Save On Meats

There exists in Vancouver the legend of the Save On Meats burger. Anyone who purports to know a thing or two about hamburgers in Vancouver will lament the loss of the original Save On Meats lunch counter. I was lucky enough to experience three times, maybe four, before it shut down for good.

Lifer servers and cooks worked that counter producing the holy grail of burgers, juicy but not overcooked, on a perfect bun, served with delicious fries made golden with fresh grease. It truly was the best burger I've ever had. Ever. Had. And it was sad to see it go.

And then this guy named Mark Brand steps in and signs a bazillion year long lease and promised to (or was forced to, depending on who you talk to) make a business that paid homage to the original Save On Meats. I hoped, nay, prayed that would be a good thing.

Firstly, though it seems like a real life diner, the original was nothing like this. It's not even a reasonable facsimile. It's a saccharine version, romanticized, with signs promising the option for you to "build your perfect burger" but if you were to ask to be able to do such a thing your server will tell you that's not possible, you will get the burger they bring you. The original also didn't have a gaggle of hip lunch counter types clogging up every available seat while a second gaggle of hipsters check their iPhones while waiting in line for the next available booth.

I think one of the things that bothers me the most about the new Save On Meats is that they call their burger "'THE' Burger" which it is anything but. I also don't like that they give no indication of what comes on the burger beyond bacon and cheese.

They are clear about one thing though, that the name Save On Meats is a license to print money.

So here's the burger. When the menu says it comes with cheese they mean they take pinch of grated cheese and dump it lightly on the burger. There's hardly enough to take a picture of never mind taste. And the bacon is paper thin and flavourless. The one thing they do give you in grand quantities is bun. The bun is the unsung hero of any good burger, kind of like the drummer in a band. Many might think the drummer an expendable commodity, a guy that hangs around with musicians, something that accompanies the guys who actually make the music. Like the bun, it's simply a vehicle for delivering the meat and toppings and can be discounted for its secondary roll. Not true. The bun can make or break a burger. The most delicious ground chuck, thick, melted cheese, home made ketchup, perfectly translucent fried onions, can all be wasted if the bun is too thick, too dry, too soft.

Save On Meats takes a thick bun that's out of proportion to the slim patty and is quite dry and actually has a flavour that overpowers that of the meat and toppings. I'd call it a bad compliment to the rest of the burger if the rest of the burger wasn't also a disappointment. The patty was thin and dry. The toppings tasteless. The suggestion that there's cheese on it is a joke. I found myself adding a generous dose of mustard so that the inside of my mouth wasn't sucked dry by the bun and to give the burger some flavour.

I was reminded as I expressed my disappointment that the burger was only $6 but a good deal is only a good deal, though, if you enjoy what you're buying. I didn't feel ripped off. I just thought the burger was worth what I paid for it. I'd rather pay a buck or two more and get something better. For $6 I'd have been better off loading up on double cheeseburgers at McDonald's.

I've read the reviews. I know a lot of people are raving about the new Save On Meats burger but I just don't see it. Cheap or not, the burger just isn't that good. I wish it was.

Of Lambs and Lions...

It hurt to review the burger at the Three Lions Cafe on Broadway at Ontario. It hurt because the food at Three Lions is generally pretty good. Why would I order a burger over bangers and mash? Or curry chips? But it would appear I'm on a mission to find excellent burgers in Vancouver and so I invested in the lamb burger. With cheese.

I already knew the food here was generally pretty good so I had high expectations for the burger too. That could work against it, the expectations. The burger almost needs to be brilliant just to live up to the preconceived notion of it being "good."

The waitress copped to being a vegetarian when I asked her if the lamb was worth the extra buck. She had to fetch someone else off the staff to give me an honest opinion. He said, "Yes. Yes it is," and then mumbled something about Guiness and cheese and juicy and gravy. It was all a blur but the one thing that was clear was that he liked this burger and his like of it seemed genuine.

These pictures don't do the burger justice. That gravy infused cheese was hypnotic. It seemed forever deep and impossibly beautiful in its spectrum of dark meaty delight to golden cheesy lightness. Biting into it all was a pleasure. The bun was soft as a plush busom and had a perfect neutrality to it that didn't compete with the flavours it was a vessel for. Fresh tomatoes and crisp greens as subtle companions made for a nicely balanced relationship between burger and condiments. It would appear the patty has been touched by caring human hands and not the product of a lab or assembly line.

Is it burger perfection? Not quite. It wasn't too expensive. It was deliciously prepared. I'd have another in a heartbeat. I will say that the idea of a lamb burger seems a little pretentious for what a burger represents. There are any number of four star chefs that have turned their attention to burgers at one point or another making them out of Kobe beef or similar in an effort to find the burger to rule all burgers but that may be too much. A burger should be made of beef. I think the best beef patty will be greasier and less "delicious" than a lamb patty but in the spirit of a good hamburger I think the beef patty would be more soulful to eat, if that makes sense. I'd like to go back to to Three Lions Cafe and try a beef burger. I don't think it comes with the acid trip cheese and gravy treatment but I bet it's a better burger than this one, and this one was pretty damned good.

A Beautiful Thing

Let's not be snobs here. Hamburgers are far from a high brow item. They are an accessible and reasonably affordable way to produce a portable and easily prepared food item. There have been others and depending on where you live the other forms of quickly made food items may still reign supreme. In New York you'd be eating a slice of pizza, or in San Francisco you'd be eating burritos or fish tacos. In Paris it would be ham and cheese baguette sandwiches. Toronto is home to the widest spread network of hot dog vendor carts in the world. But the award for ubiquity most definitely goes to burgers. With rare exceptions it is the chosen battle ground for the plethora of fast food purveyors on this continent and none of this suggests for a second that a fast food burger is necessarily a bad burger. If anyone should have figured out how to make something nearly perfectly it would be someone who has sold millions or billions of said item.

So Harvey's, what do you have for us?

Made to order is a good start. You'll see burgers half cooking away in anticipation of a burger rush and maybe some fries in the hopper slowly drying out under heat lamps but these are sins you afford a fast food chain because you're more likely to tolerate a slightly less glistening golden french fry than an extra two minutes waiting in line to be fed. The burgers, however, are never under heat lamps or in warming trays which puts Harvey's ahead of a lot of other fast food restaurants and they make each one to order. Sure, other places will, or at least can, do that for you to but it's off in a secret bunker deep in the kitchen behind a wall of beeping stainless steel machines and computer screens relaying complex orders to a small army of pimply faced teens working like ants to bring the ingredients to each order neatly into a small paper bag that will transport it to your car efficiently. You can ask for pickles at other places but at Harvey's you get to play Temporary Restaurant Manager and direct the one lowly worker to put an extra pickle on your burger, or lots of ketchup but just a little mustard. It's a small thing but it's a good thing.

It's a beautiful thing.

The other thing that is great about Harvey's is you can get onion rings with your burger instead of fries. I suppose that's only a big deal if you like onion rings. Or if you've for some dumb reason decided to start reviewing burgers and have eaten more fries than you would normally enjoy over a couple of weeks.

Of course "presentation" suffers a bit in the fast food world.

I guess one of the reasons I've decided to discuss a fast food burger so early in this blog is so others have a frame of reference. If I say I love this burger and you hate it (because you've more likely tried it than a burger from some joint on Granville) you'll get an idea of where I'm coming from.

I like this burger.

Harvey's has it figured out. I've had better burgers, yes, but for consistency, balance of flavours, juiciness, bun consistency, etc, (or "extra etc." if your taste is so inclined) (I mean, who puts "etc" on a burger?) (I suppose it would have easier to just backspace "etc" out of that sentence, but it's important that you know I don't take this too seriously, "etc" is just about the worst descriptor one could put into a review, the onus is on the reviewer to identify specifics, not grand gestures about whatever may or may not be a part of whatever it is being reviewed etc.) oh yeah, burger review, the Harvey's burger is a very pleasant experience. They've nailed the balance between patty and bun and their ingredients are fresh, the cheese is cheesie, and at $8.19 for a classic cheeseburger with onion rings and a drink it isn't outrageously expensive either.

I will point out that they burned my bun a bit. I guess that adds a human element to a big corporate burger making machine. They haven't done it to me before and maybe they'll never do it to me again. If only they knew the pressure they were under to produce a perfect burger for a review they might not have made this mistake this time either. Oh well.

The (In)Famous Warehouse Vancouver

I should mention that I know where there are a couple of burger gems in this city but as this culinary adventure begins I'm optimistic that there will be burger genius randomly discovered by going to places I've never been to before. Enter The Famous Warehouse on Granville Street. How bad could it be? How brilliant could it be?

There's a trend around the Granville Street area to offer a flat rate menu. I've seen it a couple of times. I like this idea. Food was getting out of hand expensive in some places and I missed the affordable comfort food that used to be common place in pubs, bars, whatever. The bars that present this option are dear to my heart because it's precisely this kind of place where you'll find yourself, after work, an extra couple beer specials into an evening, and you'll realize you haven't eaten yet and filling that void deep inside with something other than liquid would probably be a good idea. I've spent a couple of nights at The Moose just a block away from the Warehouse where everything on the menu is $5.95 but the Warehouse decided to one up them by going a buck shy of that already ridiculously low price.

Goddamned $4.95 for everything. All day. Can that be good?

There's a lot of stuff on this menu and nestled deep in the middle of the right hand side was this promise of a pretty stellar burger. And fries too. For less than five bucks. And it looked delicious.

The menu didn't mention it but the onions were fried. That can only be a good thing. And look at that big chunk of bacon hanging out of there. The bun was, as the menu suggested, rustic. It all piled up to a pretty majestic mountain range of fries and burger. Seriously, look at that picture of the burger. It looks fantastic.

And that's where I should have left it.

Sometimes the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. The patty was thick. The bacon elegantly strewn across it like the bare thigh of a gold digger looking to have the patty take her home for some sinful act. There was a delicate kiss of mayo along the edge of the bun. There was a promise of bun crunchiness encasing a light cloud juice absorbing fluffiness. It should have come together to build something incredible. But it didn't.

What went wrong? I guess I should accept that for the price you can't expect a whole lot but when you look at this burger you can see they invested. World Famous knows they are going to lose money on this burger but they will make it back when you buy a second, or a third beer. But the patty was store bought. You could see the machine formed edges. The bacon was picture perfect but dry. How does something that is composed mostly of glistening, delicious fat end up being dry? Not crispy. I understand crispy. It was just dry. Oh, and it lacked the most important thing bacon should have, bacon flavour. It tasted like cardboard. The whole mess just mashed up into a relatively uninspired and dry goop. Thankfully there was beer to wash it down (and add flavour).

And the fries. Let it be understood that when I wake up I take a good three licks off the salt lick I keep next to my bed just to get the day started. I use too much salt in most everything I make. These fries came "seasoned" and I found I fought the amount of salt that came on them. Too much. Is that possible? Too much salt? Apparently. And it surprised me.

But it was $5. And they have Granville Island IPA on tap. That almost makes it tolerable. Okay, I'm lying. It sucked. But the IPA was good.