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Address: Bellair St. between Bloor & Cumberland, Toronto, OnNOTE: Google insists BBQ Express is on Bay St. It isn’t.
Visited: Tuesday September 15, 2009 12:45PM
Ordered: Burger with cheese (x2), Grape Soda (x1), Bottled Water (x1)
Total Cost: $12.42 + $1.75 ATM fee
Caryl D.’s Review
The Experience – worse than Plain Jane
Dave asked if I wanted to meet him for lunch; I couldn’t resist. Unfortunately, my lunch turned out to be less than I bargained for. We met at Bay and Bloor and were off to try a new burger place, only to find it hadn’t opened yet. *sigh*
[ed.'s note: the place that was closed, Gourmet Burger Co. on Charles, will get reviewed once it opens.]
I suggested that we try this little hole in the wall in Yorkville - (selfishly to see if I could see any celebrities — no dice. *sad face*) It’s in an alley, it’s the size of my pinky finger, and it’s a mish-mash of Korean grill, Italian, and Canadian. Down side, it’s cash only. We order the burger, walk through the park and find a seat on some rocks. Had it not been for the shining sun and the wonderful company of my honey plus, it would have been a terrible experience.
Don’t get me wrong, I love being around the Newtron, but every other aspect of this burger event was not good.
The Burger (if you want to call it that)
The bun was cold and I hate cold buns.
The meat tasted weird, really weird! Not like a normal beef burger, but some cheap imitation meat, like tofurkey, only this wasn’t tofu.
Luckily, I had mustard, ketchup, and relish, accompanied with onions, lettuce, pickles and tomatoes to drown out the taste of the ‘beef.’
I had a little burger envy because Dave thought it would be good to add Ranch to his burger and I wish I had done that. Damn.
The cheese was not melted. New rule: no ordering cheeseburgers for me. It’s pointless: why pay extra money if I can’t even taste the cheese?
Dave N.’s Review
The Experience
I was leaving the office to go work at home for the afternoon, so I decided to see if Caryl wanted to grab a burger. She was game and we eventually ended up at BBQ Express in Yorkville.
This place is a tiny, tiny little lunch counter in a brick enclosure, with room for about five customers to stand inside. It is literally shoved into the middle of an alley off Bellair St., and it totally doesn’t fit in with the ultra-posh surrounds. I don’t need my burger joints to be fancy at all, but this was definitely far too cramped. I found myself getting annoyed at other customers invading my bubble while we waited.
In what is becoming a common theme, these guys only took cash. Once again I had to head elsewhere (this time to a convenience store) to withdraw money before I could have a burger.
The staff were friendly — they even started getting our burgers ready while we went to get some dough — but this didn’t really make up for the cramped quarters or the money thing. I guess they were fast-ish?
The Burger
This burger sucked hard. No, seriously, it was bad. Most everything about it was bland and tasteless and unexciting. Full-bodied this wasn’t.
I topped my cheeseburger with lettuce, mustard and — inspired by my positive experience the other day with creamy garlic wing sauce – ranch dressing. The lettuce was moist and wilty, adding none of the crunch I was hoping for. The mustard was plain old yellow mustard. The ranch dressing was basically tasteless, and definitely not worth the extra heart-attack-inducing calories and fat content. Caryl swears the cheese was real cheddar, but it looked and tasted like a processed cheese single to me; if it was real, it was some of the blandest cheese I’ve ever had.
The patty itself had taste, I suppose, but it wasn’t really a burger taste. To me it tasted more like meatloaf almost. I think it might have been homemade, but I couldn’t really tell and it was bad enough that it didn’t matter.
Bottom Line
Average rating:
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