On The Town: Gourmet Burger Company (Yonge Street)

Gourmet Burger Company
2419 Yonge Street West
Toronto, ON
M4P 2E7
Phone: 647-349-6555

I love burgers.  I particularly like having a good burger within walking distance.  The area right near my house has been in a burger drought for some time but all of  a sudden things are booming.  First came Bamburger and then an outpost of South St. Burger Co. opened up. Now we have our own Gourmet Burger Company.  GBC has two other locations in the city, one south of Yonge and Bloor the other near Parliament and Carlton. The other day I was rushing out to an event and decided to try their one of their burger to-go.  Well, really I wanted just onion rings since I read on Blog TO that they have pretty darned good onion rings but decided to make it a meal.

Without a doubt GBC has a great burger menu.  You can choose between a beef burger, chicken burger (whole chicken breast), veggie burger and even a lamb burger.  Well played GBC, well played.  A lamb burger is a pretty neat choice to add in there.  What really gets me is the assortment of complimentary toppings.  Sure you have the usual lettuce, tomato and onion but you can also load up gratis on avocado, caramelized onions, beets and roasted red peppers, among other things.  For a buck you can add things like cheese, bacon, pineapple or a fried egg.  If you don’t want to worry about choosing your own toppings they have some pre-determined burger options as well.

I ordered a beef burger with lettuce, tomato and caramelized onions.  Instead of doing ketchup and mustard I asked for some GBC sauce which has ketchup, mustard, hot sauce and some other stuff in there.  My burger was ok. They cook all burgers to medium-well but my burger was more like past well.  It was really dry.  Sure I got take-out but the walk home is less than 5 minutes away.  My burger was super goopey hence the splotchy bits on the bun.  I liked the toppings, they were all fresh and the GBC sauce added a nice kick.

The onion rings on the other hand were GREAT!  They are beer-battered and pretty darned good with thick slices of sweet onion nestled within a generous coating of batter.  The order is really generous and at $2.95 is a great price.  It will require a lot of discipline to not just pop in every day for an onion ring treat.  They also have sweet potato fries on the menu, equally dangerous.

While the burger was a disappointment I’m willing to give it another try.  I like the concept of GBC and love that use Canadian beef that they age for 30 days and that the toppings are prepared in-house.  I didn’t love that my burger was dry but here’s to hoping that next time it won’t be.  The onions rings are definitely on my snack food list.