Toronto – Page 29 – Tasty Burgers

Bier Markt

Published on November 18, 2012December 2, 2012 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 199 North Queen Street, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.thebiermarkt.com/

Bier Markt is an upscale Toronto-area chain, akin to Milestones or Earl’s. They’ve recently expanded into the west-end with an Etobicoke location, which is the one that I checked out. I went on a Sunday afternoon and they had a musician performing live, which thankfully wasn’t too loud, as I didn’t particularly feel like having to yell and strain to hear my dining companion (how much of an old curmudgeon am I, exactly?).

The menu features two burgers: the Classic Burger, and the T-Bone Burger, which is made with Kobe beef. The T-Bone Burger is 24 dollars (!), so I went with the Classic Burger, which isn’t cheap itself at 15 dollars.

No, this place isn’t exactly the best deal in the city.

I wasn’t in a beer mood, so I just went for a soda, but the place has an impressive beer list (over 150, according to the website), which is probably one of its bigger selling points.

The burger comes topped with lettuce, tomato, onion (which I removed), and pickles, with two small ramekins of ketchup and mustard on the side.

The grilled burger was (of course) cooked to well done, and had a pleasantly beefy flavour. Clearly, they’re using above-average meat. As well, the burger had some char from the grill, which added a good amount of flavour and texture.

Sadly, there’s a big caveat here: what should have been a great burger was marred by excessive dryness.

Of course, cooking a burger to well done never helps in the juiciness department, but even then it’s clear that the beef Bier Markt is using is far too lean. The menu specifies sirloin, which if true does explain a lot. Sirloin is an exceptionally lean cut of beef, and thus is completely inappropriate for use in a hamburger.

I’m tempted to go off on a rant about how a hamburger needs a decent amount of fat to be really good, but I think I’ve done that in at least half of the reviews I’ve written for this blog, so I’ll just point you to the archives. Seriously: I love Toronto, but an alarming amount of people here just have no conception of what makes a hamburger great. It’s frustrating, but what can you do? Ultimately it’s an American food, and we’re not in America.

As for the rest of the burger: the toppings were all quite good, and the fresh brioche bun complimented the patty perfectly.

All the components were there — good toppings, good quality beef, good cooking technique, and a nice, fresh bun. If only they were using fattier beef, this could have been an amazing burger. C’est la vie.

Oddly, the burger came with “root vegetable crisps” on the side instead of fries. They were essentially like thickly-cut chips, and were a bit bland, but were satisfyingly crunchy and kind of addictive.

The Works

Published on November 4, 2012November 18, 2012 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 2245 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Website: http://www.worksburger.com/

Though it’s been around in Ottawa for over a decade, The Works has only recently made its way into Toronto, opening a location on the Danforth earlier in the year, and more recently, in Bloor West Village. There are supposedly more locations on the way; if my recent experience at the Bloor West location is any indication, this is definitely, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing.

Unlike many (most?) of Toronto’s burger joints, The Works is a full service restaurant, so don’t expect to pop in for a quick bite.

The menu is full of choices, with six different patty choices, three buns, and over 70 customized burgers, with toppings ranging from standard fare like bacon and various cheeses to more bizarre selections like mac and cheese and peanut butter.

Scanning right past the novelty items on the menu (peanut butter!), I landed on the Plain Jane, and asked for it topped with my usual mayo, tomato, and pickles.

Most of the burgers seem to be in the 12 dollar ballpark, which does seem bit pricey; that does, however, include a side, so it’s pretty much in line with what other places are charging.

The grilled burger came out looking nicely charred and attractive; I took a bite and was heartened to discover that it tasted just as good as it looked. It’s not a great burger — but it was a very, very good one.

For one thing, the well done burger was actually reasonably juicy. It could have certainly been juicier — the meat was still, like pretty much every other burger in Toronto, a bit too lean. But it was far from dry, and I guess that’s all you can really hope for in this city.

The loosely packed patty, seasoned only with salt and pepper, also had a nicely beefy flavour, and a decent amount of crust from the grill.

The soft, fresh bun complimented the burger perfectly, and the toppings were fine (though the burger did come out with onions instead of pickles, a mistake that was quickly rectified).

It’s not exactly a burger I’ll remember forever, but it was one that was very well executed on every level.

As for the fries, they were a tad soggy, but were otherwise perfectly cooked and quite tasty.

Frankie’s

Published on September 23, 2012 by Michael Nusair7 Comments

Location: 994 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: None

Frankie’s has apparently been around for 35 years. I say apparently because I had never heard of it before a few weeks ago, and it certainly appears to be a new restaurant. However, a review at blogTO (which is, oddly, the only thing that pops up when you Google this joint outside of sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon) claims that it is a years-old neighbourhood standby. Okay, if you say so, blogTO. I should really make some calls and do some research, but that sounds like a lot of work. What do I look like, a journalist?

Anyway, a place this mediocre really isn’t worth that much thought or effort. The restaurant’s sign hilariously proclaims that these are the “world’s best burgers.” They’re not even Queen Street’s best burgers.

The menu offers two different types of hamburgers: the Frankie’s Original, which the menu describes as having “100% Canadian beef and Frankie’s secret spices,” and the specialty burgers, advertised as being eight ounce burgers made from “Canadian chuck.”

I found it very odd that they advertised the cut of beef that went into the specialty burgers and not the Frankie’s Original, and I was leaning towards getting a specialty burger over the who-knows-what’s-in-it Frankie’s Original; however, the specialty burgers were all so condiment and topping-heavy that I thought I’d never even be able to taste the beef. So I went with a Frankie’s Original topped with my usual selections (pickles, tomato, and mayo).

A note about the restaurant itself, which is waitress service, so you’ll be sitting there a while: they have TVs on with the volume up. This isn’t a problem. They also have a working jukebox. This is a problem. I have no problem with a jukebox in theory, but when you’ve got the music coming from the jukebox on one side, and the noise coming from the TV on the other, it can get a bit cacophonous. A note to the owners of Frankie’s: please pick one or the other.

The service was relatively fast, at least. The hamburger is, as advertised, a meatloaf burger — though it is thankfully not too strongly seasoned. This allowed the flavour of the beef itself to come through, which, in this case, wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The beef had a fairly typical low-quality beef flavour: vaguely funky, and somewhat unpleasant. Though I’ve had worse, it certainly wasn’t anything I’d want to have again.

The patty also had an oddly mushy texture despite being cooked to well done; I’m thinking that the meat had been too finely ground, and perhaps even had a filler of some sort.

As for the toppings, the pickles were fine, but the tomatoes were mealy enough to warrant removal from my hamburger, and the mayo was not mayo. It was either Miracle Whip or some house-made concoction; it was cloyingly sweet and completely overwhelming. I scraped off as much as I could from the bun and the patty.

The fries were okay, but they were a little bit soggy and very greasy, with a stale oil flavour. It’s likely that they’re using oil that is not quite hot enough, and that needs to be changed.

Burger Brats

Published on September 11, 2012January 13, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 254 Adelaide Street West
Website: http://burgerbrats.ca/

Burger Brats opened about a year ago and was almost immediately forgotten about. In a city where almost every new restaurant that opens downtown gets a ton of buzz, this concerned me a bit. Still, I’ve been anxious to try the place, and I recently got my chance.

I came here on a Sunday for lunch just after the place opened, and it was completely deserted and remained so until I left. I won’t hold this against it; Sunday afternoon is obviously not exactly a restaurant’s prime time, particularly here in the entertainment district where the bulk of the business probably comes from late-night drunken revelers.

I glanced at the menu posted on the wall, and quickly settled on the Burger Brats Classic, which is advertised as coming with “fresh lettuce, ripe tomato, red onion, pickles, mustard, and mayo.” I opted to go onion-free, but otherwise ordered the burger as-is.

I ordered the burger as a combo with fries and a soda, and it came up to just under ten bucks, so it’s not a bad deal.

After a few minutes, my burger was ready; I took a seat and dug in.

The first thing I noticed is how dry the burger was; impossibly dry. It’s the kind of burger that sucks all the moisture out of your mouth. It’s quite a jaw workout, that’s for sure.

It was cooked past well done, which is a bit puzzling given the fact that I was the only customer in the joint, and thus had the cook’s full attention. If a place is busy, you can kind of justify an overcooked burger from an overloaded, overworked kitchen. It’s still an unforgivable offense, but you can kind of justify it.

Here I clearly had the cook’s undivided attention, so there is no explanation for the overcooked burger other than that they wanted it that way. Puzzling.

The beef had a fairly neutral, not altogether unpleasant flavour, and a bit of smokiness from the grill. And though I feared that it might be a meatloaf style burger, this was thankfully not the case.

But man, it was so dry, and impossibly dense — it was way too tightly packed, which means that the patty has been over-handled, and is yet another sign that the person in charge of the burger cookery doesn’t really know what they’re doing.

Another disconcerting element about this burger: the horrifying abundance of crunchy, gristly bits of cartilage and who-knows-what-else. Not just one or two; they were interspersed throughout the entire burger. Again, something is going seriously wrong in the burger preparation department.

The toppings were fine, though it was a bit over-condimented (what, condimented is a word, isn’t it? Well it is now). I think in the future I’ll stick to my tried and true combo of tomato, pickles, and mayo when I order a plain burger.

As tends to be the case at mediocre burger joints, the burger was too small for the bun. A hamburger patty shrinks when cooking, and any restaurant that puts more than two seconds of thought into their hamburger will realize this and account for it when they’re shaping the patties. Yet again, there is a clear lack of care in the burger cookery at Burger Brats.

Seriously: this place baffles me. How do you bungle the burger so badly at a burger joint? This isn’t some random neighbourhood restaurant with a half-assed burger buried deep in the menu for variety’s sake. This is a place whose sole purpose is to sell burgers. That’s it. That’s what they do. And they serve this? Inexcusable.

Even a place that serves frozen burgers I can kind of understand. I don’t like them, but I can understand why a place might want to sell them: they’re very cheap, and they’re very easy. But Burger Brats is obviously going to the trouble and expense of making their own hamburger patties. So why not put in a little bit of extra effort to get it right, and a little bit extra expense to actually get above-average quality meat? Why not do a little bit of research on what blend of cuts makes the tastiest hamburger patty, and what percentage of fat will yield the juiciest burger? Because I guarantee that the folks at Burger Brats have not done this.

I sound upset. I am. It’s so easy; with just a little bit more work, Burger Brats could be serving something worth eating. Something good. Maybe even something better than good. But they’re not. They’re serving an inferior product and there’s absolutely no reason they need to be doing so other than laziness and ignorance. It upsets me. I’m sick of eating sub-standard burgers when making a good burger is so damn easy.

Deep breaths, Michael. Deep breaths.

Let me talk about something good about this place. The fries were delicious. Crispy on the outside and gloriously fluffy on the inside, they were pretty damn tasty. They were also sparingly seasoned with some kind of flavoured salt that complimented them quite well. If I were ever forced to come back here, I’d just get a large order of fries and forego the burger altogether.

Lick’s

Published on August 19, 2012May 17, 2014 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 1585 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.lickshomeburgers.com/

If you live in Ontario (and since you’re reading this blog, I’m assuming you do), odds are that you’ve been to Lick’s. They’re fairly omnipresent, and they’ve been around for ages. At one time, a visit to Lick’s meant the promise of above-average burgers in a casual, fast-food style setting. Though they’ve always served meatloaf-style burgers (not my favourite), they were, at one time, pretty darn good. Their success was justified.

That was a long time ago.

I’m not sure about the exact moment of their decline, but it probably would have been at some point around when they started selling frozen Lick’s-branded patties in supermarkets. These frozen patties, I would imagine, are the same ones they serve in their restaurants. And like all frozen patties, they’re not very good.

At the very least, the employees weren’t singing. For those of you fortunate enough to have never been subjected to this aural assault, the employees at Lick’s used to sing ’50s pop songs while they cooked up the burgers and fries. Loudly. And very far off key. It was unpleasant enough that it made me second-guess going to Lick’s, even back when it was good. Thankfully, they seem to have ended this policy, as my ears have been unmolested on my last couple of visits.

I ordered a homeburger combo (their standard hamburger) with fries and a soda, waited, picked out my toppings from behind the glass, and sat down.

What’s there to say about the current Lick’s hamburger? It’s a frozen burger and it tastes like a frozen burger. I could end the review right there, but I will say a few words.

It’s a strongly salty burger with that distinctive rubbery chewiness you’d expect from a patty of its ilk. To its credit, it does have a slightly beefier flavour than you’d expect, though it is mostly drowned out by the hot dog-esque chewiness/saltiness and the other spices.

I ordered the burger with pickles, tomatoes, and Guk, a mayonnaise-based sauce that Lick’s also sells in supermarkets. The sauce is fine, though its flavour is overwhelmed by the strong patty. The toasted sesame seed bun was fresh, and complimented the burger well.

The fries, like the burger, have gone downhill. Though they were once above average, they’re now pale and lifeless — bland and vaguely unpleasant. I ate a few and felt no need to subject myself to more.