French fries – Page 3 – Tasty Burgers

Station Bar & Kitchen

Published on September 29, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 866 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.stationcafe.ca/

The burger at Station Bar & Kitchen is solid. I’ve had better and I’ve definitely had worse. Nothing about it particularly stands out, but if you’re looking for a hamburger, it’s there. It exists, and it won’t make you sad.

I know that’s faint praise, but what are you going to do? Not every burger can be a home run.

Station Bar & Kitchen

The “Station Cheese Burger,” per their menu: “7 ounce beef brisket patty ground in-house with our secret spice mix, on a toasted brioche burger bun with house made burger sauce and a slice of melted cheddar. Topped with lettuce, tomato and onions.”

The reference to a spice mix had me worried; this has been discussed ad nauseam on this blog, but once you mix spices directly into a hamburger patty, it starts losing its essential burgeriness. It becomes meatloaf.

Station Bar & Kitchen

Thankfully, that wasn’t the case here. Though I think they had mixed spices into the patty, it was done subtly enough that it wasn’t particularly an issue.

The griddled, medium-well patty was pretty decent — most notably, it was juicy, and the texture of the grind was pretty much exactly where it should be. It also had some crust from the griddle. It’s a solid patty.

Station Bar & Kitchen

I wish the beef itself had more flavour, however. The flavour certainly isn’t bad, but there’s such a distinct lack of beefiness that I briefly wondered if pork was involved.

Everything else was pretty good, from the nicely toasted bun to the zesty mayo-based burger sauce and the mild, melty cheddar.

As for the fries, they’re quite tasty, and come with a little container of gravy that makes for a delightful dipping sauce.

3 out of 4

Mama’s Boys Burgers

Published on September 1, 2019September 1, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 480 Danforth Road, Scarborough
Website: None

If nothing else, I have to give kudos to Mama’s Boys Burgers for doing something a bit different. They serve a grilled burger that, at six ounces, is a bit heftier than the small griddle-smashed patties that are de rigueur in the city.

They also have a small griddle-smashed burger, because this is Toronto, so of course — but the grilled burger is there, and it’s called the Mama, so it’s the specialty.

I ordered the Mama’s Signature, which is a double cheeseburger with bacon and caramelized onions. You can get it topped with your choice of condiments (I went with Mama sauce, pickles, and tomato).

I need to mention the caramelized onions first, because holy crap, those onions. They’re so sweet. It’s overwhelming. They’re syrupy and cloying and in your face. I’m pretty sure I have diabetes now. Is that how diabetes works? Because if it is, I have it. Most desserts aren’t that sweet.

It overwhelms everything else to an almost absurd degree. For the first few bites I assumed they were mixing sugar right into the meat; the sweetness is so pervasive I thought it had to be coming from the patties themselves. It’s bonkers.

The patties aren’t bad, though I literally had to pull a piece right out of the bun to even tell what they tasted like. They don’t have much of a beefy flavour, and they’re definitely too finely ground (they’re a bit tough), but they’re fairly juicy and agreeable enough. They also have a bit of a smoky flavour from the grill, but again, it’s completely wiped out by the sugary onions.

The other issue is the slice of mild Cheddar. They put it on top of the onions instead of right onto the patty, so it never gets hot enough to fully melt. I’m sorry, but that means that this isn’t actually a cheeseburger — it’s a hamburger with a slice of cheese on it. The only way for a hamburger to make the magical transformation into a cheeseburger is for the cheese to melt and mingle with the beef.

The other toppings are fine, though again, they’re lost in the unforgiving deluge of sugar. I was only able to identify the Mama sauce as garlic mayo by trying it on its own. Otherwise I just couldn’t tell. I wish I was exaggerating about how overwhelming the onions were. It’s madness.

As for the fries, they’re slightly underseasoned, but are otherwise very good. They’re quite thick, but they’re perfectly crispy and creamy. They were easily the highlight.

2.5 out of 4

Cabano’s Comfort Food

Published on August 18, 2019September 1, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 75 St. Nicholas Street, Toronto
Website: http://cabanos.ca/

I just counted, and my list of hamburgers to try for this blog currently sits at 154. Suffice it to say, it’ll be a while before I get to all of them. If you’ve left a comment or sent me an email suggesting a burger I should try and I haven’t gotten there yet, that’s why.

I’ve been hearing good things about the burger at Cabano’s since they were located in Vaughan. I’ve been meaning to check the place out for years.

Well, I finally got there, and yeah — it was worth the wait. The burger didn’t rock my world, but it’s very, very good.

You can either get the no-frills cheeseburger, or the Cabano burger, which is a double cheeseburger that comes topped with Cabano sauce, lettuce, onions, and fried pickled jalapenos.

I got the Cabano, and it’s a quality burger; it does pretty much everything right, and very little wrong.

The patties are smashed and griddled, because of course they are. This is Toronto. If you attempt to cook a burger in any other style and serve it in a restaurant, the police are going to show up at your house, roll you up in a carpet and throw you into a river.

They’re cooked all the way to well done, which can sometimes be an issue, but absolutely isn’t here — they’re basically perfect. They have a nice crust from the griddle (though only on one side), and the texture is absolutely outstanding. They’re tender and abundantly juicy. Perfect.

They have a pleasant but mild beefy flavour; that’s the one area where the burger is lacking. Because the patties were otherwise so superlative, I was looking for that nice strong beefy hit that you get from truly top-shelf hamburgers, and it wasn’t quite there.

It didn’t help that the patties were overwhelmed by the gooey American cheese. I’m not sure how many slices they used — Two? Three? — but it was too much. The cheese was clearly the dominant flavour. It easily overpowers the mild beef.

Otherwise, the toppings were great. The Cabano sauce was the typical tangy mayo you’ll find in so many burgers, and the chopped onions and lettuce work quite nicely (I’m normally not a fan of raw onion, but these were mild enough to not offend).

The fried jalapenos, however, are the highlight. They’re crispy and a little bit spicy, with a nice vinegary bite that helps cut through the burger’s richness.

The bun — a Martin’s Potato Roll, I think, which are becoming delightfully common in the GTA — was quite good as well.

As for the fries, they weren’t great. They tasted lightly battered, which I’m not crazy about. They were also undercooked. Considering how good the burger was, they were shockingly shoddy.

3.5 out of 4

Johnny’s Hamburgers

Published on July 21, 2019July 26, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 2595 Victoria Park Avenue, Scarborough
Website: http://johnnyshamburgers.com/

Look, I don’t want to be the buzzkill telling people that the place they love actually sucks. Especially with a restaurant like Johnny’s, which has been slinging burgers since before most of its clientele were born.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. A lot of people have been going to Johnny’s since they were kids, and I get it: if you have warm, fuzzy memories of a place from your childhood, of course you’re going to overlook its flaws.

Because here’s the thing: that place you love, Johnny’s? It sucks. And I think deep down, you know that’s true.

Though it’s still popular, the city has (mostly) gotten over its collective delusion that Johnny’s is good. Most of the time now, when people post about Johnny’s on social media, they’ll preface it with something like “I know it’s junk, but…”

That wasn’t always true. Before the burger boom hit the city over the last decade or so, Johnny’s frequently appeared on — and topped, no less — lists of the best burgers in the GTA. That doesn’t happen anymore.

I still remember going there for the first time something like 15 years ago, having heard so much about how “good” it was. The crushing disappointment I experienced on taking my first bite was palpable.

It’s a bottom-of-the-barrel industrially-produced frozen patty. It’s bad.

It’s so bad that I managed to avoid reviewing it for the last eight years of running this blog, despite the fact that it’s a Toronto burger institution. It should have been one of the first places I reviewed. But their burgers are a bummer to eat. I didn’t want to.

I knew I couldn’t avoid it forever, however. Eventually, I’d have to bite the bullet. And I finally did.

On this particular visit, I got the plain burger (cheese and bacon are also options) and had it topped with pickles, tomato, mayo, and griddled onions.

There’s not much to like about the el cheapo frozen patties they serve here. They have a chewy, borderline mushy texture that’s closer to a lousy hot dog than a hamburger, and any beefy flavour is basically nonexistent. The only flavour here, aside from the generically salty hot dogginess, is that mildly gamy flavour you get from the absolute cheapest meat imaginable.

Johnny’s defenders will typically expound on the burger’s unique flame-broiled flavour, but on this particular visit there were almost no grill marks on the patty, and zero smoky flavour. So they managed to mess up the one good thing the place has going for it.

The other thing people bring up to defend Johnny’s is the price; the burger is currently $4.01 before tax. That’s cheap, but it’s not that cheap. A no-frills burger from a nicer fast food joint like A&W or Wendy’s is about the same price and is much better. Or for a couple of bucks more, you can go somewhere like the Burger’s Priest and get a burger that’s about a million times better.

The bun’s not bad, I’ll give it that. It’s way too big for the patty, and it’s certainly not a typical hamburger bun. But it’s soft and fresh, and has a nice lightly crispy exterior. It’s not a cheapo supermarket bun. They obviously get it from an actual bakery.

As for the sides, I tried both the onion rings and the fries, and they’re both exactly what you think they’re going to be. They’re not great, but they’re a hell of a lot better than the burger.

1 out of 4

Hambrgr

Published on June 23, 2019June 23, 2019 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 207 Ottawa Street North, Hamilton
Website: https://www.hambrgr.ca/

I don’t want to bury the lede: yes, Hambrgr is in Hamilton. It’s far. I’ve never reviewed a hamburger outside of the GTA for this blog, but after seeing Hambrgr on John Catucci’s new Food Network show, Big Food Bucket List, I kinda had to try it.

While I was mulling over whether I wanted to expand this blog’s range into Hamilton, I discovered that something called the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (or GTHA) exists. I’m not making this up; it has a Wikipedia page. That was really all the excuse I needed.

And seriously: watch that segment on Big Food Bucket List and tell me you don’t immediately want to check that place out. I dare you.

I’m happy to say that it is absolutely, positively worth the drive to Hamilton. It’s so damn good.

The burger from the show is the #HamOnt: “double 1/4lb patties, grilled onions, ‘merican cheese, mustard glazed bacon, brgr sauce, iceberg.”

Sadly, my pictures turned out terribly — the lighting in the restaurant is a bit wonky, so in the photos, the griddled patties look like they’ve been completely blackened. They were not completely blackened.

You’ll just have to take my word for it: they were perfect. They had an absolutely amazing dark brown crust.

They also tasted fantastic; they were profoundly juicy despite being cooked to medium well, with a thunderclap of satisfying beefy flavour. According to the show, they’re made from a blend of chuck, inside round, and navel. Unlike so many burgers in the GTA, you can tell that a great deal of thought was put into the blend they used. It’s juicy and flavourful in a way that puts most burger joints to shame.

The patties were maybe a bit too finely ground and tightly packed — they’re ever-so-slightly tougher than they should be, but that’s a very minor complaint. Considering how superlative they are in every other way, that’s easy to overlook.

The toppings are just as good. The gooey American cheese is perfect, griddled onions are always welcome on a burger, and the shredded lettuce adds some nice crunch and freshness. Then there’s the mustard-glazed bacon, which is honestly kind of ingenious. The zippy flavour from the mustard enhances the bacon and helps to cut through the burger’s richness, but doesn’t overwhelm the burger the way mustard as a condiment does.

The bun is great, too. I mean, it’s all great. If you have a car, it’s totally worth the drive to Hamilton. And if you don’t… I dunno, take the bus, I guess? Just get over there. It’s worth it.

As for the fries, I ordered the half & half, which comes with regular and sweet potato fries. It also comes with two dipping sauces: ketchup and sambal mayo. The fries are very good, and that sambal mayo makes them even better. It’s a great dip; it’s spicy, zesty, and addictive.

2.5 out of 4