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(Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
“Anybody can do a good burger,” says Todd Savage, co-owner of Stack, uptown’s answer to Barque. “But being the pit master is a real art form.” Indeed, Savage and his high-school buddy from “about 400 years ago,” Bill Panos, originally intended to devote their new restaurant to on-trend burgers, but ended up deciding it was important to have more options, especially for a family-friendly spot.
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Nine years ago, Mark McEwan scandalized Torontonians with his $35 truffled Bymark burger. That was before words like “grass-fed,” “heritage” and “dry-aged” entered into the burger lexicon. The city is now crammed with craft burgers, and carnivores no longer flinch at steep price tags. Competitive chefs bring in whole cows from nearby farms, bake their own buns, smoke their own bacon (twice), replace ketchup with tomato chutney and source the most pungent cheeses they can get their patty-flipping hands on. Thankfully, the mom-and-pop shops haven’t been artisinalled out of business—there are still plenty of sublime greasy-bag burgers around, as well as a few new-school diners ironically replicating them. Here, the very best of the city’s boundless burgerdom.
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We thought Pizza Hut was pushing the bounds of postmodernist pizza innovation with its Cheesy Bites pie. We were wrong. The lucky folks in the Middle East now have exclusive access to the cheeseburger Crown Crust pizza, a new creation whose crust is made up of, you guessed it, cheeseburgers. The whole thing is topped with lettuce, tomatoes and “special sauce,” and there’s also a version with chicken fillets for the beef-averse. What will they think up next? A pizza crusted with little tiny pizzas? [Eater]
We picked out ten trends that helped define dining in Toronto in 2012, and pronounced whether we loved them, hated them or had a love-hate relationship with them. Now you can have your say.
This year, a fleet of new trucks raised street food standards in the GTA. Trouble is, they’re always on the move. Here, the top 10 and their Twitter handles (so you’ll never miss another taco, burger or brownie). Read the rest of this entry »
Now that the simple pleasure of a good old-fashioned PC Thick and Juicy comes with the risk of contracting an E. coli infection, news of any bacteria-free burger is something of a blessing. The gastronomic sleuths at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have removed three products from the E. coli blacklist:
• Lick’s Beef Burger: 612 g, UPC 0 29345 70037 2
• Lick’s Homeburger Beef Burger: 9.18 kg, product code 55255
• PC Thick and Juicy Sirloin Burger: 1.13 kg, UPC 0 60383 64238 9
Lost in much of the talk about E. coli-laced burgers (and confusion over what, exactly, a steakette is), was the news that New Food Classics, the Burlington meat processor behind the recall, is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings. While many of the company’s products have been flagged for potential contamination, that’s only a small portion of what they’re struggling with. The Hamilton Spectator reports that the company has closed an office in Calgary and plants in St. Catharines and Saskatoon, and sought creditor protection before looking for a buyer to bail it out. Of the 22 would-be bidders, only one actually made an offer after seeing the company’s statements. So is it just the bad meat that’s dragging the company down? Hardly. The Spectator says bankruptcy documents indicate that “the company was hobbling as its beef and energy costs climbed in 2010 and 2011 while it was locked into price contracts with customers such as Loblaw, Metro, Sobeys, Walmart and food supply giant Sysco Canada.” In case that doesn’t make the situation clear enough, when the Spec sought comment from NFC yesterday, they didn’t hear back. The phones lines might have been busy all day—but they might have simply been disconnected. Read the entire story [The Hamilton Spectator] »
Hopefully these were not part of the recall (Image: Seth Kaplan)
The product: Just about every other brand of store-bought burger this side of the 49th parallel (OK, not quite—the extensive list is below)
Establishment number: 761
Best before date: from January 1, 2012 to February 15, 2013
Production code: 11 JL 01 up to 12 FE 15
Lot code: five digits, with the last four being 1831 or greater
The details: What started out as a case of some contaminated beef appears to have become a case of, well, a heck of a lot more contaminated beef. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which has been sending out steady notices about various beef products over the past weeks, has learned that over 135 products may be contaminated with E. coli. Best Value 10 Beef Burgers? (Potentially) Contaminated. Country Morning Beef Burgers and Country Morning Gold Western BBQ Burgers? Yep. PC Thick and Juicy? Oh yeah. Most of these products have ended up in grocery stores, but some have been sent to restaurants, like Hero Certified Burgers and Licks, as well. Anyway, while it’s tough to keep track of the dozens of potentially affected products, the CFIA says they can all be identified by their establishment number, 761, which belongs to New Food Classics. The CFIA reports only one illness associated with the outbreak so far, but maybe you’d better jot that number down—this is the same strain of E. coli that was responsible for seven deaths in Walkerton, Ontario back in 2000. [CFIA]
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The product: Best Value–brand 10 Beef Burgers and 20 Beef Burgers
The UPCs: 0 71212 88103 8 and 0 71212 88104 5, respectively
The details: Another day, another case of E. coli–contaminated beef from the good folks at New Food Classics. This time, it’s Best Value–brand burgers that, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, have been distributed to Giant Tiger and Northern Canada stores in several provinces and territories—including Ontario. The symptoms are the same as last time—abdominal pain, diarrhea, etc.—and there has only been one reported illness. The CFIA is now warning that “underlying issues” may be to blame for widespread contamination, and it’s working with Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada on an ongoing investigation. Again, we shouldn’t like to monger fear—but please grill responsibly. [CFIA]
While news of a new entrant into the city’s red-hot burger market might not shake Toronto’s battle-tested burger kings, they might be a little nervous to hear that the new guy is a real estate mogul who owns a farm and raises hundreds of head of cattle. When Shane Baghai’s wife developed breast cancer, the Star reports, a nutritionist advised that she avoid beef, which can be laced with hormones and “pink slime” (Google it). Instead, Baghai, who made his fortune selling homes and condos, started raising his own hormone-free cows. The 450-odd grass-fed and hormone-free animals on Baghai’s Paradise Farms will serve as the foundation for the three burger restaurants he plans to open in the GTA. He wants to open 30 locations in five years, which sounds ambitious enough, but according to the Star, “he’s not ruling out hundreds of Paradise Farms Cafes…during his lifetime.” Our message to him: good luck on that. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
The barn-board walls are covered with various food-related sayings
“It’s global flavours—without the fuss!” That’s how Hemant Bhagwani, the driving forced behind the Amaya empire, describes his latest venture, Bazaar Global Food Bar. The casual, family-friendly restaurant, which took over the space vacated by Lai Toh Heen, brings together flavours from a range of world cuisines and applies them to two of Toronto’s never-ending food obsessions: burgers and pizza.
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Burger 2.0?
According to Mark Post, the head of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, all that stands between you and a juicy lab-grown hamburger are $315,000 and celebrity status. Post says that by October, his team will be ready to put their £200,000 creation before a real live celebrity taste-tester. The burger would be the result of a project funded by an anonymous donor that involves taking stem cells from cows and growing them in a culture with fetal calf serum, according to the Guardian. Post believes lab-grown meat could drastically reduce the number of cows at factory farms, which would mean fewer greenhouse gas emissions and less animal suffering.
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The Tower of Babel: grilled cheese bun, with two beef patties surrounding a pair of fried, cheese-stuffed portobello caps (Image: Lucas Richarz from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)
After the fanatically venerated indie burger joint The Burger’s Priest netted third place in the 2012 Zagat Survey of Toronto last week (the only budget option in a rather upscale top ten), the Toronto Star published a pair of articles about founder Shant Mardirosian. Mardirosian, an Armenian-American who left L.A. for Toronto in 1984, is a seminary graduate, a burger evangelist, and all-round pretty interesting dude. The five best tidbits we learned, after the jump:
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Looking out onto Yonge Street
On the opening night at The Burger’s Priest’s eagerly anticipated second location at Yonge and Lawrence, owner Shant Mardirosian had butterflies in his stomach. “I was sweating buckets,” says the man behind what many consider to be Toronto’s best burger. But when the doors finally swung open, the eager crowd outside burst into a spontaneous cheer, leaving Mardirosian at a loss for words. “It was insanity. It brought a tear to my eye, to be honest. I’m blown away by what’s going on.”
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