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?

Patty & Frank’s

Published on November 3, 2013November 3, 2013 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 467 Danforth Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://pattyandfranks.ca/

Every time a new burger place opens in the city, I immediately perk up. Will it be Toronto’s next great burger joint? Who knows! It’s like an unwrapped present. Exciting!

As the name implies, Patty & Frank’s serves both hamburgers and hot dogs, though it should be fairly obvious that I’m much more interested in the former and less in the latter (this isn’t Tasty Hot Dogs, after all).

The restaurant is bright, cheerful, and incredibly spacious. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about finding a place to sit.

I typically try to order a burger joint’s namesake burger, assuming they have one, but in this case the P & F Signature is so comically overstuffed (it comes topped with, among other stuff, cheese, a hot dog, and french fries) that I knew I’d never be able to taste the patty.

So I just ordered a plain burger, waited for my name to be called, then had it topped with pickles, tomato, and mayo.

Their cooking method is a little different than most Toronto burger joints. The uncooked patty is first placed on a griddle, then finished off on the grill. You’d think that this method would result in some browning on the surface of the patty, but nope — aside from the grill marks, it was completely gray. So I can’t say I quite understand the point of the two-step cooking process.

I sat down and took a bite. Sadly, it was clear pretty quickly that this wasn’t quite the present I was hoping it would be. Is there a gift receipt…?

It’s a meatloaf burger, though by the standards of this style of hamburger they’re fairly conservative with the seasonings. There’s definitely something more than salt and pepper in the patty, but it’s subtle. Still, it’s enough to knock out whatever mild beefy flavour this particular meat might have once had, which makes me sad.

The patty is also a bit on the salty side. At first I thought that perhaps this was from the mayo that was very liberally applied on my burger, but my dining companion found his burger to be a little bit salty as well.

The well done burger is somewhat juicy, which I definitely appreciated. But the patty has been really tightly packed, and is a bit more dense than I’d like. It’s odd, because you’d think that the one benefit of their two-step cooking process would be that they could grab a fresh ball of beef, smash it on the griddle and then transfer it over to the grill, which would allow for a much more loosely packed and texturally satisfying patty. But nope, the patties are formed in advance and are quite dense.

The bun tasted fresh and suited the burger well, and the condiments were fine (aside from the fairly obscene amount of mayo).

So no, Patty & Frank’s is not Toronto’s next great burger joint. It’s barely even good. I mean, it’s fine. I’ve certainly had worse. It’s a big fat meh, and honestly, I’m getting a bit sick of big fat mehs.

As for the fries, though they tasted a bit oily, they were pretty good and actually kind of reminded me of chip truck fries.

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.

Union Burger

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

Location: 4188 Living Arts Drive, Mississauga
Website: http://ubburger.com/

I was driving to the movies the other day (to see Gravity, which is amazing, and which you should see immediately if you haven’t already) and saw the newly-opened Union Burger right nearby. Intrigued, I pulled up their website on my phone; they’re a chain, apparently, with about a dozen locations.

I hadn’t planned on eating a burger that day, but plans change.

The place is very similar to South St. Burger, right down to the round metallic trays they serve the burgers on. They have a handful of elaborately topped signature burgers, but I went with the original burger topped with tomato, pickle, and mayo. I got it as a combo with a drink and fries and it came up to less than eight bucks.

They have a convenient pager system to let you know when your order is ready, so you can sit down and wait for your disc to light up.

The grilled burger is very, very okay. It is quite possibly the most middle-of-the-road hamburger I’ve reviewed for this blog. It’s neither particularly good or particularly bad; it’s just there.

The patty doesn’t have much flavour at all, with pretty much all of the taste coming from the grill. I wouldn’t exactly describe it as juicy, though I wouldn’t call it dry, either. It tasted fresh, though it also had a very slight amount of the chewiness that you tend to find with frozen, industrially-produced burgers. I’m not sure what to make of that.

The bun and toppings were fine. The whole thing was fine. Very innocuous. I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to eat at a Union Burger again, but if I found myself there, I wouldn’t object.

As for the fries, they were actually a bit better than average, so I guess they were the highlight.

Origin

Published on July 28, 2013July 28, 2013 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 2901 Bayview Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://originnorth.com/

Claudio Aprile recently opened the latest in his burgeoning chain of Origin restaurants, this one right next to Bayview Village. I took this as an excuse (like I needed one) to finally try their much-ballyhooed burger — among other accolades, Toronto Life called it the 13th best burger in the city.

Aprile obviously has very high hopes for this location; it’s a ridiculously enormous, cavernous space. There’s no middle ground here. It’s either going to be a huge hit for Aprile, or a very high profile flop.

However, if he can keep serving food of this caliber, he has a lot less to worry about.

Though it’s certainly not Toronto’s cheapest burger at 17 bucks (with fries or a salad), in this case you get what you pay for.

They don’t advertise the size of the patty on the menu, but it’s fairly substantial — I’d guess at least eight ounces.

It’s a great quality burger. Seriously, seriously good. For one thing, it’s obviously made with sufficiently fatty beef, and is really juicy. This doesn’t seem like a huge deal, but when you eat as many depressingly lean, way-too-dry burgers as I do, it’s like manna from heaven.

The juiciness and the lack of any meatloaf-esque ingredients is enough for me to give this burger a solid thumbs up. But the flavour is also pretty great, with a really complex, satisfyingly beefy taste. It’s always a pleasure to eat a burger at a restaurant where the chef actually takes care to source the beef he uses in his hamburger.

It’s topped, as per the menu, with “avocado + smoked mayo + arugula.” You don’t find too many burgers topped with avocado, and I’m not sure why. I wouldn’t want it on a griddle-cooked, fast food-style patty, but it’s perfectly suited for a more substantial burger like this one. Its creaminess and mild flavour are a perfect fit for this particular style of hamburger.

The smoky mayo and peppery arugula also compliment the burger pretty darn well, as does the fresh, soft yet substantial bun. It’s very easy for the bun to be an afterthought, but it clearly isn’t here.

So what’s the deal? Is this a perfect burger? Sadly, no. Though it didn’t appear to be, and it is cooked to a perfect medium rare, the outside of the burger is a bit over-charred, giving it a slight acrid bitterness. It’s not too strong, fortunately, so I was still able to enjoy the hell out of this hamburger — but it’s there, marring what could otherwise be on a shortlist of the best burgers in the city.

Maybe this was just a one-off mistake. Maybe it’s something that almost never happens. I don’t know. Sadly, I’m not a professional reviewer, and I don’t have the luxury of visiting a restaurant multiple times. I can only review the burger I was served that day, and that’s what I was served.

As for the fries, they were truly outstanding. No caveats here: just perfectly cooked, amazingly flavourful fries. Good stuff.