restaurant – Page 16 – Tasty Burgers

Brown Bag Sandwiches

Published on May 7, 2012May 7, 2012 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 377 Church Street, Toronto
Website: http://www.brownbagsandwiches.ca/

Some Eastern philosophies state that there should always be balance; if there is good in the world, there must be bad to balance it out. So it goes, then, that if a burger joint as delicious as Holy Chuck or The Burger’s Priest exists, there must also exist a place that is as bad as those restaurants are good. Enter Brown Bag Sandwiches.

No, this is not a dedicated burger joint. It is a sandwich shop — however, they do have a kitchen and a griddle and all of the tools they would need to make a delicious burger, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to expect something halfway decent. Moreover, the hamburger is the first item on the menu, so it’s clearly not something that only exists to pad out their selection. It’s front-and-centre, and therefore fair game for scrutiny. And scrutinize I shall.

I got the burger as a combo with a can of soda and a very generous order of fries, and it came up to about ten bucks, so it’s reasonably priced.

I ordered my combo, waited a few minutes for the burger to be ready (there are a handful of tables in the small restaurant for those who want to eat in), then asked for my hamburger to be topped with pickles, tomato, and chipotle mayo.

The burger is oblong, presumably to accommodate their choice of bread. It’s a little bit unorthodox, but I suppose that there is no rule that says a hamburger must be round.

You’ve no doubt gathered as much from the opening of this review, but this was not a good hamburger. In fact, I would say that it was a terrible hamburger. I’m not even sure that I need to write this review; if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I believe that the picture above communicates all that needs to be said about this burger. It looks gross, to put it bluntly, and it tasted just as bad as it looks.

It’s a meatloaf burger. Though this isn’t my favourite style of hamburger, I have no problem recognizing a good meatloaf burger when I see one. Again, this was not a good burger. For one thing, it was way overcooked, and the too-lean, impossibly dense beef was egregiously dry. Sucks-the-moisture-out-of-your-mouth dry. Sahara Desert dry. Dry.

Even by the standards of a meatloaf burger it was overseasoned, obliterating whatever beefy flavour the meat might have once had. Then there was the very crusty, toasted bun; this might work okay in some of their other sandwiches, but it was wildly inappropriate as a hamburger bun. It was completely overwhelming and far too substantial for the task at hand.

Any flavour that the chipotle mayonnaise might have had was annihilated by the strong patty, so I can’t speak to its success as a condiment. The tomato and pickles were fine.

The burger actually reminded me a lot of the hamburger I had at BBQ Express. This is not a flattering comparison, to put it mildly. I should also note that my dining companion had the fried chicken sandwich and was similarly unimpressed, so the quality of the food (or lack thereof) was not restricted to the hamburger.

The one redeeming quality of the meal were the French fries. Though they were a tad overcooked, they were crispy, well-seasoned and delicious. They came with a side of ketchup, which they make in-house, and which was pretty fantastic. Bright and tomatoey, and far less sweet than typical ketchup, it proved to be surprisingly addictive when combined with the above-average fries.

BQM Diner

Published on April 2, 2012June 25, 2012 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Website: http://www.bqmburger.com/
Location: 354 Queen Street West, Toronto

When a burger joint’s menu proudly advertises the fact that all of their burgers have less than 10 percent fat, I’m immediately on my guard. A burger should strive to be many things; low fat is not one of them. It is a universally accepted fact that a good burger needs a bare minimum of 15 percent fat; a preferable number is anywhere between 20 and 30 percent. This is where a burger’s juciness comes from. So if you’re advertising low fat burgers, you’re pretty much just coming out and admitting that you serve dry hamburgers. Not a good sign.

The BQM Diner is a small-ish restaurant, with almost comically small booths. Seriously, the booth was probably the smallest one I’ve ever sat in; I’m pretty sure I could have head-butted my dining companion without having to lean forward all that much.

The menu, oddly, offers three different cuts of beef: chuck, brisket, or sirloin. Sirloin is a definite no-go; though there is the perception that sirloin is a “fancy” cut of beef, thus making it more desirable, it is actually quite lean and a terrible choice for a burger. It may work well as a steak, but a burger is a different beast altogether.

I was leaning towards the brisket, because it is the fattiest cut, and I was concerned by the menu’s 10 percent fat boast. However, the waitress came by and rendered it all moot — all they had left was the chuck. It seemed odd that they were already out of 2/3rds of the menu, given that it was lunchtime and early in the day, but since chuck is a fairly standard cut of beef for a burger, I wasn’t too perturbed.

I ordered the BQM, labeled as “the Boss’ favourite,” which comes topped with caramelized onion, horseradish, garlic aioli, lettuce, and tomato. The waitress asked if I wanted it medium or medium-well. It’s always a good sign when you get asked how you want your burger cooked; I asked for mine medium.

The burger came, and it was immediately apparent that it was a little overcharred on the grill — it was pretty much completely blackened, giving it a strong smoky flavour that did overwhelm the beef a bit.

The burger actually was fairly juicy; it helped that it wasn’t cooked to well done like at most places (the burger actually came out much closer to medium rare than to medium), but I would be very surprised if this burger truly only contained 10 percent fat. I suspect that the 10 percent fat claim only really applies to the sirloin burger.

Though its flavour was a bit obscured by the liberal amount of charring on the burger and by the horseradish, it was still pretty clear that this was an above average burger, with a nicely beefy flavour. The toppings generally suited the burger fairly well, though the aforementioned horseradish was probably unnecessary. I’m generally not a fan of assertive flavours like horseradish on a burger, because they tend to overpower the taste of what is supposed to be the star of the show: the patty. It is a shame to disguise that flavour, especially when you’re dealing with good quality beef like they’re clearly using here.

I also got the fries on the side, and though they were a bit on the soggy side, they were obviously freshly cut and quite tasty.

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.

Billy’s Place

Published on July 25, 2011April 21, 2012 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 5945 Dixie Road, Mississauga
Website: None

Whenever I go to a little hole-in-the-wall place that I’ve never heard of, I get a little bit excited; could this be a great new discovery? A hidden gem? A place I’ll excitedly recommend to everyone I know?

Spoiler alert: this was not one of those places.

Walking in didn’t exactly fill me with confidence; the place looks like it hasn’t changed much since it opened (probably in the ’70s or ’80s, judging by the decor). It was also completely deserted at around 12:30 on a weekday, which was a bit worrisome — this seems like the type of restaurant that should have a bustling lunch crowd.

There was a fairly large rear-projection TV (the type they stopped making something like fifteen years ago) in the corner of the restaurant playing the Bruce Willis flop Hostage, which was a bit of a head-scratcher. This wouldn’t have been so strange had the TV just been tuned to TBS or something, but nope — it was a DVD. Someone (the owner, presumably) had actually gone to the trouble of buying Hostage on DVD, which is pretty bizarre.

I looked at the menu, which is posted fast-food style on the wall behind the counter; if nothing else, this place definitely wasn’t overpriced. The hamburger combo comes with a six ounce burger, a generous serving of fries, and a can of soda. The price? $6.15. It’s almost suspiciously cheap.

I ordered the combo, and within a few minutes it was ready. I asked for the burger topped with pickles, tomato, lettuce, and mayo, and I was good to go.

The first thing I noticed about the burger was the aroma. This is a meatloaf-style hamburger, which was quite apparent from the garlicky smell wafting from the patty.

I took a bite. Even by the standards of a meatloaf-style burger, this was aggressively spiced, with a strong garlicky taste that pretty much slaps you in the face.

It also had a sausage-like texture, with the beefy flavour thoroughly eliminated by the strong seasoning. The taste and texture were so far removed from what you’d associate with beef, that I’m pretty sure that this could have been made out of ground pork without the taste or texture being particularly affected.

It wasn’t bad, I guess. It was juicy and reasonably tasty for what it was, though it was pretty much a complete failure as a hamburger. I mean, proponents of the meatloaf-style burger will argue that the additional ingredients should serve to compliment the beefiness of the burger, which certainly wasn’t the case here. Whatever beefiness this (probably low-quality) beef had was completely annihilated by the other ingredients, which makes it kind of hard to argue that it was any kind of success as a hamburger.

As for the fries, they were kind of bad despite being fresh out of the frier. They were obviously frozen, and they were completely unsalted, resulting in some seriously bland fries.

Apache Burgers

Published on July 18, 2011 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 5236 Dundas Street West, Etobicoke
Website: None

Apache Burgers is one of those really old school burger places that’s been around forever, looking about the same and serving up the same food for decades on end. People tend to get pretty nostalgic about places they’ve been visiting (and food they’ve been eating) since they were children. Which probably helps to explain why this place is frequently named as one of the best burger joints in the GTA.

Apache Burgers is fine. My burger was perfectly edible. But one of the best places in the GTA? Not by a long shot.

I arrived just before 1:00 PM on a weekday, and the place was fairly crowded. Unlike most burger joints downtown where you’ll mostly find twenty-somethings, the demographic here was pretty varied: families, teenagers, workers on their lunch break, and an older couple who have probably been getting burgers here for years. The place does well, no doubt about it.

It’s a pretty standard layout: order your burger, pay, wait, then pick your toppings from behind the glass. The whole restaurant was pretty clean and not run-down at all, so I’d imagine that they’ve renovated recently.

I elected to go with the Apache Burger, since it’s generally hard to go wrong ordering a restaurant’s namesake item. The Apache Burger is basically a double cheeseburger: two beef patties, two slices of American cheese. I topped it with pickles, tomatoes and mayonnaise (which you’ve probably noticed are my go-to burger toppings).

The burger is not bad. It’s not good, certainly, but it’s not bad. The quality of the meat itself is fairly mediocre, and certainly no better than a fast food place like Wendy’s, so how Apache became a burger joint of note is a complete mystery to me. It’s not even cheap — my Apache burger was $6.79, and with just a small drink and no sides it came up to about ten bucks.

Apache uses prefabricated patties for their burgers, though they are of a slightly higher quality than your average frozen burger. They don’t have that telltale chewy texture that you typically get from a frozen burger, so that definitely puts them head-and-shoulders above Johnny’s in the great Johnny’s-versus-Apache debate. But being better than Johnny’s is not exactly a tall mountain to climb.

The patties also had that vaguely gamy, somewhat unpleasant taste that you associate with lower quality beef, but they were basically okay. They weren’t too dry, and they had a decent texture to them.

The cheese was gooey and fully melted, which was a definite plus. The other toppings were fine, though the guy who assembled my burger was a bit heavy-handed with the mayo.

The bun is a little too big and bready. It’s overpowering. It basically worked in my double burger; the single, however (which is what I ordered the last time I was here), is completely dominated by the large bun.

“Meh” is a good word to describe Apache Burgers. It’s fine, I guess, but if you go there expecting something above average, you will be sorely disappointed. Personally, given the caliber of the burgers served here, I’d sooner just go down the street and order from Wendy’s. At least it’s a bit cheaper.