grilled – Tasty Burgers

St. James’s Gate

Published on March 2, 2020 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 5140 Dundas Street West, Etobicoke
Website: https://sjgtoronto.ca/

I’ve been at this for almost a decade now, so for the most part, these reviews basically write themselves (what’s that? The reviews all feel like I’m writing them on autopilot? Yeah, that’s fair). But burgers like the one they serve at St. James’s Gate — good, but not noteworthy in any way — are probably the toughest to review.

It’s a solid burger. It exists. There’s nothing majorly wrong with it. I don’t know.

St. James's Gate

The Royale with Cheese, according to the menu: “Twin four ounce brisket burgers stacked with melted American cheese, Havarti, secret sauce and bread and butter pickles.”

Is it the best burger I’ve ever had? No, absolutely not. Did it offend me in any way? Also no. It’s good.

St. James's Gate

I will say that the two types of cheese are a nice touch; I’ve never seen the Havarti/American combo on a cheeseburger, and I was skeptical. I thought it might be too much. But they’re both nice and gooey without being overly assertive. It works.

Another bonus: I’m pretty sure that the patties were grilled, which is a nice change of pace from the griddle-smashed patties that you’d expect to find in a burger like this.

St. James's Gate

Otherwise, the patties are fine. They’re slightly too dense and tough, but they’re nice and juicy, which helps to balance things out. And while there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about the flavour of the beef, it’s fine. It’s inoffensive, and there’s so much other stuff going on here that it doesn’t really stand out as a huge issue.

The other toppings, including the tangy secret sauce, are all about what you’d expect, and the bun — though slightly too toasty and crispy — suits the burger well.

St. James's Gate

As for the fries, they’re quite good. Unlike the burger, they’re actually quite a bit better than okay.

3 out of 4

Turtle Jack’s

Published on December 22, 2019December 22, 2019 by Michael Nusair5 Comments

Location: 108 Courtneypark Drive East, Toronto
Website: https://turtlejacks.com/

Nope.

Seriously: no. I’m so sick of the no-effort pucks of despair that they serve at basically every Canadian chain restaurant like Turtle Jack’s.

How? How does this happen? How can a restaurant serve a hamburger that’s so unambiguously bad that anyone with a mouth and functional tastebuds will immediately identify it as the off-putting garbage that it is?

That’s a legitimate question and I’d like someone at Turtle Jack’s to answer it. Also, Turtle Jack’s? While you’re here? Get out of here with that horrific slop. Get all the way out and never come back.

The burger at Turtle Jack’s is incredibly dry and dense, and it’s an absolute bummer to eat. It made me sadder and sadder with each mouthful. The beefy flavour was almost nonexistent, with a vaguely leftovery funk that makes me think they might be precooking the patties and reheating them to order. It’s bad. Bad bad bad bad bad.

I feel no need to discuss it further, because it’s a piece of garbage that’s clearly made by people with the cynical belief that they can serve whatever the hell garbage they want and people will eat it. If you order it, you’re proving them right. Please don’t do that. I ate it so you don’t have to.

The fries were slightly better (because there’s really nowhere to go but up from that burger), but they were the boringest of boring frozen fries.

1 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

The Belsize Public House

Published on August 19, 2018August 19, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 535 Mount Pleasant Road, Toronto
Website: https://thebelsize.pub/

As much as I love the griddle-smashed burgers that are so omnipresent in the GTA, it’s hard to resist a big, fat grilled burger. But it’s much, much harder to find a really good burger cooked in that style, so when I heard that they serve a tasty one at The Belsize Public House, I was all over it.

They have a couple of burgers on their menu; there’s the Hoser Burger, which features peameal bacon and cheddar, and the no-frills Grilled Burger, which comes topped with lettuce, tomato, and onion. As I’m wont to do, I went with the simpler of the two.

I’ve cut through so many burgers over the years that I can pretty much tell instantly if a burger is going to be iffy. This one was suspiciously difficult to saw in half, and the alarm bells were going off in my head. They were screaming.

As I feared, it wasn’t very good. The Belsize makes every mistake you can make to end up with an unsatisfying burger. Literally every single one: the beef was clearly too lean, the texture of the grind was way too fine, the beef had been overhandled and was too tightly packed, and it was cooked all the way to the tippy tippy top of well done (if not a little bit further). The meat was so dense. It was a punishingly tough chew. There was a vague amount of juiciness there, but not even close to enough to make any kind of impact.

The flavour wasn’t much better; aside from the fact that I’m pretty sure they had mixed salt and pepper right into the patty (it was distractingly peppery), the flavour of the beef was almost non-existent. And what little flavour there was tasted vaguely off. It wasn’t good.

The toppings were fine, and the fluffy bun was actually pretty perfect. That patty, though…

I will say that my dining companion had the jerk pork sandwich and really enjoyed it, and the fries and the coleslaw that came with the burger were both quite tasty. The fries, in particular, were seriously delicious, with an addictively crispy exterior and perfectly creamy interior. So it’s possible that everything else coming out of the kitchen is tasty. But they bungled that burger, and they bungled it hard.

1 out of 4

Skyline Restaurant

Published on March 19, 2017 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1426 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.theskylinetoronto.com/

I wasn’t crazy about the Skyline Restaurant on my first visit, but that was before the recent change in ownership; I figured another try was probably in order.

My first impression was how delightfully cheap the burger is; for twelve bucks with a hefty side of fries, it’s very much on the low end of what you’d expect to pay from a restaurant like this in Toronto.

It’s a no-frills hamburger, topped with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion, and mayo. The waitress asked if medium was okay; it was. And the grilled patty was indeed cooked to a perfect medium, with a rosy pink interior.

Griddled burgers are so ubiquitous in this city that a grilled burger is almost a novelty these days. I like a griddled burger as much as the next guy, but cooking a hamburger patty on a grill gives it a bit of a smoky flavour and a unique character, so it’s always nice to have that option.

It’s especially nice when the burger is as good as it is here; with its satisfying punch of beefy flavour, it’s very obvious that they’re using above-average beef. It’s not the juiciest burger that I’ve ever had, but it’s very far from dry, and the texture was about 95% where it should be (it was just a bit too finely ground, making it ever-so-slightly tougher than it needed to be, but that’s a very minor complaint).

The toppings were mostly quite good, though the very thickly-sliced tomato was a bit mealy. And the soft, fresh bun — lightly toasted — suited the burger well.

As for the fries, they were amazing. Perfectly crisp and perfectly tender, with just the right amount of salt — very close to fry perfection.

3.5 out of 4