69 replies to this topic

[Caramia]

Bah I loved Fudruckers!

[G-Man]

How many threads can that one restaurant take off course.

[Rorschach]

Just to get the thread back on course, I decided to try the recommendations for my lunches this week...

I went to each restaurant at the same time of day, about 11:45 AM. Just trying to beat the lunch rush, but still getting to see how busy the places are at lunch.

Rosie's had a nice burger and fries and the freshest buns of the three. I was seated quickly and got the food quickly. The burger was good, but not great. Fried on a grill. Far better than any fast food burger of course. Lunch traffic was low to medium. They had multiple brands of ketchup depending on which table you were seated. I like Heinz, but got something else at my table. Fries were also good, not great.

Fairfield Fish and Chips had the best fries that's for sure. The burger was grilled and I noticed that during the grill process, the patty was covered with a lid from a pan probably to prevent splatter, but perhaps to keep in flavors. This is a very small place and if you eat in, you can see everything. It was a good burger too, but it came with a large amount of yellow hot dog mustard that overpowered all the other flavors. If you want the traditional burger, ask for no mustard. No one was there when I arrived, but while I was there, I noticed that the Oak Bay couple that just donated their million dollar house to the First Nations that has been in the news the past few days showed upfor lunch. He had a burger and she had fish and chips. By the time I was done, the place was overrun with a lunch crowd. This place is designed for take out primarily

I think G-Man was right. The fish and chips looked great to me. You have to pay 50 cents extra for tartar sauce though which is homemade. (Mayo, cornichons, capers, dash of hot sauce if you want to make your own). The burger was good, but not great. I have to ty it again without the mustard overload to be definitive.

I thought the burger at Pluto's tasted the best. It was a classic burger just as I described. The restaurant has a mesquite grill, so I think that made a big taste difference. The fries were okay, but not as good as Fairfield Fish and Chips. The place was about 2/3 full for lunch, but it is much larger than Rosie's or Fairfield Fish and Chips and only had one server. She was a cute little thing that looked a lot like the girl who plays Lana Lang on Smallville except with black hair. She dropped things three times while I was there from rushing around, food once, drinks once, and then when she ran to answer the telephone, she dropped that too and smashed it. Pluto's seems to be the most popular. They need at least one more server during lunch rush.

I'd have to give all three restaurants three stars out of four. All were under $10 out the door. Pluto's was slightly more expensive. Fairfield Fish and Chips was the least expensive. All things considered, I have to give the edge to Pluto's.

[G-Man]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention that while Plutos has awesome food they have average to below average service. When my wife and I go we actually plan on there being at least a 40 minute time period between ordering and eating also those that go should plan for a 10 to 15 minute wait to even be acknowledged. One item that one of you ordered will be wrong or forgotten or not rung in. If you know it is going to be like that then it hardly ever disapoints.

Man i could go for a burger.

Thanks for the legwork Rorshach!!!!

[Rorschach]

I started out the thread mentioning that the best burgers are the ones you can make at home. All the restaurants mentioned try to go for that homemade taste. It does not seem like something you need a recipe for, however, after much trial and error and watching a butt load of cooking shows on television I have compiled a simple recipe to make as good a burger as any restaurant possibly can at home with a minimum of hassle. So impress your friends or kids with this one -- or just treat yourself.

The Optimized "Traditional" Hamburger Home Recipe

Each individual burger should be 5 ounces or 150 grams of lean ground beef. Don't use regular hamburger which has too much fat or "extra lean" which has too little. Don't use ground sirloin either or anything too lean - it will just taste too dry or burn in the cooking process. The flavor is in the fat and the hamburger should be 80% lean to 20% fat.

Make your patty to be about the same diameter as your bun. Sprinkle both sides of the patty with a bit of fresh ground black pepper, salt, garlic powder, and onion power. Just these four spices. If you use garlic salt or onion salt, don't add any extra salt.

If you have an outdoor barbeque grill, that's the best method to cook the burgers. Five minutes a side is about right, but could be more or less depending on how hot your grill is. Don't keep flipping them and don't press down on them as they cook. Flip only once.

If you don't have a barbeque grill or don't want to mess with it, use a cast iron skillet on the stovetop. Get it very hot before any meat ever touches it. Don't put oil in and wait for it to smoke up to cook. Put oil in after the pan is hot and cook immediately. You can't get barbeque taste on a skillet, but you can get that restaurant taste. Restaurants that serve fine meat nearly universally use the pan roast method. A pan roast is where you sear the meat on one side in the pan, flip it, then finish cooking in the oven. You want your oven hot too, about 500 degrees F. A nice way to get good flavour and aromatics into your pan roast is to use olive oil and rosemary. Get the oil hot, and sprinkle in some rosemary and stir it around to roast it a little, then sear your meat on one side, flip it, then put the whole pan in the oven for another 5-10 minutes. It will come out great this way and your kitchen will smell great and not stink like burning oil or a deep fry.

Find the slightly larger size buns, not the 12 pack of tiny buns they like to sell. The "Burger Me" buns in Save On Foods or the "Giganto" buns in the Real Canadian Superstore are the right size. But use anything fresh that you like. Kaiser rolls are good and that's what the restaurants I sampled used. After the burger is flipped and the second side is cooking, put the halfs of the buns in your toaster and lightly toast them 2-3 minutes. When they come out of the toaster, put a little garlic butter on each side and let it melt in.

Everyone has a personal preference of condiments, but to make a great burger keep it simple. Put a little mayo on each bun - not a lot, more does not add more flavor. The mayo is a moisture barrier between the meat and bun and the tomato slice and the bun.

Put the cooked burger on the bottom half, then lettuce, then a little sliced onion, then a tomato slice and an optional dill pickle slice and then the top half of the bun. If you like cheeseburgers, put a slice of cheddar on the burger just before you remove it from the BBQ or right after you remove it from the oven. If you cook on a skillet using the pan roast method, a little Bullseye BBQ sauce spread on the burger before you put on the lettuce is a nice extra touch of "outdoor" flavor. If you want to hassle it, grilling the onions before putting them on the burger is another nice touch that tastes great.

Grilled onions are tasty, but easy to mess up when cooking. In all cooking, color is flavor. When you sear the meat, it ads flavor. Same with browning the onions. Get them nice and brown, but not burned. If you hate hassling onions, here's a tip from McDonalds - use re-hydrated, dehydrated onions. In the spice section of the stores they all have dehydrated onions. Just soak them in water a few minutes, drain, and then grill them in a pan until browned and put them on your burger as a substitute for sliced onions.

If you make your hamburgers by this method they will be as good as can be made at home, taste as good as a restaurant and cost very little and impress your guests and/or family.

Perfect home french fries coming next...

[gumgum]

^I gotta nominate that post "Post of the Week."


Rorschach, check out Six Mile. You'll like them. Um, maybe.
If not, print out that last post and leave it on the table with your signed bill. That should fix 'em!

[Rorschach]

Thanks for the post of the week nod. I have to go back and edit a few typos and word transpositions though.

Here's the other half I wanted to post -- perfect homemade french fries.

To be more exact, this is a recipe for chips which are larger finger-sized french fries -- the best -- but only if done correctly. This recipe is a bit more hassle and you need to deep fry, so here goes...

Forget buying frozen fries in the supermarket. Way too expensive and they just don't cook the same as you get in a restaurant. Get some russet potatos and wash the exterior. You can peel them or not, but there's a lot of flavor in the skin. Cut the potato lengthwise in half and cut the halfs lenghwise in half and then each quarter in half again. This gives eight nice chips per potato and is about right and easy.

Soak the chips in cold water and put in the refrigerator. This step leeches out a lot of extra starch and prevents a chemical chain reaction that will oxidize and discolor your chips. A half-hour is about right, but make sure you dry off the chips before cooking. Water and hot oil is an explosive mixture - be careful.

Use vegetable oil, preferably canola oil. Peanut oil is good too. In the UK they make chips with palm oil -- the worst artery clogging stuff possible. I don't think you can even get it in Canada. Heat your oil to 325F. Using a candy thermometer is best if you don't have a controllable fryer.

The first step here is critical - blanching. Put the chips into the hot oil for 2-3 minutes. They should not be crisp or fully cooked at this point. Remove them with a spider strainer or a slotted spoon and let them drain on a paper towel.

Now increase the temperature of the oil to 375F. By the time the oil reaches that temperature, the blanched chips will have cooked a little from residual heat. Place the blanched chips back in the oil for another 4-5 minutes until you get that nice color and remove them and let them drain on a paper towel. Season with popcorn (fine) salt. If you don't have or don't want to buy popcorn salt, just produce your own with table salt and a coffee grinder to make it finer.

It's just that easy. These chips are fresh as can be, cheap, and extremely tasty.

So, there you have it. An optimized home recipe for a burger and fries that is as good or better than you can get in a restaurant and for very little cost.

[Rorschach]

Rorschach, check out Six Mile. You'll like them. Um, maybe.

Okay I had to try Six Mile at gumgum's urging so I set out to View Royal. I have to say it turned out to be the best of the bunch...

Six Mile's hamburger was a great burger. Probably just as good as you could make at home. Service was good and the Six Mile has a lot of character -- it's B.C.'s oldest Pub. Lunch crowd was light.

What stood out to me was the freshness of all the ingredients. Freshness is something you can taste in a burger. And the bun was the best I've seen so far. It was an apparently custom made soft sourdough hamburger bun -- I say apparently custom made because I've never seen any like it in any of the local stores. Anyone who knows of a source, tell me.

The Six Mile's recipe is very close to the one I posted. The burger had fresh red onion slices, not grilled onions and no garlic toasted style bun preparation. But, these are distinctions without any difference. The burger tasted just right. Six Mile's burger was the exact same price as the burger at Pluto's.

The Six Mile uses mayonaise as I suggest, but they also have "special sauce" on the burger. I think people believe that special sauce is just catsup and mayo or thousand island and mayo, but that's not true. If you want special sauce on your burger, here's an addition to the burger recipe -- source: McDonalds -- yes, that McDonald's.

Special Sauce for Hamburgers:

1/2 cup mayonaise
2 tablespoons French dressing
4 teaspoons sweet pickle relish
1 tablespoon finely minced white onion
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and refrigerate overnight to let the flavors marry. The recipe above makes about 3/4 of a cup.

This completes our local burger survey. Any other local restaurant suggestions appriciated.

[Mike K.]

Ror, thanks for all that. I'm a hamburger connoisseur myself and appreciate your write-ups very, very much.

[mikedw]

I like the ideas of burgers but I often find that most burgers land in my stomach like a hoof.

The best stand-out burger I've had in the last while was at (pls make with the hails of abuse....)... Denny's. It was great. Of course, I had it at 2AM, so maybe I was tired.

- Mike

[Rorschach]

I have had the burger at Denny's and you're right it's quite good. However, I have to say that it was the cook that made the difference. You may have dealt with a relative of someone here on VV that works there.

Switching gears but still on the general topic... I suggested that using a barbeque grill was the best way to make hamburgers. I noticed something on page two of today's Times Colonist... an ad for a new business. New to me at least, because I have never visited or seen it.

The ad is for BBQ Time at 1008 Broad St. The business advertises for sale all stainless steel grills locally made, free delivery and setup. Since the weather is heating up and getting nice, this looks like a nice place to get a good grill. I'll visit the store and let you know what's what.

I saw a very nice grill at Costco. It was a Kirkland brand -- but it had an insane price of $1099. That's probably too much to pay. The BBQ time ad says their grills start at $399. I'm sure you don't get as much for that, but I'm hoping their grill beat Costco's Cadillac grill models. Plus, I like to buy the locally made stuff where possible. It appears that these grills are made in Duncan:

[url=http://www.jacksongrills.com/:37315]Jackson Grills[/url:37315]

If anyone has already been there, please post something.

[LJ]

That COSTCO grill is a bargain at $1099. I have been looking for a BBQ as well and the couple of places I have been to, would put it over $2000 minimum, I have not been to BBQ time but I will go and check it out before I buy the one at COSTCO. I'm guessing that their built in premier series with a side burner will be over 2k.

Now back to burgers - I haven't been, but two friends of mine swear that the Loghouse pub on Millstream road has the 6 mile pub beat for best burger.

[VicHockeyFan]

$2000 buys 2000 Wendy's JRBC burgers. That's one a day for 6 years, without having to buy ingredients or cook it.



I can't justify the expense of buying a BBQ.

[gumgum]

Good point, but Wendy's hamburgers suck.

[Holden West]

^Don't make Jada mad.

That BBQ Time is on Broad between Fort and Broughton, across from Pagliacci's. I think it's that store that sells stuff for rich people--cufflinks, bathrobe holders, crap like that. I remember seeing barbecues parked on the sidewalk last time I walked down Broad.

[Maia]

I've heard the beef burger (I think it's a half-pound) at Ferris's is really good.

[Icebergalley]

I've heard the beef burger (I think it's a half-pound) at Ferris's is really good.

It's one of my favourites...

[Icebergalley]

Isn't Capital Iron the place to buy a serious BBQ machine...

[VicHockeyFan]

Good point, but Wendy's hamburgers suck.

True, but I'll eat cardboard if its under $1.

[Rorschach]

I've had the burger at Loghouse and it was just okay. I'll have to try the one at Ferris.

The Costco barbeque looks good and has all the right features, but I think assembling it is going to be a *****, not to mention loading out the big boxes of parts - lots of opportunity for a screw-up. I looked at it and it didn't look like $1000+ machine to me. The free delivery and assembly part of the deal is appealing to me.