onion rings – Tasty Burgers

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

The Opera House Grill

Published on December 20, 2015December 20, 2015 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 737 Queen Street East, Toronto
Website: https://www.facebook.com/theoperahousegrill/

I’m going to keep this one relatively brief. If you’ve read my recent rant about the Opera House Grill’s inclusion on Toronto Life’s new list of the city’s 25 best burgers, then you already pretty much know what I think about this burger: it’s made with a frozen patty, and it doesn’t belong within a million miles of any kind of “best of” list.

Still, that’s not to say that it’s the worst thing ever. It’s actually pretty okay, as far as frozen burgers go. The Shaggy Burger (the one that made Toronto Life’s list) is an impressively ridiculous behemoth of a burger. Piled high with sweet griddled onions, crispy onion rings, bacon, tsatziki, and a healthy mound of cheddar cheese, not to mention the standard burger toppings like lettuce, pickles, and tomato, it’s pretty much the definition of a kitchen sink burger.

And I won’t lie: it’s pretty good in the middle. It’s topping overload, but everything in the pile is fairly tasty, and it all tastes pretty good together. The big mound of shredded cheddar cheese never quite melts as much as it needs to, but aside from that the toppings are solid.

Where the burger really falls apart (figuratively — the bun held up surprisingly well to all the toppings) is around the perimeter of the burger, where all of the many condiments begin to fade away. That’s when you really taste that hot-doggy, mediocre frozen patty, and realize that greatness is simply never going to be in this burger’s vocabulary.

As for the fries, they clearly came out of the same freezer as the burger patty, and were about as middling as you’d expect.

2 out of 4

Chef Burger

Published on February 22, 2015 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 8910 Yonge Street, Richmond Hill
Website: http://www.chefburgers.ca/

Burger? Check. Cheeseburger? Check. Fries? Check. Onion rings? Check. Tongue sandwiches? Check. Wait, what?

You don’t often find a burger joint with multiple tongue sandwiches on the menu (both calf and lamb), but Chef Burger’s Middle Eastern owners obviously have a bit more on their mind than just burgers and fries.

I was actually kind of tempted to get one of those tongue sandwiches, but then how would I satisfy my insatiable need to review more and more burger joints for this blog? I ordered the namesake Chef Burger, and had it topped with their special sauce, along with pickles and tomato.

The grilled, well done burger is somewhat juicy, but it’s too finely ground, giving it a vaguely mealy texture. I’ve certainly had worse in this regard, but I do wish that the grind was a little bit more coarse.

It’s also a meatloaf burger — but as far as these types of burgers go, the flavouring is pretty subtle. I definitely noticed onions in there, but it otherwise wasn’t very aggressively spiced. You’d think this would allow the burger’s beefy flavour to shine through, but not really. It’s surprisingly bland. It doesn’t taste bad, but it’s very neutral-tasting beef.

Any issue with the flavour of the burger itself, however, is almost entirely moot if you get your burger topped with their special sauce — a garlicky, tzatziki-esque concoction that, while tasty, completely overwhelms any other flavour that the burger might have. It’s good, but man, it is seriously in your face.

The other toppings are pretty good, and the bun is surprisingly good. It looks like it should be too big, but it’s fresh, light, and fluffy, and suits the burger perfectly. It also has a very lightly crispy exterior, which is always delightful.

The fries, however, aren’t great. They’re not terrible; they’re just run-of-the-mill frozen fries. They suit their purpose, but don’t do much more than that. My dining companion got the onion rings, which are pretty much the same deal: frozen, mediocre, okay.

2.5 out of 4

Bymark

Published on December 14, 2014December 21, 2014 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 66 Wellington Street West, Toronto
Website: http://bymark.mcewangroup.ca/

This being my 100th burger review for this blog (yeah, I can’t believe I made it this far either), I figured something special was probably in order. And what’s more special than one of the city’s most highly-regarded burgers, and at a whopping 35 bucks, probably its most expensive?

So it was that I found myself at Bymark, a restaurant several orders of magnitude classier than where I typically go for this blog. It’s the type of place where you look around and you think, everyone in this room probably makes more in a couple of months than I make in year. But do they have a blog where they get to be snarky about hamburgers? No? Well then.

The 8 Ounce P.E.I Grass Fed Burger comes with “brie de meaux, porcini mushrooms, & crisp onion rings or frites.” I figured the onion rings might be more interesting than fries, so I went with those. I was also asked how I wanted the burger cooked, and requested medium rare.

I’m not going to lie: I was pretty skeptical that this meal could possibly justify the extra-large price tag. With that price, it’s about double the cost of even the most expensive burgers I’ve reviewed for the blog thus far. I was ready to dislike it just on principle. Where do you get off charging that much for a burger??

Well… It’s a pretty amazing hamburger. It’s grilled and came cooked to a perfect medium rare — and when I say perfect, I mean perfect. Normally when you get a burger cooked medium rare, it comes out that way in the centre, with a fairly significant ring around the edges of well done beef. That phenomenon is minimized to a ridiculously impressive degree here, with amazingly consistent medium rare beef practically the whole way through. I have no idea how they managed to cook it this evenly from edge to edge (sous vide, perhaps?), but however it’s done, it is glorious.

The patty was coarsely ground and a bit densely packed — but oddly enough, not in a bad way. Though a loosely packed burger is normally what you’re looking for, this patty had a rich, almost steak-like consistency, without ever losing its hamburgery goodness. It was actually quite unlike any burger I’ve ever had, but in an amazing way.

It’s also one of the tastier burgers I’ve had in a while, with a nicely beefy flavour that’s fairly pronounced, even if it could be stronger (Allen’s definitely has it beat in this regard).

Oh, and it was super juicy, too; it made me want to parade it around to most of Toronto’s burger joints and say “See? See how juicy this is? This is how juicy a burger is supposed to be. Stop being an idiot.”

Are you getting the sense that I liked this burger? Because yeah, I kinda liked it.

The toppings were pretty great as well. The brie was super creamy, with a distinctively nutty but not overly sharp flavour that complimented the beef perfectly. The mushrooms were garlicky and intensely flavourful; they were crazy delicious, though I do think they were a little bit overwhelming — one of the burger’s few weak points.

I quite liked the bun, too. Though it was more substantial than I typically want, with a burger this big, rich, and juicy, you need that kind of substance or it’ll fall apart.

I will say that I wasn’t crazy about the onion rings. They were fine, but there wasn’t anything all that special about them. And though the smaller ones at the top of the pile were crispy and perfectly cooked, the larger ones at the bottom were doughy and underdone. That didn’t stop me from eating all of them, of course, but after that superb burger they couldn’t help but feel like a pretty big let-down.

I honestly didn’t think that this review was going to go this way, but you know what? This burger was absolutely worth the 35 bucks. It’s not something you’re going to get all the time, but as a special treat? Hell yeah. It’s amazingly rich and flavourful, with a heady decadence and an overall level of quality that really is in a league of its own.

I kind of wish that I hadn’t eaten it, because I’m pretty sure I’m going to be craving it all the time now. It’s a very strong contender for the best burger in the city.

4 out of 4

Wahlburgers

Published on November 23, 2014November 30, 2014 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 46 Blue Jays Way, Toronto
Website: http://wahlburgers.ca/

Kudos to whichever Wahlberg brother realized that their name made them ideally suited to open a burger joint, and double-kudos to whichever one decided that they should actually make good on what I can only assume started as a silly joke. As a fan of cheesy puns and general wordplay, I approve.

And if you want to eat a hamburger while basking in the reflected glory of a famous movie star and a semi-famous TV star (and a third guy you probably don’t care about), then Wahlburgers will fit the bill.

Of course, there’s a good chance that you don’t care about such things, and are just looking for a tasty burger. Thankfully, Wahlburgers is more than just a Planet Hollywood-esque shrine to celebrity-adjacent dining; it’s certainly nothing anyone is going to go too crazy over, but they serve a pretty good burger.

It’s a fairly large, full-service restaurant with long list of pre-topped burgers to be had. Each Wahlberg has his favourite burger labelled on the menu: Donnie’s got a BBQ bacon burger, Mark has a turkey burger, and Paul (i.e. the Wahlberg you haven’t heard of –- and the chef) has a simple cheeseburger. I went with Paul’s choice, dubbed Our Burger: “Paul’s signature Wahl sauce, dill pickles, government cheese, lettuce, tomato and onion.”

The griddled burger was cooked all the way to well done (despite the claim that they cook to medium on the menu), but was somewhat juicy regardless. It was definitely a bit more dry than I’d like, particularly around the edges, but I’ve certainly had worse. It was also too tightly packed and a little bit dense, making it a bit more tough than it needed to be.

Still, it’s a pretty good cheeseburger outside of those two beefs (no pun intended… oh, who am I kidding? Pun absolutely intended). The meat has a decent –- if somewhat mild –- beefy flavour, and the American cheese on top is nicely gooey. Though the bun looks a little bit big, it’s not overwhelming at all and actually suits the burger perfectly.

The other toppings were all solid — particularly the onions, oddly enough. I normally find raw onions to be a bit too overwhelming for my tastes, but these were very thinly sliced and nice and mild. They added some crunch and oniony character without over-asserting themselves, as onions tend to do.

The burgers don’t come with any sides, so I got an order of tater tots. I could have gotten fries as per usual, but who can say no to tater tots? Nobody, that’s who. They pretty much tasted like run-of-the-mill cafeteria tots. This isn’t a bad thing. I also tried the onion rings, which are more like onion strings than what you’d expect. They were pretty good as well.

3 out of 4