The Grid’s Burger Week is back for yet another year of beefy – and shrimpy, and slawy, and chicken-friedy – bodaciousness. From May 28th to May 31st, 63 of Toronto’s top restaurants will be grinding, chucking, and smoking meats to offer up $5 fantasmically gourmet burgers, culminating in a tour-de-force of meat sweats on June 1st at Fort York National Historic Site. While we pre-applaud anyone brave enough to attempt buying up every burger on the list – that would be over 50 burgers in four days and about $325 – we’ve read through the consortium of carnivorous creations and decided on 10 we’d forgo our daily calorie counts for…
The Place: Holy Chuck Burgers
The Burger: The Misbred Village Bahahastard
The Ingredients: Two patties of aged beef, Ontario lamb, and saganaki cheese ground together and topped with red onion, Greek olive oil, and sautéed peppers.
The Reason: Holy Chuck Burgers are our among our all-time favourites in the city, and a patty comprised of beef, lamb, and saganaki all ground together is a caloric catastrophe that sounds too damned good to pass up.
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The Place: Barque Smokehouse
The Burger: Brisket Burger
The Ingredients: Brisket patty with smoked candied bacon and pommery barbecue sauce on a brioche bun. (Available at lunch only.)
The Reason: Barque is tops in the smoking department, and we already know their brisket is nothing but a prime palatable party. Candied bacon will always grab our attention, too.
The Place: The County General
The Burger: Spiced Lamb Burger
The Ingredients: Spiced lamb patty with cucumber relish, minted goat yogurt, and confit tomatoes on Greek flat bread. (Available at dinner only.)
The Reason: Spiced lamb with minted goat yogurt and confit tomatoes? The Mediterranean-influenced burger sounds like our next great obsession.
The Place: Habits Gastropub
The Burger: Smoked Brie-Stuffed Black Angus Burger (Black Tie option for $16. Five dollars from the sale of each burger will go to The Stop Community Food Centre.)
The Ingredients: Smoked brie–stuffed Black Angus patty with puttanesca relish, pancetta, crispy onion, and spicy aioli on a brioche bun.
The Reason: House-smoked brie stuffed inside a Black Angus patty is reason enough. But everything piled atop a buttery brioche bun is the true draw here.
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The Place: John & Sons Oyster House (both locations)
The Burger: Smoked B.C. Fanny Bay Oyster Burger
The Ingredients: Smoked B.C. Fanny Bay oyster, pimento glaze, crispy prosciutto, iceberg lettuce, tomato, and chipotle aioli on a butter bun.
The Reason: This is the badass offspring of a spicy burger and an oyster po’boy.
The Place: The Happy Hooker
The Burger: Crispy Tuna Burger
The Ingredients: Panko-breaded tuna patty with tartar sauce, lettuce, and tomato on a toasted bun.
The Reason: Because sometimes you just need a pescetarian fix to combat all those meat sweats.
The Place: Osteria dei Ganzi
The Burger: Ganzi Saltimbocca Burger
The Ingredients: Ground veal burger topped with tomato-sauced parma, provolone, arugula, sage, and sage aioli.
The Reason: It’s basically a veal parmesan sandwich for the 21st century, just, y’know, meatier.
The Place: Lisa Marie
The Burger: The Nutella Burger
The Ingredients: A burger patty stuffed with Nutella and topped with plantain chips and garlic coconut sauce. (Available between 11:30am and 3pm; takeout only.)
The Reason: We’d put Nutella on everything and anything, but Fidel Gastro beat us to it.
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The Place: Hey Meatball (all locations)
The Burger: Vegan Burger
The Ingredients: Lentil, sweet potato, and mushroom patty with cashew mayo, red pepper ketchup, caramelized onion, lettuce, and tomato.
The Reason: Hey Meatball is doing up two burgers (they also have a meat-centric Canadian Burger on offer) for the “week,” and we love that they’re giving some love to the vegetarians of our fair metropolis.
The Place: Utopia Café and Grill
The Burger: Korean Short Rib Burger
The Ingredients: Korean short rib patty topped with kimchi slaw, pickled daikon, and spicy karashi mayo.
The Reason: It’s a Korean burger. Do you need any other reason?
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What burgers are you most excited about for The Grid Burger Week 2014? Comment below or tweet us @ViewtheVibe!
