meatloaf burger – Page 6

Peter’s on Eglinton

Published on December 16, 2012 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

peter
Location: 1035 Eglinton Avenue East, Mississauga
Website: http://www.petersoneglinton.com/

Peter’s on Eglinton kind of saddens me. Unpretentious to a fault, serving generous portions of unassuming diner fare, with clientele who look like they’ve been frequenting the place for years, it’s the kind of place that you really want to like. Sadly, I’ve been here a few times now, and I’ve yet to have a meal that was particularly good.

The varied menu ranges from breakfast fare to stuff like souvlaki and pasta to (of course) hamburgers. I ordered the standard burger, and asked for it topped with tomato, pickles, and mayo.

I was concerned that with such a variety on their menu they’d go the frozen patty route, but thankfully this is not the case.

It is, however, a meatloaf burger, and they certainly aren’t shy with the seasonings. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that it’s the meatloafiest meatloaf burger that I’ve ever had. The flavour of the beef is absolutely annihilated by all the spices and miscellanea in the burger. It also has a somewhat mushy texture — perhaps from all the stuff that’s been mixed in.

It’s actually kind of absurd how strongly-spiced this “hamburger” is, but if you’re in the mood for a meatloaf sandwich, you could do worse, I suppose.

Aside from the prodigious spicing, the grilled burger is cooked to well done but not overcooked, and it’s actually reasonably juicy. The bun is a bit too bready, but basically fine, and the toppings are okay (though the pickles are sliced a bit too thick). Like I said, as a meatloaf sandwich it’s not horrible, but as a hamburger it’s almost hilariously misguided.

The burger also comes with a generous portion of fries (which are frozen and fairly mediocre), and a baseball-sized mound of tasty, vinegary coleslaw. It’s a pretty good deal for just about ten bucks.

Frankie’s

Published on September 23, 2012 by Michael Nusair7 Comments

Location: 994 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: None

Frankie’s has apparently been around for 35 years. I say apparently because I had never heard of it before a few weeks ago, and it certainly appears to be a new restaurant. However, a review at blogTO (which is, oddly, the only thing that pops up when you Google this joint outside of sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon) claims that it is a years-old neighbourhood standby. Okay, if you say so, blogTO. I should really make some calls and do some research, but that sounds like a lot of work. What do I look like, a journalist?

Anyway, a place this mediocre really isn’t worth that much thought or effort. The restaurant’s sign hilariously proclaims that these are the “world’s best burgers.” They’re not even Queen Street’s best burgers.

The menu offers two different types of hamburgers: the Frankie’s Original, which the menu describes as having “100% Canadian beef and Frankie’s secret spices,” and the specialty burgers, advertised as being eight ounce burgers made from “Canadian chuck.”

I found it very odd that they advertised the cut of beef that went into the specialty burgers and not the Frankie’s Original, and I was leaning towards getting a specialty burger over the who-knows-what’s-in-it Frankie’s Original; however, the specialty burgers were all so condiment and topping-heavy that I thought I’d never even be able to taste the beef. So I went with a Frankie’s Original topped with my usual selections (pickles, tomato, and mayo).

A note about the restaurant itself, which is waitress service, so you’ll be sitting there a while: they have TVs on with the volume up. This isn’t a problem. They also have a working jukebox. This is a problem. I have no problem with a jukebox in theory, but when you’ve got the music coming from the jukebox on one side, and the noise coming from the TV on the other, it can get a bit cacophonous. A note to the owners of Frankie’s: please pick one or the other.

The service was relatively fast, at least. The hamburger is, as advertised, a meatloaf burger — though it is thankfully not too strongly seasoned. This allowed the flavour of the beef itself to come through, which, in this case, wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The beef had a fairly typical low-quality beef flavour: vaguely funky, and somewhat unpleasant. Though I’ve had worse, it certainly wasn’t anything I’d want to have again.

The patty also had an oddly mushy texture despite being cooked to well done; I’m thinking that the meat had been too finely ground, and perhaps even had a filler of some sort.

As for the toppings, the pickles were fine, but the tomatoes were mealy enough to warrant removal from my hamburger, and the mayo was not mayo. It was either Miracle Whip or some house-made concoction; it was cloyingly sweet and completely overwhelming. I scraped off as much as I could from the bun and the patty.

The fries were okay, but they were a little bit soggy and very greasy, with a stale oil flavour. It’s likely that they’re using oil that is not quite hot enough, and that needs to be changed.

OBQ Burgers

Published on April 20, 2012April 21, 2012 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 602 Brown’s Line, Toronto
Website: None

OBQ Burgers is one of the sketchier looking places that I’ve visited for this blog; it’s a tiny place in a run-down little plaza that’s basically in the middle of nowhere, and its sign/logo looks like it was designed in about five minutes in MS Paint. But sometimes hole-in-the-wall places like this can have some seriously tasty food, so I’ve learned not to judge a book by its cover.

Though I dined in, it’s pretty much a take-out place only — the seating options are limited to a small counter with four stools, though they do have a couple of tables outside, so if it’s a nice day that’s probably your best bet.

The burgers are listed on a blackboard next to the register; there’s actually a pretty good variety to be had, though as per my policy I zeroed in on the eponymous OBQ Burger. I think I’m going to have to go back to try the Halo Burger, which reminds me of a burger that I read about in Hamburger America, from a place called Shady Glen (and if you’re reading this blog, that’s probably a book that will interest you). It’s a essentially a cheeseburger in which the cheese has been allowed to overflow onto the griddle, creating a ring of crispy cheese surrounding the burger. If I go back and try this I will update this post.

As for my OBQ Burger, I was heartened to see the man behind the counter get out a ball of fresh beef, and then smash it down on the griddle; no frozen burgers here. After searing the burger on the griddle for 30 seconds or so, he transferred the patty to the grill, which struck me as an interesting way to cook a burger.

A few minutes later the burger was ready, and I took my tray, sat down on a stool and dug in. The OBQ Burger is described as being “served with cheddar, lettuce, pickles, onion & GABAGOO!!” I asked the man behind the counter what Gabagoo was, and was informed that it’s their special sauce, and a secret recipe.

The burger was okay. After eating it, I told my dining companion that I wish the burger had either been better, or worse, because writing about an agreeable but generally middling burger like this one can be a bit of a challenge.

It’s a meatloaf burger, though it wasn’t too aggressively-spiced. It didn’t have that sausagey texture that a lot of meatloaf burgers tend to have, which I definitely appreciated. The beef itself had a fairly neutral flavour — it obviously wasn’t bad quality beef, but it wasn’t great, either. It was also too lean and a bit on the dry side, though I have certainly had worse.

The cheddar was shredded and mounded on top of the burger, a questionable choice that resulted in cheese that was melted around the edges and cold and uncooked in the middle. There’s clearly a reason why 99 percent of the cheeseburgers out there use slices. The cheddar was also fairly low quality, and as such I kinda wish they had just gone with good old fashioned American cheese — it melts much more consistently and is a good match for a burger such as this.

The Gabagoo sauce essentially tasted like sweet honey mustard, so I’m not sure what all the “top secret” business was about. I like honey mustard when it leans more toward mustard than honey; this leaned very strongly in the other direction, and I found it to be a bit too sweet and overpowering for my tastes.

I got the burger as a combo with fries, and received a very generous portion of crispy, tasty fries. They were probably better than the burger itself, actually.

Goody’s Diner

Published on March 19, 2012September 12, 2012 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: ~~133 Manville Road, Scarborough~~
UPDATE: It appears that, sadly, Goody’s Diner has closed down.
Website: http://www.goodysdiner.com/

When a place gets a 300+ post thread at Chowhound, you pretty much have to sit up and take notice. When that thread deals largely with the greatness of the establishment’s burgers, you can pretty much guarantee I’ll be there at some point. So of course, I eventually found myself at Goody’s Diner, an unassuming little place tucked away in a drab business park. Not the most auspicious of locations, but it’s the food that counts.

A quick glance at the menu reveals a burger called the Goody’s Burger; since it’s my general policy to to get any burger named after the restaurant, the selection process was quite easy. The friendly waitress came by; I ordered. Fries or salad? Yeah, okay, I’m really going to order a salad. With a hamburger. (to be fair, my dining companion ordered the salad and said it was above average.)

A short while later, the burger came, and it is enormous. The menu labels it as an eight ounce burger (i.e. half a pound) and that’s definitely no exaggeration. The thing is massive. It’s not kidding around, that’s for sure.

The Goody’s Burger comes topped with “grilled peameal bacon, mushrooms, jalapeno havarti, caramelized onion, lettuce and tomato.” First things first, this is a meatloaf-style burger; they tell you right on the menu that it’s mixed in with “roasted garlic and our secret spice blend” (and I have to thank them for this — there’s nothing worse than expecting a standard burger, only to get one perfumed with onion, garlic, and who-knows-what-other-spices. This style of burger can be perfectly tasty, but there is no doubt that it is very different from a traditional burger and should be labeled as such).

And it is actually pretty tasty. Meatloaf-style burgers are not my favourite, however this was definitely one of the better ones that I’ve had. It was quite juicy, and the spicing wasn’t too aggressive, allowing some of the burger’s beefiness to shine through. The burger was a bit chewier and more sausage-like than I would prefer, but that seems to be par for the course for this style of hamburger.

As for the many toppings — they would almost surely overwhelm a smaller, more traditional burger. But between the gigantic size of the patty itself and the strong spice blend, the burger is definitely the dominant flavour here. The toppings compliment it quite nicely, as does the soft yet substantial bun.

Though the fries are of the battered variety (like the meatloaf-style burger, this is generally not my favourite), they are above average; crunchy, potatoey, and without the overly processed flavour that battered fries tend to have. They’re also lightly seasoned with rosemary, which makes them pretty tasty on their own without much need for a dipping sauce.

BBQ Express

Published on August 1, 2011April 21, 2012 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 1240 Bay Street, Toronto
Website: None

I’ve seen things done to burgers. Bad things: frozen burgers, overly-spiced burgers, too-lean burgers, burgers ground too finely, burgers with filler, burgers with bad quality meat… I thought I had seen it all. I was wrong.

BBQ Express is one of those places I’ve walked by many times, though it took the prospect of reviewing it for this blog to actually walk in. It’s a tiny place; there’s basically just enough room to stand there and order.

They advertise a homemade burger, so I ordered it thinking “how bad could this be?”

Then something happened I don’t think I’ll ever forget. The woman who took my order moseyed on over to the grill, opened a foil bag with a stack of pre-cooked hamburgers, and slapped one on the grill.

I stood there in shock. Did I really just see that? Is that really a pre-cooked hamburger, cooked who-knows-when? Is she actually going to reheat that and serve it to me?

My pulse quickened. Fight or flight kicked in. A voice in my head screamed “Run! Run now and never look back!” And if it hadn’t been for this blog, there’s no way I would have eaten that hamburger. I would have politely given the grill lady some excuse, and I would have high-tailed it out of there.

The things I do for you.

I got my hamburger topped with pickles, tomato and mayo, and I walked across the street to sit outside and eat my meal.

I took my pictures of the uncut burger, then, as I am wont to do when I’m reviewing a burger for this blog, I cut it in half so I could take a picture of the burger’s innards. Cutting into the burger, it was immediately clear that something was wrong. The hamburger was suspiciously difficult to cut in half. The meat was tough, almost like trying to cut through a steak.

Hesitantly, I took a bite. The burger was — surprise, surprise — unusually dry. It was also tough and leathery with an almost jerky-like texture around the edges.

This was also a meatloaf-style burger. It wasn’t too strongly-spiced, though this was one instance where I actually would have preferred for the beef to be disguised by other flavours; the beef had a funky, vaguely unpleasant flavour.

The only reason I’m not going to give this burger zero stars is that I actually managed to finish the whole thing, so I guess it wasn’t completely inedible. But then that probably speaks more to my gluttony than to the general quality of this burger. Seriously: this was a terrible, terrible hamburger. I’m pretty sure I’ve had worse in my lifetime, though I’m having a hard time thinking of any right now.