Yonge and Eglinton – Tasty Burgers

Uncle Betty’s

Published on August 4, 2019September 1, 2019 by Michael Nusair1 Comment

Location: 2590 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: https://www.unclebettysdiner.com/

The burger at Uncle Betty’s is odd — it’s really tasty in a lot of ways, but it’s also fails as a hamburger on a pretty fundamental level.

It’s the patty. It’s the meatloafiest meatloaf burger I’ve had in a long, long time. The flavouring of the beef is aggressive, and any natural flavour from the meat is completely wiped out. The spicing punches you in the face. It’s too much.

Worse, it has that off-puttingly squishy texture that plagues some meatloaf burgers, and it’s got it bad. Despite the fact that its cooked all the way to well done, the texture of the beef is essentially akin to eating a burger rare, only mushier.

The texture only emphasizes how un-burger-like it is. It’s not necessarily the most unpleasant thing in the world, but if I had eaten this blindfolded, it would have taken me a whole bunch of guesses to get to hamburger. The spicing of the beef and the soft consistency makes it taste more like a Sloppy Joe.

Otherwise it’s actually quite good. The burger has an impressive amount of crust from the griddle (or grill? The menu says it’s grilled, though it tasted griddled to me) — this gives it some nice texture, and helps to mitigate the patty’s mush factor.

It’s topped with a lot of stuff — garlic aioli, mustard, pickles, sport peppers (which is a Chicago thing, apparently, and kinda like a less spicy banana pepper), an onion ring, and cheddar cheese.

Normally this would be way too much stuff, but the aggressively-spiced patty stands out even under the deluge of toppings. It helps that everything is quite tasty, and it all goes together very, very well. The cheese isn’t melted all the way through, but there’s so much other stuff going on that you can barely notice.

The bun is quite good, too — I think it’s a Martin’s Potato Roll or something similar. It has a great balance between fluffiness and heft.

If the patty were better, this would be an outstanding burger. It’s nicely cooked, and all of the toppings are great. That patty, though. Oh well.

As for the fries, they’re thinly-cut and nicely seasoned (I think they’re using some kind of seasoning salt, but it’s mild enough to not call attention to itself); they would have been great if they had been served hot or even warm, but alas, they were room temperature (at best).

2.5 out of 4

McCoy Burger Company

Published on August 29, 2016August 29, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 3334 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: http://mccoyburgerco.ca/

It’s a bold move opening a burger joint on this particular stretch of Yonge Street, mere steps away from both the Burger’s Priest and the Burger Cellar, and just a few blocks north of Stack. That area is pretty well covered in terms of burger availability. You’ve gotta have confidence in what you’re selling to wade into that scrum.

So with cojones like that, I wanted to like McCoy Burger Company. I really did. And I didn’t dislike it; it was just aggressively average.

They’ve got a few pre-topped burgers on the menu, and a few different meat choices aside from beef (chicken, lamb, turkey). I did my usual thing and went with the simplest choice: the plain McCoy Burger, which I had topped with mayo, pickles, and tomato.

The patty has a little bit of crust from the griddle, though it’s not really enough to add a whole lot of texture or flavour. The menu, confusingly, refers to the patty as being “grilled to perfection,” even though it has obviously been griddled (I think they just don’t realize that there are different words for grilling or griddling a hamburger).

The texture is actually pretty good — the loosely-packed patty had a nice, coarse grind, and though it was cooked all the way to well done, it was still a little bit juicy.

It’s the flavour that really sinks the burger. They season the patty with some kind of spice blend; that’s generally not my favourite, but it wasn’t too overwhelming. The biggest problem is the flavour of the beef itself; it’s just kind of tasteless, with a slightly off flavour that you typically only get from middling quality beef.

It’s a shame; with better tasting beef and with a bit more crust from the griddle (which they obviously know how to do — the video on their website shows a burger with an impressive amount of crust, so your mileage may vary), the burger could have been well above average, but instead it’s just a resounding shrug.

The fries, on the other hand, were great — featuring an addictively crispy exterior and a fluffy interior, they were really hard to stop eating.

2.5 out of 4

The Abbot Pub & Fare

Published on March 13, 2016 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

abbot
Location: 3367 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: http://theabbot.ca/

I’m not gonna lie: though I have a vague recollection of reading something positive about the burger at the Abbot, I decided to review this place almost entirely because of its proximity to the Rolling Pin, a bakery that specializes in elaborately decadent doughnuts. Two birds, one stone, and all that jazz.

(The doughnuts were great, by the way.)

Though I came at lunch and could have ordered the brunch burger, I went with the standard hamburger, which comes topped with lettuce, tomato, and onion. You can also get optional stuff like cheese or caramelized onions for an extra charge, but I kept it simple.

In the spirit of not beating around the bush, I’ll say that this was not a good hamburger and you should absolutely never order it. But I guess I should elaborate a bit?

It’s a meatloaf burger, and a particularly strong one at that. This isn’t necessarily the worst thing ever, but oh man it was strong. The odour of garlic and spices hit me almost as soon as the plate was set down in front of me. My dining companion could smell it from across the table, which should tell you something.

This, of course, means that the flavour of the beef itself was completely gone, but if that were the burger’s only problem, it wouldn’t necessarily be a deal-breaker.

It wasn’t the burger’s only problem.

Worse was the hamburger’s texture, which despite being grilled and cooked to well done, was a particularly off-putting combination of mushy and stringy. I’ve reviewed mushy burgers before, but this was the worst one yet. By far. It was the stringiness that really got me, with a texture that was soft but refused to get fully chewed, like a trying to eat wet fabric. It was unpleasant enough that I got a bit more than halfway through and had to throw in the towel. It’s not that I couldn’t finish it; I’ve had worse. But I really didn’t want to.

Everything else was fine, though the bottom layer of the bun was weirdly crispy, making the burger harder to eat (and cut in half) than it needed to be.

As for the fries, they were pretty good. They’re nothing anyone is going to lose their minds over, but they were slightly above average.

1 out of 4

Hole-E Burger Bar

Published on June 7, 2015 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 2419 Yonge Street, Toronto
Website: http://www.holeeburger.com/

Hole-E Burger Bar’s gimmick is that all their burgers are punched with holes pre-cooking. Why? To justify the name? Their website claims that the holes allow the burgers to be “evenly cooked to perfection,” though common sense would dictate that the opposite should be true. They also claim that they fill the holes with sauce; whether a burger really needs more places to cram sauce is questionable, but that’s probably a debate for another time. Because in this particular case, the whole thing is moot (get it? Whole thing?? Ah, get out of here, no one appreciates puns).

There were no holes in my burger. Like, not one single hole. So… that’s odd (or not odd at all, since a burger really shouldn’t have holes in it to begin with). There were a few dimples where maybe some holes had once been, but it otherwise looked like a standard patty.

So without any oddball hole gimmicks to fall back on, how was the burger? Not great.

I ordered the standard, plain burger, and had it topped with pickles, tomato, and mayo. The well done patty is griddled, with a decent — if not exactly awe-inspiring — amount of crust. It was also reasonably juicy, which is always a good thing.

But there were problems, the foremost being the downright weird texture.

You know when you eat a steak, and you accidentally get a mouthful of gristle, and you really have to chew it thoroughly before you can swallow? To a certain extent, that’s what every mouthful of this burger felt like. You’d chew and you’d chew, and you’d think you were done, but then nope — there was this tough, oddly ropey beef still hanging out in your mouth, refusing to get fully chewed.

It was bizarre, to put it mildly, and I really don’t even have a theory as to how it could have happened. It was definitely too finely ground, but that alone can’t account for the textural weirdness going on here. And my dining companion had the exact same issue, so this wasn’t just a one-patty issue.

The beef mostly tasted okay, but had a slightly off flavour. It was also way over-peppered, but both of those complaints fade into the background when the texture of the burger is so wonky.

The bun and toppings were okay, at least, and the fries were pretty great. The restaurant is also right next door to some really delicious cupcakes via the Cupcake Shoppe, so the outing wasn’t a complete bust.

2 out of 4

The Burger Shack

Published on February 15, 2015February 15, 2015 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

shack
Location: 233 Eglinton Avenue West, Toronto
Website: None

I mentioned recently, in my review of Dangerous Dan’s, that most old-school burger joints in Toronto are kind of lousy. They all pretty much look the same, and they all serve similarly mediocre meatloaf burgers (or even worse, a frozen burger). They’re a nice reminder of how good we have it now, and how difficult it used to be to find a decent hamburger in this city, but that’s about it.

That’s The Burger Shack, in a nutshell. It’s not much better or much worse than any other old-school burger joint in the GTA. It is what it is.

Like a lot of restaurants of its ilk, it has two different burgers on the menu: a really cheap one, usually frozen, and a slightly less cheap one that they make in-house. I went with the latter, and had it topped with tomato, pickles, and mayo.

This being an old school burger joint, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the burgers here are grilled. Grilling can add an appealing smokiness to a burger; it can also, if overdone, add a bitter, burnt flavour. Sadly, that was the case here. And though the well done patty was a little bit juicy, it was also ridiculously tightly-packed and tough.

It was also, of course, a meatloaf burger; it was seriously meatloafy, with almost zero beefy flavour and a vaguely sausage-like consistency.

The bun was fine, and the toppings were mostly fine, though like with a lot of old school burger joints, the “mayo” was actually Miracle Whip (or some cheap, Miracle-Whip-like substitute). I don’t know why so many of these places think it’s okay to substitute Miracle Whip for mayo without telling their customers. Sure, they look the same, but they taste completely different.

So the burger was mediocre (at best), but I’ll end this review on a positive note. The fries, though unsalted (salt was provided on the tables), were otherwise amazing. Like, seriously, addictively amazing. Strong contender for the best fries I’ve ever had amazing. AMAZING. They had a great potatoey flavour, and were the perfect combo of crispiness and creaminess. Seriously: I want to come back here and just eat a large order of those fries. So good.

2 out of 4