smashed – Tasty Burgers

Top Gun Burgers

Published on November 25, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 5955 Latimer Drive, Mississauga
Website: http://www.topgunburgerto.com/

I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to check out Top Gun Burgers. I guess their original Kensington Market location opened shortly after The Burgernator, a nearby burger joint I didn’t care for, and it looked similar enough that I was never particularly motivated to try it.

In the meantime, however, Top Gun Burgers have done well enough to expand to eight locations throughout the GTA, so this review was long overdue.

Top Gun Burgers

Their fighter-plane-inspired menu has over a dozen choices, but I went simple with the Bobcat: “beef patty, fresh onion, lettuce, tomato, pickles and top gun aioli.”

It’s not the best, though it certainly looks impressive. The smashed and griddled patty (of course it’s smashed and griddled, what else would it be?? There’s no other way to cook a burger, right???) looks great, with a picture-perfect amount of crust from the hot griddle.

Top Gun Burgers

Alas, though it’s certainly not bad, it doesn’t taste quite as good as it looks.

The patty is the biggest issue. It’s been cooked to well done and beyond, not to mention the fact that it’s a bit too tightly packed. It’s vaguely juicy, but still dryer than it should be. It all adds up to a patty that’s a bit of a tough chew.

Top Gun Burgers

The burger has a very mild beefy flavour; it’s nice, but not nearly as beefy as you’d like it to be.

The toppings are what you’d expect, other than the Top Gun aioli, which is zippier than the standard burger sauce, with a slightly smoky flavour.

The bun is mostly okay, though it’s a bit too dense.

Top Gun Burgers

As for the fries, they’re absolutely phenomenal. They’re some of the best fries I’ve had in ages; they’re perfectly crispy and creamy, and the flavour is outstanding. It’s worth coming here just for them. Seriously, seriously good.

2.5 out of 4

Cabano’s Comfort Food

Published on August 18, 2019September 1, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 75 St. Nicholas Street, Toronto
Website: http://cabanos.ca/

I just counted, and my list of hamburgers to try for this blog currently sits at 154. Suffice it to say, it’ll be a while before I get to all of them. If you’ve left a comment or sent me an email suggesting a burger I should try and I haven’t gotten there yet, that’s why.

I’ve been hearing good things about the burger at Cabano’s since they were located in Vaughan. I’ve been meaning to check the place out for years.

Well, I finally got there, and yeah — it was worth the wait. The burger didn’t rock my world, but it’s very, very good.

You can either get the no-frills cheeseburger, or the Cabano burger, which is a double cheeseburger that comes topped with Cabano sauce, lettuce, onions, and fried pickled jalapenos.

I got the Cabano, and it’s a quality burger; it does pretty much everything right, and very little wrong.

The patties are smashed and griddled, because of course they are. This is Toronto. If you attempt to cook a burger in any other style and serve it in a restaurant, the police are going to show up at your house, roll you up in a carpet and throw you into a river.

They’re cooked all the way to well done, which can sometimes be an issue, but absolutely isn’t here — they’re basically perfect. They have a nice crust from the griddle (though only on one side), and the texture is absolutely outstanding. They’re tender and abundantly juicy. Perfect.

They have a pleasant but mild beefy flavour; that’s the one area where the burger is lacking. Because the patties were otherwise so superlative, I was looking for that nice strong beefy hit that you get from truly top-shelf hamburgers, and it wasn’t quite there.

It didn’t help that the patties were overwhelmed by the gooey American cheese. I’m not sure how many slices they used — Two? Three? — but it was too much. The cheese was clearly the dominant flavour. It easily overpowers the mild beef.

Otherwise, the toppings were great. The Cabano sauce was the typical tangy mayo you’ll find in so many burgers, and the chopped onions and lettuce work quite nicely (I’m normally not a fan of raw onion, but these were mild enough to not offend).

The fried jalapenos, however, are the highlight. They’re crispy and a little bit spicy, with a nice vinegary bite that helps cut through the burger’s richness.

The bun — a Martin’s Potato Roll, I think, which are becoming delightfully common in the GTA — was quite good as well.

As for the fries, they weren’t great. They tasted lightly battered, which I’m not crazy about. They were also undercooked. Considering how good the burger was, they were shockingly shoddy.

3.5 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

Extra Burger

Published on December 23, 2018 by Michael Nusair3 Comments

Location: 1357 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.extraburger.ca/

Another day, another smashed-and-griddled burger in Toronto. At some point, this city’s obsession with the thin, griddled patty (to the exclusion of every other type of burger) will cool down.

We’re not there yet.

Not that I’m complaining — well, not entirely, at least. Though a little more variety would be nice, there’s a reason this style of patty is so popular. It’s damn good.

Extra Burger

But there’s something to be said for the satisfying meatiness of a thicker patty, and for the smokiness that you get from the grill. I love chocolate cake, but other flavours of cake are good too, you know?

But I digress. Extra burger is an especially bare-bones burger joint; the menu consists entirely of a cheeseburger, a double cheeseburger, and fries. They have a few stools where you can sit, but mostly, it’s take-out only.

I ordered the double, which comes topped with lettuce, tomato, pickles, special sauce (well, they call it special sauce, but it looked and tasted like plain mayo to me), and two slices of American cheese.

Extra Burger

The burger certainly looks impressive; their griddling technique is exactly as it should be, with an impressive amount of dark brown crust on the exterior of each patty. And the burger is well proportioned and photogenic.

Alas, though it’s a solid burger, it’s not quite as good as it looks. The well done patties are nicely juicy, but the beef is finely ground and overhandled, resulting in a burger that isn’t nearly as tender as it should be.

It’s also bland; the meat has a very neutral flavour that, while certainly not unpleasant, lacks the beefy punch that you’re looking for in a top shelf hamburger.

Extra Burger

It’s otherwise very good — the gooey American cheese is perfect, the bun is soft and fresh, and the toppings are all on point (particularly the zippy, thickly cut pickle slices that I’m assuming they make in-house).

As for the fries, they’re okay. They’re crinkle-cut, and they’re seasoned with a spice blend that brings them a nice flavour without overwhelming. But they were slightly underdone, with an unpleasantly chalky interior.

3 out of 4

Fancy Franks

Published on September 18, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 326 College Street, Toronto
Website: https://fancyfranks.com/

Though the hot dogs are clearly the thing to order here (they are fancy, after all), there is a burger on the menu at Fancy Franks.

You can get a single cheeseburger, a double cheeseburger, a bacon cheeseburger, or a Fancy Patty, which comes with lettuce, chicken bacon, and Fancy sauce. I went simple with the single cheeseburger, and had it topped with tomato, pickles, and mayo.

There’s nothing that particularly stands out about it, but it’s a solid burger. I have very few complaints.

As you’d expect, it’s a smashed and griddled burger, and it’s nicely prepared. There’s an impressive amount of crust from the griddle (maybe even a little too much? It’s slightly crunchier than you’d like), and the American cheese is satisfyingly gooey. And while the flavour of the patty isn’t particularly beefy, it’s not unpleasant.

It’s cooked to well done and then some, however; while I wouldn’t call it dry, it’s not particularly juicy, either. The grind is also slightly too fine, but otherwise everything is pretty much where it should be. It’s a tasty burger.

The condiments were standard issue (though the mayo was globbed on a little bit too enthusiastically), and the soft, lightly toasted sesame seed bun was supermarket fare — but it works.

As for the fries, they were a little bit oily and weren’t quite as crispy as they should have been, but they were still tasty enough.

3 out of 4