Toronto – Page 32 – Tasty Burgers

Holy Chuck

Published on February 6, 2012March 16, 2012 by Michael Nusair3 Comments

Location: 1450 Yonge St., Toronto
Website: http://www.holychuckburgers.com/

I think there’s one thing I have to get out of the way before I talk about the burgers at Holy Chuck. Whoever owns the place obviously likes The Burger’s Priest. A lot. Both places have similar menus (right down to the presence of a cheese-stuffed, deep fried mushroom), serve a similar style of hamburger, and have similarly religious-themed names.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with this. Though The Burger’s Priest was a bit of an oddity for Toronto, all they’re doing is serving the type of burger that’s been ubiquitous in the States for many, many years. Specifically, much inspiration was taken from In-N-Out, a well known burger chain in the southwestern United States. If we start seeing even more places that serve burgers in this style (and do it well) in Toronto, that would make me a very happy man. Perhaps if enough of these places open up and people realize how burgers are actually supposed to taste, we’ll start seeing the decline of frozen patty purveyors like Johnny’s, and meatloaf sandwiches masquerading as burgers like Lick’s. I can dream, can’t I?

Anyway, Holy Chuck.

I actually went at lunch, without a particularly huge appetite, and planned on getting something reasonably small — probably single patty. But my general policy is to order any burger off the menu that shares a name with the restaurant, and in this case the eponymous burger consisted of two patties, two slices of cheese, sauteed onions, and bacon. So much for small. I also opted to upgrade to the combo, because, well, go big or go home, right?

After a five minute or so wait, I got my burger, as is. It didn’t strike me that this burger needed any further condiments, though even if it had, I would have been out of luck — for this particular burger, the menu very emphatically states “NO TOPPINGS ALLOWED!“

My first impression was that the cheese appeared to be unmelted, though cutting into the burger it was clear that this was thankfully not the case.

Look at that burger. Seriously. Behold. Yes, it’s as good as it looks. Beefy, juicy, greasy, with a perfectly brown crust from the hot griddle, this is close to burger perfection. The flavour isn’t quite as richly beefy as at The Burger’s Priest, but it’s close. The soft sauteed onions compliment the burger perfectly, as does the thickly cut bacon. The cheese is American, de rigueur for a burger such as this; so too is the supple, soft bun.

Actually, let me talk about the cheese for a bit. Two slices is the standard for a double cheeseburger (it’s what they serve at the Priest, and pretty much everywhere else a double cheeseburger is found). However, I’m starting to think that two slices is just too much, and that one slice is more appropriate. One slice gives the burger a welcome creaminess and a nice cheesy tang; two slices threatens to compete with the beef in the flavour department. This is fine if the beef is iffy, but if I’m eating somewhere like Holy Chuck where the beef is above average, I want the toppings to compliment the burger, not compete for dominance.

And yes, the beef is definitely above average here. Cooked medium well with a blush of pink, the beef is packed with flavour and is fantastically juicy. I overheard a fellow customer ask if the burgers could be cooked to order, and the man behind the counter responded that yes, they can do anything from rare to well done. I had already ordered my burger when this nugget of info was revealed; however, though my preference is generally medium rare, this burger was so perfect at medium well that I might just leave well enough alone and continue ordering it without any alterations when I return.

I’ve heard the complaint leveraged that the Holy Chuck burger is too greasy. This is nonsense. If someone tries to tell you that they think the burger is too greasy, smile, nod, and immediately discount anything that this person has to say on the topic of hamburgers; it’s sad to say it, but they are lost to the horrors of Toronto’s mediocre burger scene. We’re so used to too-lean, overcooked and completely dried out burgers that the burgers like the ones served at Holy Chuck stand out as odd. But this is how a burger is supposed to taste. A burger that is edible without the assistance of at least a couple of napkins is, to put it bluntly, not worth eating.

I mentioned before that I had a smallish appetite and was considering not getting the combo, but oh boy, am I glad I did. The fries are perfect: crispy, salty, flavourful, with a fluffy interior and just the right amount of crunch. I’ve eaten a lot of French fries in my life, and these were among the best that I’ve ever had. Suffice it to say, this is one area in which Holy Chuck beats the Burger’s Priest quite handily.

If you’re just skimming this review (it is a little wordy, I’ll admit it), the Reader’s Digest version is this: go to Holy Chuck. Now. Even if it’s not quite as good, it easily rivals The Burger’s Priest for fast food burger dominance in Toronto. Wading through so much burger mediocrity for this blog, it’s easy for forget why I even love burgers so much in the first place. Holy Chuck is just the reminder that I needed. It is a ray of light piercing through the darkness. It’s pretty fantastic.

Epic Burgers and Waffles

Published on October 14, 2011August 23, 2013 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: The Ex
Website: Epic Burgers and Waffles (Facebook)

Sometimes a food item is just so insane, you pretty much have no choice but to try it. Last year at the Ex, the crazy food getting all the attention was deep fried butter (which I tried, and which was nothing too special — it just tastes like a doughnut hole with a molten butter centre). This year, the buzzed-about carnival food was the Krispy Kreme hamburger. Doughnut hamburgers are nothing new, but I believe this was our first shot at trying them in the GTA (without making them yourself, I mean).

The line for this was easily the longest line in the food building, so obviously I’m not the only one curious about these monstrosities. I noticed, while in line, that Epic Burgers and Waffles advertises their burger as a “smashburger,” a popular American burger style in which the beef is smashed down on the griddle, providing a satisfyingly crispy crust (think Burger’s Priest or Five Guys). Could this actually be a good burger, aside from the novelty factor?

After a few minutes, my turn came. I elected for the bacon and a fried egg-topped burger, because if you’re going to get a Krispy Kreme burger, you may as well go all the way.

I sat down, and it immediately became apparent that this was not a dainty hamburger. It’s pretty much impossible to eat this thing without making a mess; the heat of of the burger and toppings melts the glaze on the doughnut, resulting in a sticky mess.

First: this is not a smashburger. It’s a slightly better-than-average frozen burger, which by definition cannot be a smashed burger (frozen burgers are, obviously, preformed, whereas smashed burgers start as a ball and are smashed down on the griddle). The burgers were actually cooked in such a way as to create a bit of a crust, but they’re still frozen burgers. I’m reminded of an expression relating to lipstick and pigs.

As for the doughnut/hamburger combination? It’s not bad. It’s not great, certainly, but if you’re partial to foods that combine sweet and salty, this might just be something you’ll like. It actually reminded me a lot of a McGriddle (the presence of bacon and an egg probably solidifies that connection), so if you’ve had one of those, then you pretty much know what to expect here.

BBQ Express

Published on August 1, 2011April 21, 2012 by Michael Nusair2 Comments

Location: 1240 Bay Street, Toronto
Website: None

I’ve seen things done to burgers. Bad things: frozen burgers, overly-spiced burgers, too-lean burgers, burgers ground too finely, burgers with filler, burgers with bad quality meat… I thought I had seen it all. I was wrong.

BBQ Express is one of those places I’ve walked by many times, though it took the prospect of reviewing it for this blog to actually walk in. It’s a tiny place; there’s basically just enough room to stand there and order.

They advertise a homemade burger, so I ordered it thinking “how bad could this be?”

Then something happened I don’t think I’ll ever forget. The woman who took my order moseyed on over to the grill, opened a foil bag with a stack of pre-cooked hamburgers, and slapped one on the grill.

I stood there in shock. Did I really just see that? Is that really a pre-cooked hamburger, cooked who-knows-when? Is she actually going to reheat that and serve it to me?

My pulse quickened. Fight or flight kicked in. A voice in my head screamed “Run! Run now and never look back!” And if it hadn’t been for this blog, there’s no way I would have eaten that hamburger. I would have politely given the grill lady some excuse, and I would have high-tailed it out of there.

The things I do for you.

I got my hamburger topped with pickles, tomato and mayo, and I walked across the street to sit outside and eat my meal.

I took my pictures of the uncut burger, then, as I am wont to do when I’m reviewing a burger for this blog, I cut it in half so I could take a picture of the burger’s innards. Cutting into the burger, it was immediately clear that something was wrong. The hamburger was suspiciously difficult to cut in half. The meat was tough, almost like trying to cut through a steak.

Hesitantly, I took a bite. The burger was — surprise, surprise — unusually dry. It was also tough and leathery with an almost jerky-like texture around the edges.

This was also a meatloaf-style burger. It wasn’t too strongly-spiced, though this was one instance where I actually would have preferred for the beef to be disguised by other flavours; the beef had a funky, vaguely unpleasant flavour.

The only reason I’m not going to give this burger zero stars is that I actually managed to finish the whole thing, so I guess it wasn’t completely inedible. But then that probably speaks more to my gluttony than to the general quality of this burger. Seriously: this was a terrible, terrible hamburger. I’m pretty sure I’ve had worse in my lifetime, though I’m having a hard time thinking of any right now.

Apache Burgers

Published on July 18, 2011 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 5236 Dundas Street West, Etobicoke
Website: None

Apache Burgers is one of those really old school burger places that’s been around forever, looking about the same and serving up the same food for decades on end. People tend to get pretty nostalgic about places they’ve been visiting (and food they’ve been eating) since they were children. Which probably helps to explain why this place is frequently named as one of the best burger joints in the GTA.

Apache Burgers is fine. My burger was perfectly edible. But one of the best places in the GTA? Not by a long shot.

I arrived just before 1:00 PM on a weekday, and the place was fairly crowded. Unlike most burger joints downtown where you’ll mostly find twenty-somethings, the demographic here was pretty varied: families, teenagers, workers on their lunch break, and an older couple who have probably been getting burgers here for years. The place does well, no doubt about it.

It’s a pretty standard layout: order your burger, pay, wait, then pick your toppings from behind the glass. The whole restaurant was pretty clean and not run-down at all, so I’d imagine that they’ve renovated recently.

I elected to go with the Apache Burger, since it’s generally hard to go wrong ordering a restaurant’s namesake item. The Apache Burger is basically a double cheeseburger: two beef patties, two slices of American cheese. I topped it with pickles, tomatoes and mayonnaise (which you’ve probably noticed are my go-to burger toppings).

The burger is not bad. It’s not good, certainly, but it’s not bad. The quality of the meat itself is fairly mediocre, and certainly no better than a fast food place like Wendy’s, so how Apache became a burger joint of note is a complete mystery to me. It’s not even cheap — my Apache burger was $6.79, and with just a small drink and no sides it came up to about ten bucks.

Apache uses prefabricated patties for their burgers, though they are of a slightly higher quality than your average frozen burger. They don’t have that telltale chewy texture that you typically get from a frozen burger, so that definitely puts them head-and-shoulders above Johnny’s in the great Johnny’s-versus-Apache debate. But being better than Johnny’s is not exactly a tall mountain to climb.

The patties also had that vaguely gamy, somewhat unpleasant taste that you associate with lower quality beef, but they were basically okay. They weren’t too dry, and they had a decent texture to them.

The cheese was gooey and fully melted, which was a definite plus. The other toppings were fine, though the guy who assembled my burger was a bit heavy-handed with the mayo.

The bun is a little too big and bready. It’s overpowering. It basically worked in my double burger; the single, however (which is what I ordered the last time I was here), is completely dominated by the large bun.

“Meh” is a good word to describe Apache Burgers. It’s fine, I guess, but if you go there expecting something above average, you will be sorely disappointed. Personally, given the caliber of the burgers served here, I’d sooner just go down the street and order from Wendy’s. At least it’s a bit cheaper.

The Burger’s Priest

Published on July 11, 2011July 29, 2012 by Michael Nusair8 Comments

Location: 1636 Queen Street East, Toronto
Website: http://theburgerspriest.com/

In many of the reviews that I’ve written thus far, I’ve complained about the burgers being too dry. I started to wonder: was I making that complaint too much? I doubted myself. Am I insane? Is a burger not supposed to be as juicy as I think it’s supposed to be? Have I been unfairly maligning hamburgers that are, in reality, acceptably juicy and not — as I perceive them to be — egregiously dry?

I started to have what amounts to a burger-lover’s existential crisis. Maybe the perfect hamburger, as it exists in my mind, is just not feasible in the real world. Maybe my standards are astronomically high, and a good burger is supposed to be a bit on the dry side. I started to try to justify it in my mind: maybe dryness helps add character to a burger. Maybe dryness, in the way that it tends to suck the moisture out of your mouth, makes you hyper-aware of the meat you’re eating. Maybe the increased effort it takes to chew and swallow dry beef only increases your appreciation of the meal at hand.

Basically, Toronto’s awful burger scene started to mess with my head.

Thank God for the Burger’s Priest. This is a place that opened up a couple of years ago to immediate hype. I instantly knew I had to go there, and yet it took me two long years to actually go. In the meantime, having heard nothing but effusive hype about the place, I was afraid that my expectations were getting unreasonably high.

I’m happy to say that aside from one fairly major caveat, the place has lived up to my expectations and then some.

An aside: I must apologize for this photo. One of my food blog pet peeves is the ubiquitous photo of a half-eaten burger being held in the photographer’s hand. I don’t want to see your stupid hand, or your gross half-eaten meal. Sadly, the folks at the Burger’s Priest didn’t have any knives they could give me, so I had no way of feasibly cutting my burger in half. And yet I had to show you the inside of this glorious hamburger. So here we are.

Moving on. You’ve probably heard that the restaurant is small. It’s smaller than you’ve heard. About the size of a large walk-in closet, this is a take-out place only. There are a few stools, but you’re probably better off taking your food outside and sitting down on one of the grassy patches in the vicinity of the restaurant. Of course, this will be a challenge once it starts to get really cold, but right now the weather is just too nice for me to even think about the ugly unpleasantness of the Canadian winter.

I walked in, and it being an off time (around 2:00), I was able to immediately order a Double Double from the vaguely surly woman behind the register (I’d be a bit surly too if I were crammed into that tiny space with four sweaty cooks) and within a few minutes, I had it in my hands.

I opened the bag, and rivulets of grease and burger juices began to flow from my burger. This was a glorious burger to behold: glistening, with a gorgeously browned crust that can only be the product of a burger chef who really knows what he’s doing. The two patties each had a slice of bright orange American cheese (a must for a true, classic cheeseburger) that were gooey and melted.

Just looking at it, I knew it was going to be a great hamburger.

And it was; but let me get that big caveat out of the way first. The patties were excessively salty. At first I thought that perhaps they were using a overly-salty brand of American cheese, but my two dining companions both elected to go cheese-free, and they too found the saltiness issue to be problematic.

Aside from that, this was pretty damn close to burger perfection. It’s telling that despite the oppressive saltiness of the beef (it really was quite salty) I still enjoyed the hell out of this burger.

It’s a gloriously, magnificently, decadently juicy burger. One bite and I immediately knew that my burger crisis was completely unfounded. Yes, a burger can and should be juicy. I held the proof right there in my hands.

The medium-well patties had a great, beefy flavour (which was, sadly, partially obscured by the saltiness) which was only magnified by that amazing crust. Seriously, take a closer look at that crust and tell me that you don’t want to eat that burger right this minute.

The gooey cheese complimented the burger perfectly; the other toppings were standard burger fare, and worked quite well.

Like the American cheese, the soft, squishy bun may turn off those who have become accustomed to fancier burgers. Those people are wrong. This is a classic bun for a classic burger; it provides just the right amount of heft without getting in the way, and gives the burger a perfect bun-to-beef ratio.

The medium-cut fries were golden brown with a robust potatoey flavour. They were a bit soggy, but that may be because I didn’t start eating them until after I had finished my burger.

If it weren’t for the over-salted patties, I’d easily give the Burger’s Priest a perfect score. Alas, as much as it pains me to do so, I cannot give a perfect rating to such a salty hamburger — despite the fact that I’m fairly certain that this visit was just an aberration, and that the patties normally have a reasonable amount of salt. However, I’ll definitely be going back at some point soon. If my suspicions are correct, I’ll update this post and change the score.

Update (7/27/2011) – I just went back. This time I got a double burger with no cheese and my usual toppings (mayo, pickles, tomato) just so I’d be sure about the saltiness issue. It was perfect. The burger had just enough salt to highlight its absolutely amazing, almost ridiculously beefy flavour. It was just as juicy as last time. This was a burger so beefy and so juicy that it puts every other Toronto burger joint to shame. Seriously — every Toronto burger joint proprietor should be forced to eat a burger here so they can see how a burger is supposed to taste. It’s easily the best burger I’ve had in Toronto, and probably one of the best burgers I’ve ever had. I can now happily bump this up to the perfect rating it so richly deserves.

Update 2 (7/29/2012) – I felt like I would be remiss if I didn’t update this review to note that, on my last couple of visits, the aforementioned ridiculously beefy flavour has been greatly diminished. It’s still a great burger, and still a very strong contender for best in the city, but it is no longer anywhere close to the best burger I’ve ever had.