French fries – Page 26 – Tasty Burgers

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.

Hero Certified Burgers

Published on July 29, 2012July 29, 2012 by Michael Nusair5 Comments

Location: 25 The West Mall, Toronto
Website: http://www.heroburgers.com/

Baffling. That’s the only word that comes to mind in response to Hero Burgers’ expansion and continued success. I’ve been meaning to review this local chain for a while now, but I’ve been putting it off because I had it a couple of times a few years ago, and I remembered it being pretty bad.

“Pretty bad,” as it turns out, doesn’t even begin to describe the horrors of what they serve at this place.

I visited the location in the Sherway Gardens food court (and if you ever find yourself here, The Construction Site — a grilled cheese place — is a bit over-priced but pretty darn tasty). They have a four ounce, a six ounce, and an eight ounce hamburger. Knowing that I would probably want as little of this burger as possible, I went with the four ounce. I selected my toppings (pickles, tomato, and Hero Certified Sauce), received a number, and waited. A few minutes later I had my tray and took a seat.

The first thing I noticed is how odd the patty looks; pallid and wrinkly, it’s clear just looking at it that it’s a frozen burger. It looks like the most unappealing frozen burger you’ve ever seen, only with its deficiencies multiplied ten-fold.

I cut the burger in half, and again, it was obvious that something was amiss. Thanks to this blog I’ve cut through quite a few burgers, and I’ve never felt anything like this; it was rubbery and tough, like trying to cut through a piece of calamari. Any idea that I might be pleasantly surprised was completely out the window at this point. Even still, I was unprepared. I took a bite and grimaced.

It’s the worst burger I’ve ever had.

I’ll say that again, because it bears repeating: it is quite literally the worst hamburger I’ve ever had in my entire life, and I say that as someone who has eaten a lot of burgers in his lifetime.

I’m not even sure where to start. The texture, I suppose. It was horrific. Chewy and rubbery in the worst way imaginable, it was completely alien from anything even remotely resembling real, fresh beef. All frozen burgers suffer from some degree of chewiness, but never this bad. It was disgusting, to be perfectly blunt.

Then there was the taste. Zero beefiness, and not even much saltiness — not much of anything, other than a rancid, turned-meat flavour. My dining companion took a bite and described it as fishy, and I can’t say I particularly disagree. Again: disgusting.

Seriously, take a closer look at this burger:

That is not how ground beef is supposed to look.

The toppings were fine, and the bun was a little bit too dense but mostly fine, but it’s all completely moot; this burger could have featured the greatest, most delicious bun and toppings of all time and it still would have been a complete wash. I was hungry, and for the first time in the history of this blog (and in my life, I’m pretty sure) I couldn’t finish my hamburger. I didn’t want to finish it. It was so gross.

I honestly didn’t believe it was possible for a burger to be this bad. When I was able (and willing) to eat the entire burger from BBQ Express, I assumed that there would simply never be a burger so bad that I couldn’t finish it. I assumed that even the worst burger in the world had some nugget of desirability, some small appeal, even if only in its deepest reaches.

I was wrong. There is nothing appealing about the burger at Hero Certified Burgers. It is where dreams go to die. It is a shriveled disc of pure despair, from which all hope is forever lost. If there is a hell, then it is what they serve there, all the time, no exceptions.

It’s bad, basically. Inedible. It should be avoided under all circumstances.

Not that it matters, because you should never go to this place for any reason ever, but the fries were pretty good. They were crispy on the outside and nicely fluffy on the inside, though it’s obvious that they prepare the fries in the same oil that they use for the onion rings — oil which hasn’t been changed in a long, long time. How am I so sure? The fries tasted like onion rings. Not just a little bit like onion rings; blatantly so. It was bizarre, but surprisingly tasty (though since it is merely the result of Hero Burgers’ incompetence — seriously, change the oil every now and then — I can’t even give them credit for it).

Slab Burgers

Published on May 14, 2012May 14, 2012 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 47 Charles Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.slabburgers.com/

I have to say, the current abundance of quality burger joints in Toronto really warms my heart. I remember a time, not more than a few years ago, when finding a decent burger in the city was quite a challenge — particularly if you didn’t feel like trekking to a fancier place like Bymark and paying a premium. Johnny’s and Apache frequently topped “best burgers in the city” lists. If you wanted a fast-food-style, griddle cooked burger, your only option was low-quality chain fare like McDonald’s or Wendy’s. All in all, it was a grim time to be a burger fan.

Fast forward to present day. Suddenly, it’s an embarrassment of riches. Good burgers are easy to find. Burger joints seem to be opening on a regular basis, and many of them are quite good. Many people are calling this a fad; I disagree. There’s nothing quite like a good burger, and Torontonians are only just now realizing this. Go to any big city in the States, and you’ll find any number of high quality burger joints flipping burgers and feeding the hungry masses. Toronto used to be a burger dead-zone, and it’s only now catching up to other big cities — and there’s work to be done yet. So no, burgers are not a fad, and they’re not a flash in the pan. It just took us a while to realize their worth.

But I digress, so let me get to the topic at hand: Slab Burgers.

It’s an unassuming location, tucked away in an office building just off of Bay. It’s an oddly designed space, with a couple of tables next to the register, and a wall separating a narrow strip with a few more tables. They’ve also built a barrier, maybe 6 feet tall, around the area where they cook the burgers, blocking the burger cookery from view. It’s an odd choice that made me wonder if they have something to hide.

The menu will look pretty familiar to anyone who’s visited Five Guys — the offerings are pretty much identical, with the addition of a chicken sandwich. I ordered the four ounce burger as a combo with fries and a drink (and like at Five Guys, you order your toppings as you order the burger). It’s a pretty solid deal at $6.99.

I sat down, and within a few minutes my burger arrived, topped with pickles, tomato and mayo. I have to admit that my expectations were not very high — perhaps it was the Five Guys copycat menu, or the odd design of the restaurant, but I wasn’t expecting much. Imagine my surprise, then, as I bit into what turned out to be a damn good burger.

Let me get my one caveat out of the way first: the bun was too big. I suspect that it might have worked better in the double burger, and it wasn’t quite as bad as it looks in the picture (it was very soft and fresh, and aside from its size it was a good bun), but it was definitely too big.

Disproportionate bun aside, this was a winner from top to bottom. The beef was clearly fresh and of an above-average quality, and was therefore quite flavourful. It was juicy, and had a decent amount of crust from the griddle. With the exception of the questionable bun, the whole thing was very Five Guys-esque — but Five Guys at its best, since that place tends to be a little bit spotty. It wasn’t a “OMYGOD you must try this burger IMMEDIATELY” burger, but it was damn solid, and one I’d happily eat again if I found myself in the area.

As for the fries, they were top shelf: perfectly cooked and flavourful, I wasn’t very hungry and planned on only eating a handful, but once I started I could not stop. I cleaned the plate.