Toronto – Page 25 – Tasty Burgers

Home of the Brave

Published on November 17, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 589 King Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.thehotb.com/

Home of the Brave opened a few months ago, and word very quickly got out that it’s a place you should probably check out. They serve their take on classic American comfort foods like fried bologna sandwiches, BBQ ribs, and tater tots, in a trendy, hipster-friendly environment (read: it’s dark and loud). The burger isn’t on their regular menu — it is, however, on the late night menu (served after 11:00 PM) and it’s the daily special on Saturdays.

I didn’t even realize they had a burger on the menu, but as soon as I saw it I knew that I had to have it. Called The Altar Boy, it’s described as having “house ground beef, tartar sauce, house made processed cheese, tomato & lettuce.”

After a string of mediocre (or worse!) hamburgers, this was just what the doctor ordered: beefy, juicy, and seriously satisfying. It’s a bit busy; it actually reminded me quite a bit of the burger at Wallace & Co. Like that one, it’s a saucy, juicy mess with a little bit more going on than it probably should. And like that one, it’s really good.

I think the quality of the beef is better here than at Wallace & Co. The griddled, medium rare patty has a pretty solid beefy flavour (or at least it seemed to in the few less condimented mouthfuls I got).

The tangy tartar sauce is a little bit more assertive than I’d like, but it tastes good and mostly compliments the burger pretty well. Though they’re going to the trouble of making their own processed cheese, there’s so much else going on that you can’t really tell.

The fresh sesame seed bun has enough heft to hold up to the messy burger without ever tipping the scales and throwing off the beef-to-bun ratio. It’s pretty great.

It’s a shame that this burger isn’t on the regular menu. It’s kind of sad that a burger that they only occasionally serve here is head and shoulders above what they serve at a lot of burger joints (I’m thinking specifically of my most recent review, the mediocre-at-best Patty & Frank’s), but there you go.

The closest thing on the menu to fries are the tater tots — though with their creamy interior and cripy coating, they’re more like fried mashed potato bites than tater tots. But whatever they are, they’re pretty darn good.

The Buffalo cauliflower is also quite tasty. If you have to eat cauliflower, battered, deep fried, and dipped in house-made Buffalo and ranch sauces is probably the way to go.

(Image of the outside of the restaurant in the header photo courtesy of kiki’s B.F.F. I totally forgot to take that picture. Whoops!)

Patty & Frank’s

Published on November 3, 2013November 3, 2013 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 467 Danforth Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://pattyandfranks.ca/

Every time a new burger place opens in the city, I immediately perk up. Will it be Toronto’s next great burger joint? Who knows! It’s like an unwrapped present. Exciting!

As the name implies, Patty & Frank’s serves both hamburgers and hot dogs, though it should be fairly obvious that I’m much more interested in the former and less in the latter (this isn’t Tasty Hot Dogs, after all).

The restaurant is bright, cheerful, and incredibly spacious. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about finding a place to sit.

I typically try to order a burger joint’s namesake burger, assuming they have one, but in this case the P & F Signature is so comically overstuffed (it comes topped with, among other stuff, cheese, a hot dog, and french fries) that I knew I’d never be able to taste the patty.

So I just ordered a plain burger, waited for my name to be called, then had it topped with pickles, tomato, and mayo.

Their cooking method is a little different than most Toronto burger joints. The uncooked patty is first placed on a griddle, then finished off on the grill. You’d think that this method would result in some browning on the surface of the patty, but nope — aside from the grill marks, it was completely gray. So I can’t say I quite understand the point of the two-step cooking process.

I sat down and took a bite. Sadly, it was clear pretty quickly that this wasn’t quite the present I was hoping it would be. Is there a gift receipt…?

It’s a meatloaf burger, though by the standards of this style of hamburger they’re fairly conservative with the seasonings. There’s definitely something more than salt and pepper in the patty, but it’s subtle. Still, it’s enough to knock out whatever mild beefy flavour this particular meat might have once had, which makes me sad.

The patty is also a bit on the salty side. At first I thought that perhaps this was from the mayo that was very liberally applied on my burger, but my dining companion found his burger to be a little bit salty as well.

The well done burger is somewhat juicy, which I definitely appreciated. But the patty has been really tightly packed, and is a bit more dense than I’d like. It’s odd, because you’d think that the one benefit of their two-step cooking process would be that they could grab a fresh ball of beef, smash it on the griddle and then transfer it over to the grill, which would allow for a much more loosely packed and texturally satisfying patty. But nope, the patties are formed in advance and are quite dense.

The bun tasted fresh and suited the burger well, and the condiments were fine (aside from the fairly obscene amount of mayo).

So no, Patty & Frank’s is not Toronto’s next great burger joint. It’s barely even good. I mean, it’s fine. I’ve certainly had worse. It’s a big fat meh, and honestly, I’m getting a bit sick of big fat mehs.

As for the fries, though they tasted a bit oily, they were pretty good and actually kind of reminded me of chip truck fries.

Kevin’s Burger Obsession

Published on September 22, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

kevin
Location: It’s a truck, so check Twitter to see where they’re parked
Website: http://kevinsburgerobsession.com/

Though there are a handful of food trucks serving hamburgers in the city (including Food Cabbie, one of the earlier trucks in the recent food truck explosion, as well as Crossroads Diner and Beach Boys, among others), this is the first one I’ve reviewed for this blog. I guess if you put “Burger Obsession” in the title of your eatery, I’m pretty much obligated to go there. Plus, as far as I know it’s Toronto’s only burger-centric food truck, so there’s that.

Kevin’s Burger Obsession serves a grilled burger; most of the essential burger joints in this city serve griddled patties, so another great grilled burger would certainly be welcome.

On this particular day I found the truck parked near Roundhouse park, but since they’re on wheels you’ll have to check their Twitter to see where you can find them at any given moment.

I ordered the plain beef burger (they also offer pork and turkey), which comes topped with lettuce, tomato, and grilled onion.

Sadly, though Kevin may be obsessed with burgers, his own burgers are kind of bad. I think these hamburgers may need to take out a restraining order on Kevin.

It’s a meatloaf burger. I think I’ve made it fairly clear by now that I’m not crazy about this style of hamburger, but I can recognize a good one when I see it. This is not a good one. The seasonings are actually not all that strong, as far as meatloaf burgers go, but despite that there’s absolutely no beefy flavour here — just the muddled taste of whatever they’ve mixed in to the beef (Worcestershire? I’m not sure).

Much more troubling was the patty’s off-puttingly mushy texture. This isn’t the first mushy hamburger I’ve reviewed for this blog (see here, here, and here); I don’t know what these people are doing to give their hamburgers such a horrifying texture, but I really doubt it’s a coincidence that all these squishy patties come from meatloaf burgers.

This is yet another argument to not mess with a good thing by mixing unwanted garbage into your hamburger. Condiments belong on top of a hamburger, not inside of it. Anyone who’s tasted the burger at a place like Burger’s Priest or White Squirrel knows that all you need is good quality beef seasoned with some salt and maybe pepper. That’s it. Throwing other gunk in there is like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

Of course, that’s assuming that you start with very good quality beef, and I doubt that’s the case here. The complete lack of beefy flavour makes that all too clear.

The toppings were pretty good, particularly the grilled onions, and the bun was nice and fresh and complimented the patty fairly well. It was, however, way too big — I was left with a pretty significant amount of superfluous bun after the patty was gone. I’ve said it before, but a too-big bun is a telltale sign of a middling (or worse) burger joint. When making a hamburger, the natural inclination is to shape the patty to the size of the bun, but hamburgers shrink while cooking. This is pretty basic stuff. It doesn’t seem like a big deal to have a bun that’s wider than the patty, but if you drop the ball with something so basic, it’s safe to say that you’re getting other things wrong as well.

Did I hate this burger? Not really — I’ve certainly had worse. But for a place with “Burger” in its name, this was unforgivably bad.

Canyon Creek

Published on August 25, 2013August 25, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1900 The Queensway, Toronto
Website: http://canyoncreekrestaurant.ca/

Just once, I’d like to go to a casual chain restaurant and get a burger that’s actually really good. I mean, that’s not such a tall order, is it? A good burger isn’t all that difficult to make. Just start with decent quality beef that’s reasonably fatty, and you’ve won half the battle. Alas, the burgers at places like this tend to either be just okay, or outright bad.

This being a restaurant that specializes in meat, I thought that perhaps it could be the one to buck the trend. I ordered the Canyon Burger and hoped for the best.

The menu describes the burger as coming topped with “crisp leaf lettuce, vine ripened tomato, dill pickle, red onion, Canyon aïoli on a fresh sesame bun baked in-house daily.”

Well, it’s not bad, I’ll give it that. But sadly, it does not rise above its casual chain restaurant brethren; it’s merely okay.

The biggest issue here is that the grilled, well done patty is — like an absurd amount of Toronto-area burgers before it — made with beef that is too lean. It’s dry. I just… I can’t even muster up the motivation to get particularly worked up about this anymore. If you live in Toronto and you like burgers, you will be getting your mouth dried out by too-lean hamburgers. Often. Sadly, it just comes with the territory.

Aside from that, it’s not bad. The quality of the beef is obviously pretty decent, as the burger has a decent amount of beefy flavour.

As for the toppings and the fresh-baked bun? They’re fine. It’s all pretty ho-hum, though you could certainly do worse.

The lightly battered, shoestring fries were okay. Battered fries aren’t my favourite, and they were a bit on the crunchy side, but like the burger I have had worse.

Origin

Published on July 28, 2013July 28, 2013 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 2901 Bayview Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://originnorth.com/

Claudio Aprile recently opened the latest in his burgeoning chain of Origin restaurants, this one right next to Bayview Village. I took this as an excuse (like I needed one) to finally try their much-ballyhooed burger — among other accolades, Toronto Life called it the 13th best burger in the city.

Aprile obviously has very high hopes for this location; it’s a ridiculously enormous, cavernous space. There’s no middle ground here. It’s either going to be a huge hit for Aprile, or a very high profile flop.

However, if he can keep serving food of this caliber, he has a lot less to worry about.

Though it’s certainly not Toronto’s cheapest burger at 17 bucks (with fries or a salad), in this case you get what you pay for.

They don’t advertise the size of the patty on the menu, but it’s fairly substantial — I’d guess at least eight ounces.

It’s a great quality burger. Seriously, seriously good. For one thing, it’s obviously made with sufficiently fatty beef, and is really juicy. This doesn’t seem like a huge deal, but when you eat as many depressingly lean, way-too-dry burgers as I do, it’s like manna from heaven.

The juiciness and the lack of any meatloaf-esque ingredients is enough for me to give this burger a solid thumbs up. But the flavour is also pretty great, with a really complex, satisfyingly beefy taste. It’s always a pleasure to eat a burger at a restaurant where the chef actually takes care to source the beef he uses in his hamburger.

It’s topped, as per the menu, with “avocado + smoked mayo + arugula.” You don’t find too many burgers topped with avocado, and I’m not sure why. I wouldn’t want it on a griddle-cooked, fast food-style patty, but it’s perfectly suited for a more substantial burger like this one. Its creaminess and mild flavour are a perfect fit for this particular style of hamburger.

The smoky mayo and peppery arugula also compliment the burger pretty darn well, as does the fresh, soft yet substantial bun. It’s very easy for the bun to be an afterthought, but it clearly isn’t here.

So what’s the deal? Is this a perfect burger? Sadly, no. Though it didn’t appear to be, and it is cooked to a perfect medium rare, the outside of the burger is a bit over-charred, giving it a slight acrid bitterness. It’s not too strong, fortunately, so I was still able to enjoy the hell out of this hamburger — but it’s there, marring what could otherwise be on a shortlist of the best burgers in the city.

Maybe this was just a one-off mistake. Maybe it’s something that almost never happens. I don’t know. Sadly, I’m not a professional reviewer, and I don’t have the luxury of visiting a restaurant multiple times. I can only review the burger I was served that day, and that’s what I was served.

As for the fries, they were truly outstanding. No caveats here: just perfectly cooked, amazingly flavourful fries. Good stuff.