review – Page 2 – Tasty Burgers

Gourmand’s Burger

Published on November 10, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 3100 Winston Churchill Boulevard, Mississauga
Website: http://www.gourmand5ad.ca/

It’s hard to get too excited about yet another place serving a smashed and griddled fast-food-style hamburger. Unlike Toronto, however, Mississauga is still quite burger-starved. There are exceptions, like Gladiator Burger and the now-ubiquitous Burger’s Priest, but great burgers are still something of a rarity in this city.

So fine, another smashed burger? If it’s in the wilds of Mississauga? Yeah, bring it on.

Gourmand's Burger (Gourmand 5AD)

(And yes, it’s bizarre that there are two burger joints in Mississauga with an ancient Rome theme, but as far as I can tell, this place and Gladiator Burger have no affiliation.)

Normally I’d order a restaurant’s namesake burger, but in this case the Gourmand is topped with cheese, bacon, fried onions, mushrooms, garlic aioli, and an egg. It’s a bit much. So I went with the simple cheeseburger instead.

The pricing is wonky; the plain cheeseburger actually costs less than the plain hamburger, at six bucks versus nine bucks. I was told that this is because the classic burger comes with condiments (lettuce, tomato, onions, and pickles), and the cheeseburger doesn’t.

Gourmand's Burger (Gourmand 5AD)

Which means that they charge for even no-frills toppings like lettuce or tomato, or at least I’m assuming they do; I should have asked, but I was too busy being flabbergasted that a plain burger cost more than a cheeseburger. I’m not sure that I’ve ever been to a burger joint that charged for basic condiments, but based on what my bill came up to, it seems like that’s the case.

I ordered the cheeseburger and had it topped with pickles, tomato, and mayo. Which I had to pay for, I guess??

Gourmand's Burger (Gourmand 5AD)

It’s a solid burger. The patty has a nice crust from the griddle, it’s juicy, and it’s got a fairly pronounced beefy flavour. It’s not bad at all.

But the beef is way too finely ground; combined with the fact that they cook it all the way to well done, it gives the patty a slightly mealy texture.

Gourmand's Burger (Gourmand 5AD)

The cheddar-Jack cheese has a nice mild flavour, and would have suited the burger well if it were melted all the way through. Alas.

The other condiments (which I paid extra for???) were fine, and the bun is what it looks like; it was fresh, lightly toasted, and suited the burger well.

As for the fries, they’re quite good. They’re nicely cooked, and they have a very pleasant rosemary-tinged flavour.

3 out of 4

Grill Gate

Published on June 9, 2019June 16, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 832 Sheppard Avenue West, North York
Website: https://grillgate.ca/

Grill Gate serves the type of burger I should love. If nothing else, it’s actually different than the smashed-and-griddled cheeseburgers that have become the city’s de facto burger style over the last decade or so. That alone is kind of delightful.

And for the most part, what they’re serving here is tasty. I ordered the simplest option, the Gourmet Cheezeburger, which comes with a mix of American cheese and mozzarella, special sauce, and onion chips.

Grill Gate

As you’d guess from the name of the restaurant, it’s grilled rather than griddled, which is a refreshing change of pace from pretty much every other burger in the city. The eight ounce patty has a nice heft to it, and holds up to the grilling quite nicely — there’s a good amount of char and a pleasant smoky flavour from the grill, which is quite enjoyable. The patty is cooked all they way to well done, but still reasonably juicy.

So what’s the problem? It’s a meatloaf burger, and a very meatloafy one at that. The spicing here is front and centre. It doesn’t taste like a hamburger to me; not even a little bit.

Grill Gate

Actually, in this case, I shouldn’t call it a meatloaf burger; the way it’s spiced, it would be more apt to call it a kofta burger. It tastes a lot like a kofta kebab. Which isn’t the worst thing in the world — I quite like kofta kebabs! But you can’t put one on a bun and call it a hamburger. It’s tasty in a completely different way.

Other than that, it’s decent enough for what it is. It could be juicier, and the meat is a bit too tightly packed and tough, but it’s not bad. There is, of course, zero beefy flavour — the spices are absolutely the star of the show.

Grill Gate

The cheese isn’t bad. A mixture of American and mozzarella is a bit odd, but mostly, it works. It’s a bit plasticky, even by the standards of American, but it’s also gooey and satisfying.

Then there’s the special sauce and the onion chips, and to be completely honest, I have no idea what they tasted like. I forgot to take note of them (this is my first burger review in several months, so I guess I’m a bit rusty), and neither stood out to me at all. It’s possible they weren’t there. It’s also possible they were overwhelmed by the very assertively spiced patty. I’m not sure.

I liked the bun. It was weirdly crispy on the bottom, but other than that it was nice and fluffy. It looks a bit big, but the bun-to-patty ratio was perfect.

Grill Gate

As for the fries, they’re great. They’re battered fries, which I’m normally not crazy about, but these are surprisingly tasty. They were perfectly fried — they might have been the crispiest fries I’ve ever had, but they never tipped the scales and became overly crunchy. They’re also topped with a zippy, parsley-infused sauce that compliments them perfectly. They were easily the highlight of the meal.

2.5 out of 4

Burgers n’ Fries Forever

Published on January 5, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 182 Ossington Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://burgersnfriesforever.com/

I mentioned in my last review that smashed-and-griddled burgers are a dime a dozen in Toronto. On one hand, that’s a bummer — there so many other varieties of hamburger, but you’d basically never know it judging by the city’s burger joints.

On the other hand, there are a bunch of really great choices out there for a smashed burger. Which means we no longer have to settle for anything less than great.

Burgers n' Fries Forever

This definitely wasn’t the case a few years ago. If you look at my very first review, for Johnny Rockets back in 2011 (which no longer exists in Ontario outside of a location in Windsor), you’ll notice that I cut it a lot of slack — this style of burger was still something of a rarity in the city.

Today, on the other hand? If you’re serving a smashed-and-griddled burger: be great or GTFO.

Burgers n’ Fries Forever is not great.

Burgers n' Fries Forever

I got the BFF², which is a double cheeseburger that comes topped with lettuce, tomato, red onion, beef bacon, and BFF sauce.

Though the patty actually looks really impressive, with a nice amount of crust, it has a bunch of issues that hold it back from being much better than okay.

The biggest problem is the texture: the grind is way too fine and it’s too tightly packed. You can tell just by looking at it. If the cross-section of a burger patty is a uniform slab of gray, you know you’ve got problems. A burger should have crags and crannies. It should have texture. If it’s basically just one monolithic slab of beef that’s trying its best to re-form into a steak, it’s going to be a bummer to eat. It’s going to be tough.

And yes, it was tough. It was vaguely juicy, but it was still a tough chew.

Burgers n' Fries Forever

The flavour was okay, at least, if nothing particularly special.

The toppings were a bit of an issue, too. The cheese was cheddar rather than American; that’s not my favourite (I find it a bit too overwhelming), but that’s more of a personal preference thing. Your mileage my vary. It was nice and gooey, so no complaints there.

The beef bacon was iffy. I don’t have anything against this variety of bacon (in fact, the best burger I’ve had recently featured beef bacon), but the stuff here was chewy and tough to bite through.

The BFF sauce was lost among the burger’s other flavours. I couldn’t even tell you what it tasted like. Everything else was fine, including the sweet, fluffy bun.

As for the fries, they were the clear highlight. They were perfectly cooked, with an addictive crispy/creamy contrast and a really great flavour. The combo comes with a dipping sauce; I went with the kimchi mayo, which complimented the fries very well.

2 out of 4

Scaddabush

Published on December 9, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 155 York Boulevard, Richmond Hill
Website: https://www.scaddabush.com

I’ve mentioned on another blog that Scaddabush is one of the better chains in Canada. That continues to be true. I even enjoyed the burger! Considering that my reaction to the hamburger at chains like this tends to range from “that was extremely mediocre” to “that was so bad it makes me angry,” I was shocked at how much I enjoyed what they served here.

It’s not, however, a traditional hamburger. The Italian Burger, per their menu: “Hand-pressed Certified Angus Beef ground chuck, fresh mozzarella, arugula, bruschetta, balsamic reduction, basil pesto aioli, focaccia bun.”

There’s so much going on here that the patty itself almost feels like an afterthought.

Between the very garlicky pesto aioli, the sweet balsamic glaze, the peppery arugula, the chunky bruschetta topping, and the thick slice of fresh mozzarella, the beef is basically just another condiment. You could slide it right out and it would barely make a difference.

I’m normally not a huge fan of over-condimented hamburgers, but it’s hard to deny that what they’re serving here is tasty. All of the toppings are quite good and compliment each other very well, and the substantial, slightly chewy bun does a great job of holding it all together.

But what about the patty itself? It’s there, and it’s fine. The texture is slightly sausagey, and it doesn’t have a particularly beefy flavour (not that it makes a difference with all of the other stuff going on here), but it’s otherwise a solid burger patty.

It basically just adds some meatiness — this thing is all about the toppings.

As for the fries, they basically tasted like a lightly battered version of what they serve at McDonald’s. They’re not particularly great, but I’ve had worse.

3 out of 4

The Loose Moose

Published on October 28, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 146 Front Street West, Toronto
Website: https://theloosemoose.ca/

The Loose Moose isn’t part of a chain (though it is owned by SIR Corp, the restaurant conglomerate behind places like Jack Astor’s, Canyon Creek, and Scaddabush), but it serves a prototypically lousy chain restaurant burger: it’s exceptionally dry, it features personality-free flavourless beef, and it’s just an absolute bummer to eat.

It’s the type of burger that gives burgers a bad name. I could see someone who doesn’t eat a lot of of them ordering this, eating it, and then thinking “oh, I guess I don’t like hamburgers then?” Because it’s so far removed from what makes a good burger so great that it’s almost like an entirely different dish. It’s unpleasant.

I got the Classic Burger, which is completely no-frills, topped only with lettuce, tomato, and pickle.

This is going to be brief, because if they’re not going to put any effort into making it, I shouldn’t have to put any effort into writing about it.

The griddled patty had a decent amount of crust, but it was cooked way past well done, it was too finely ground, and it was just the driest thing in the history of dry. It was brutal. The flavour was fine, I guess (it was inoffensive, at least) but it was so incredibly dry that having to actually eat it was such a chore.

The toppings were okay, as was the bun (though it was a bit too dense). Who cares, though? That stupid jerk of a patty needs to take a long walk off a short pier.

As for the fries, they were ultra-generic frozen fries. Because why not, right? The restaurant’s on a very high-traffic section of Front Street, so I guess it’ll be busy regardless of how the food actually tastes. So why not serve the most low-effort, cheapest garbage you can find? People will eat it regardless, apparently! It’s just good business. I have a certain amount of grudging respect for that. I just wish I didn’t have to suffer through eating there myself.

1 out of 4