slider – Tasty Burgers

Location: 10 Kingsbridge Garden Circle, Mississauga
Website: https://www.oklahomaburgers.ca/

I wasn’t even sure that I was going to write about this place for this blog. Tasty Burgers has been on hiatus since the beginning of the pandemic, and I still hadn’t decided if/when I wanted to bring it back.

But you know what? Oklahoma Burgers serves a four star burger, and it needs to be recognized as such. I had no choice. Tasty Burgers must come back.

Oklahoma Burgers

Because yes, spoiler alert: the burger at Oklahoma Burgers is amazing, and you need to eat it immediately. If you’re a regular reader of this blog? Eat it immediately. If you’re not a regular reader of this blog? Eat it immediately.

Stop doing whatever you’re doing and eat it immediately, is what I’m saying.

Oklahoma Burgers

As soon as I saw the glorious photos and videos on the restaurant’s Instagram page, I knew I’d have to check the place out. I mean, look at this. And this. And this. Come on.

The place itself is a bit odd. They share a large, semi-fancy-looking space with a few other restaurants. It’s waiter service, and when you sit down you get a handful of menus and you can order whatever you want from the various restaurants (including a tasty-looking BBQ joint that I might have to come back to check out).

Oklahoma Burgers

They serve Oklahoma-style onion burgers, which is a variation on the smashed burgers that are so popular throughout the GTA, but with the addition of a whole bunch of thinly-sliced onions smashed right into the patty.

Those onions complement the patty perfectly. Most of them get sweet and tender — not fully caramelized, but close enough to be super tasty — and some get dark, brown, and crispy. It’s an absolutely delightful combination.

Oklahoma Burgers

The burgers are cooked like a slider, with the fresh, squishy buns being placed on the patties as they cook, which allows them to get perfumed with beefy goodness, further emphasizing the burger’s tastiness.

You can get it as a single or a double; I got the double, and it was a perfect ratio of meat, onions, cheese, and bun. You can’t really tell from the photos, but the patties were cooked to a perfect medium, and were abundantly, profoundly juicy. This might be one of the juiciest, greasiest burgers that I’ve ever had, and it is glorious. The amalgam of melty American cheese, flavourful beef, and sweet/crispy onions is the stuff dreams are made of.

Oklahoma Burgers

It’s topped with “burger sauce,” but aside from a mild mustardy flavour, all I could taste was the beef, cheese, and onions. Please note: I’m not complaining. This feels like the type of burger where I’d normally be looking for pickles or something acidic to cut through the richness — but here, it totally works. The burger’s rich decadence is almost overwhelming, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

As for the fries, they’re fairly standard battered fries. They’re crispy and tasty, but honestly? Just order another burger on the side. Don’t waste your time.

1.5 out of 4

Location: 385 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://thefed.ca/goldstandard/

Though the term “slider” has come to mean any little sandwich on a bun, it used to refer to a very specific type of hamburger where onions, beef, and bun all mingle together in a way that can be downright magical. I’ve decried the absence of this style of burger in the GTA a few times over the years; most recently, in my review for Broncos Slider Bar, I predicted that we’d never get a true slider joint in the city.

Well, I’m happy to say that I was wrong. Gold Standard, a tiny little take-out window just off of Roncesvalles, serves a Telway-style burger — a variation on a slider that originated in Detroit.

And while it’s not quite as delicious as I might have hoped, I’m very, very glad that it exists.

The burgers here feature a diminutive patty that’s been cooked with a generous amount of thinly shaved onions, which allows the beef and the onions to cook together, and for the flavours to mingle (they remain completely distinct from one another, however — this is a far cry from a meatloaf burger). They also put a pre-cooking application of mustard directly on the patty and/or griddle to amp up the flavour. It’s served with gooey american cheese and pickles, and comes tightly wrapped in foil so that the bun absorbs some of the flavour from the beef and the onions.

It’s a very respectable slider, but alas, nothing about it got my heart rate up. The best part is the interplay between the beef and the griddled onions; that is a boffo flavour combination, and Gold Standard executes it perfectly. The gooey melted cheese was also quite good, if a bit too salty.

The patty was solid — it had a good texture and it wasn’t too tightly packed — but it could have been beefier and juicier. It wasn’t exactly dry, but it wasn’t particularly juicy, either, and the beefy flavour was more muted than I’d like. It doesn’t help that the mustard was surprisingly intense, and dominated all of the other flavours in the hamburger.

The bun was probably the weakest part. That’s a shame, because the soft beef-and-onion infused bun is a big part of the appeal of this style of hamburger. I’m pretty sure that it started out as a good-quality bun, but it had been so thoroughly mashed down and squashed into oblivion that all of the fluffiness had been compressed right out of it. It had the approximate texture of a really dense marshmallow. It wasn’t completely unappealing, but it was firm and chewy in a way that was odd and off-putting.

This would normally be the part of the review where I talk about the fries. There aren’t any. There are only three things on the menu at Gold Standard: the burger, a breakfast sandwich, and a vegetarian sandwich (or vegan? I honestly didn’t even read that portion of the menu).

3 out of 4