Toronto – Page 27 – Tasty Burgers

The Lakeview

Published on May 5, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1132 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Website: http://thelakeviewrestaurant.ca/

The Lakeview was just featured on the popular Food Network show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, which probably explains why it was so packed when I checked it out on a recent Sunday afternoon. Though the burger wasn’t one of the items sampled by Guy Fieri, I figured I’d give it a shot.

This, it turns out, was a blunder. If you go to a restaurant featured on that show, you should probably get what Guy gets. Or, just skip The Lakeview altogether. That’ll work too.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Why should you skip The Lakeview? Read on, friend. Read on.

The Lakeview was originally opened in 1932, and its charmingly retro diner decor is probably the best thing about it. I think it’s likely a big reason for its inclusion in DDD.

They have a few burgers on the menu, but as per my general policy, I went with the namesake item: The Lakeview, topped with “Peameal, Melted Cheddar, Grilled Portobello, Onion Ring + Fixings.”

It took a while to arrive (like I said, the place was packed), but it came looking impressively large and fairly appealing. A big red flag went up when I struggled to cut it in half; my knife was just barely sharp enough to make it through the despairingly tough patty.

Still, I took a bite hoping for the best; the burger quickly took those hopes, smashed them against the wall and stomped on them for good measure. This was not a tasty burger.

The first thing that hit me? Not only is this a meatloaf burger, it’s an especially meatloafy meatloaf burger. The spices and whatever other junk they mix in there completely knock you back. I honestly don’t even think they should be allowed to call this a hamburger. It is a meatloaf sandwich, plain and simple.

If you served this “hamburger” to an American, they’d laugh in your face. Here’s an analogy that I think pretty much sums it up: the Lakeview’s burger is to a real, American-style hamburger what chop suey is to real Chinese food. It is imitation; a photocopy of a photocopy.

That’s not to say that an imitation can’t be tasty. A meatloaf sandwich can be perfectly delicious. This, however, was not.

It was absurdly dry, for one thing. Make sure you’ve got a big glass of water handy when you eat this, because it’ll suck the moisture right out of your mouth. The patty is way too tightly packed, too lean, and overcooked. The grilled burger was also over-charred and blackened in spots. Burger jerky, essentially.

I normally like my burgers sparsely topped, and this is the opposite of that. In this case, however, the myriad of toppings are a godsend; they’re the only things keeping your mouth lubricated against the assault of the mouth-drying patty.

Between the peameal bacon, the cheddar, the onion ring, and the mushroom (not to mention the lettuce, tomato, and pickle) there is a hell of a lot going on here. Unlike the burger at The Samuel J. Moore, however, the toppings are good and the flavours all meld together in a somewhat cohesive fashion, so that was good at least. The toppings didn’t taste bad, I’ll give it that. But they still weren’t enough to save the insipid patty.

The sesame seed bun bun was too wide for the task at hand, resulting in a fair amount of bun remaining after the patty was but a memory. The dry bun was also a bit more on the stale side than I would have liked.

The burger came with a side of fries and a salad. The salad had clearly been dressed far too long in advance, and was vaguely mushy and kind of horrible. The fries, on the other hand, were surprisingly decent and easily the highlight of the meal.

I will note that my dining companion had one of the items featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives (the freedom toast — essentially a peameal grilled cheese sandwich with French toast for bread), which he quite enjoyed. So if you absolutely have to go to the Lakeview, stick with what Guy ate; if someone offers you the burger, run screaming in the other direction.

Marben

Published on April 21, 2013April 21, 2013 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 488 Wellington Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.marbenrestaurant.com/

After the recent Pizzaburger fiasco (which I reviewed at A Hamburger Today), I kind of felt like going for a safer bet. The awfulness of that Pizzaburger will haunt my dreams. I needed something that actually tasted good.

So I decided to take another gander at Toronto Life’s list of the best burgers in the city, and wound up at Marben — home of Toronto’s second best burger, by their approximation.

The menu was actually fairly interesting, but of course, I was there with a purpose. I zeroed in on John’s Burger, described on the menu as coming with “Branston Pickle, braised beef short-ribs, aged cheddar, coleslaw, fries.”

(For the unaware — and I know I was — Branston Pickle is, as per Wikipedia, “a jarred pickled chutney.” It’s a British thing, apparently.)

This is not a traditional hamburger. Similar to Daniel Buloud’s famous burger, which is sadly not available at his Toronto outpost, the patty is stuffed with braised short ribs. This addition changes the hamburger’s essential character, and naturally, takes away from its burgeriness.

Is that a bad thing? It’s up to you, I suppose. I certainly can’t deny that the final product is good, though whether this modification is severe enough to make a burger no longer a burger is up for debate.

The short rib has some kind of Worcestershire-esque sauce, which is tasty enough, if somewhat overpowering.

This means that the centre of the burger, which is chock-full of the saucy, shredded short rib, is less hamburger and more upscale sloppy joe.

The short rib-less outer edges is where this tastes more like a traditional hamburger. These parts are good, but not great.

The beef is obviously of a fairly good quality, with a mildly beefy flavour. But it’s a little bit too tightly packed and dense (I would imagine that it would be difficult to stuff a patty with short ribs without overhandling the beef). This, combined with beef that is a bit on the lean side, results in an unfortunately dry burger. This is not particularly noticeable in the centre, where the medium rare ground beef mingles with the saucy short ribs, but around the edges it is clearly an issue.

The rest of the burger is quite good; the cheese and the soft, toasted bun compliment the patty very well.

When the burger arrived, I was a bit shocked by how small it is. It’s certainly not the largest hamburger in the city, but combined with the generous portion of fries, there is no risk that you’ll leave here hungry.

And those fries are seriously delicious. They’re the polar opposite of the mediocre frozen fries I was recently served at Boston Pizza; they’re crispy, potatoey, and amazingly addictive.

As for Toronto Life’s proclamation that this is the second best burger in the city? No. I seriously doubt it would be in my top 20 at all, let alone number two. It’s certainly tasty, but it’s a bit too bastardized for my tastes — and even setting that aside, it has too many issues to be considered an upper-echelon burger.

The Drake

Published on April 7, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1150 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.thedrakehotel.ca/dining/

It occurred to me recently that, though I’ve mentioned Toronto Life’s semi-recent list of the 25 best burgers in the city on the blog before, I’ve never actually used its suggestions to determine my next review. I guess I have a hard time taking a list of the best hamburgers seriously that features an elk burger and a lamb burger (not to mention at least a couple of meatloaf burgers, and perhaps most egregiously, the mediocre-at-best Apache Burgers).

But I was struggling to figure out the next place I wanted to review, and I thought I may as well give Toronto Life a shot.

So I wound up at The Drake, a boutique hotel with a fairly popular restaurant on its first floor, and (of course) a burger on the menu — number 20 in the city, as per Toronto Life.

The Drake Burger is described as having “cheddar, Perth Bacon, Russian dressing, pickle + hand cut fries.”

Okay, Toronto Life, you win. I guess I should be taking your list a bit more seriously, because this was a pretty damn good burger.

It only takes one bite to realize that they’re clearly using very good quality beef. The patty has that distinctively satisfying beefy flavour that tells you that someone in the kitchen knows where to get the good stuff.

The grilled burger is a little bit too tightly packed, with beef that is slightly too lean. I’ve certainly had juicier burgers — but I can forgive a somewhat dry burger when it tastes this good, and when it at least has a bit of juiciness to it, which this does.

It’s also, sadly, a little bit busier than I’d like. Between the peppery bacon, the tangy thousand island, and the sharp cheddar, there’s a lot of assertive flavours competing for your palate’s attention. It’s a tasty combo, no doubt about it, but with a burger this good, I’m generally of the opinion that less is more. But of course, compared to the failure pile at The Samuel J. Moore, it’s positively heavenly, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

The fresh sesame seed bun did a good job of holding up to the burger and was quite good. Good too were the crispy, perfectly cooked fries. Actually, no. Like the burger, they were better than good. They were pretty great.

So yes, to quote Seinfeld, The Drake is great. How could you not like The Drake?

The Samuel J. Moore

Published on March 24, 2013June 29, 2014 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1087 Queen Street West, Toronto
UPDATE: The restaurant is closed, apparently. Can’t say I’m too surprised.
Website: https://www.facebook.com/TheSamuelJMoore

The Samuel J. Moore just opened a few weeks ago, and the early word is that they’ve got a burger worth eating. Obviously, I had to give it a shot.

I came at around noon on a Saturday during brunch service. I was hoping to get the regular hamburger off the dinner menu, but sadly, only the Brunch Burger was available.

Before I get into the less-than-great things about the place, I will say that the design of the restaurant is quite nice. Spacious, with a classy old-school diner aesthetic and lots of sunlight streaming in from the windows, it’s certainly a pleasant enough place to have a relaxing meal.

And when the burger came, it looked pretty darn good. This is a place that seemed to have it all figured out — or so I thought, until I actually took a bite.

The Brunch Burger comes topped with a fried egg, peameal bacon, smoked cheddar, and coleslaw. There are a lot of flavours here, and sadly, they never coalesce into anything particularly satisfying.

It looks good, though, doesn’t it?

But let me talk about the patty, because that’s really where this burger takes a wrong turn and never comes back. Finely ground,densely packed, overly lean, and cooked all the way to the tippy-top of well done, it’s a perfect storm of density and dryness.

The patty also has a distinct lack of beefiness that was so pronounced I felt compelled to ask my server if it was all beef, or some kind of beef/pork blend. It’s all beef, apparently, so I’m not sure how to account for its almost complete lack of beefy flavour. It didn’t taste bad, at least. It just tasted like nothing. Chewy, tough nothing.

Of course, I was only able to discern this in the bites I took of the patty alone, because this is a hamburger with a lot going on. The dominant flavour is the peppery, tangy coleslaw, which is surprisingly spicy and completely inappropriate as a topping for a hamburger. It might have been okay on its own, but as a condiment it is ridiculously overpowering and tragically misguided.

The somewhat dry, tough peameal bacon also didn’t do the burger any favours.

The fried egg, however, was perfectly cooked with a satisfyingly runny yolk. It couldn’t do much to save the burger, but it was nice. The fresh, toasted brioche bun was also pretty great, and definitely deserved to be part of a better burger.

And I guess there was cheddar in there, too, but with all the other stuff going on I honestly couldn’t even taste it.

The burger also came with a side of perfunctory hash browns and bland house-made ketchup. They were on par with the burger, which is to say not good.

The Burgernator

Published on March 3, 2013March 4, 2013 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 269 Augusta Avenue, Toronto
Website: http://theburgernator.com/

Whatever else you can say about The Burgernator, whoever is in charge of their marketing/branding/design has done a top-notch job. A great amount of care has obviously gone into the look and general theme of the place, including a well thought out web and social media presence. The restaurant is slickly designed, with their manifesto proudly displayed on the wall. Said manifesto promises that their never-frozen patties contain “a custom blend of freshly ground chuck,” and that they want to “rid the city of half-hearted and overcooked burgers.”

The burgers are smashed and griddle-cooked, in the style of Burger’s Priest and Holy Chuck, two of my favourite burger joints in the city. Suffice it to say, by the time I had ordered and sat down to await my hamburger, I was excited. Another great, griddle-cooked burger in Toronto? Yes please.

I ordered the Lieutenant Burger, which comes with two four ounce patties, cheddar cheese, Burgernator sauce, lettuce, tomato, and pickles. The restaurant is set up so that you order at the register, sit, then wait for them to bring you your food.

The burger arrived glistening and full of promise. It didn’t appear to have much crust, a hallmark of a really good smashed burger, but I was still ready for greatness. I cut the burger in half for the requisite photo and peeked inside. My heart immediately sank. One look at the gray, textureless slab that was the burger’s cross-section, and I knew the truth. The odds of this being a great hamburger suddenly seemed distressingly low.

You don’t have to be a burger expert to know that something is amiss here; this is not how a burger is supposed to look.

Alas, this is also not how a burger is supposed to taste. As you can tell just by looking at it, the beef is way, way, way too finely ground and tightly packed, resulting in a dense, unpleasantly chewy burger. The sad part is that it’s actually fairly juicy, but it’s negated by how insanely dense it is.

A good burger should feature beef that is coarsely ground, loosely packed, and has a certain amount of texture to it. This was just a solid, unforgiving mass of mediocre meat.

And yes, the beef is kind of mediocre. While it certainly didn’t taste bad, it had a vaguely off-putting flavour that I found somewhat unpleasant. Some nice crust from the griddle might have helped, but as mentioned earlier, there wasn’t much in that department. It was perfectly edible, but when the nicest thing you can say about a hamburger is “I was able to eat it without questioning my will to live,” then you know you’ve got problems.

The cheddar suited the burger just fine, though there is a reason why American cheese is the standard for a fast food-style burger like this — it adds a mild tang and a welcome creaminess without overwhelming the meat. But that’s a matter of preference, and while I certainly prefer American for a cheeseburger, the cheddar here was fully melted and perfectly okay.

The Burgernator sauce, on the other hand, was cloyingly sweet and really did not do the hamburger any favours. The rest of the toppings were standard stuff, save for the pickles which were weirdly tasteless.

The bun was a little too dense and bready. Which is weird, because despite its density it did a fairly disastrous job of holding up to the burger. I was able to eat my hamburger with just a little bit of maneuvering towards the end; my dining companion, who ordered one of the more substantial burgers on the menu, wasn’t so lucky. His bottom bun almost immediately disintegrated, forcing him to eat the majority of his burger with a fork and knife. Like an animal.

The fries, too, were disappointing. They were pale and undercooked; limp and unappealingly chalky. They did, however, come with a rosemary mayo dipping sauce which was surprisingly tasty.

As I left, I noticed the following inscription by the door: