Build your own burger

Le Gourmet Burger lets you pick your
toppings from the patty up

by BARTEK KOMOROWSKI

For reasons I cannot grasp, it’s hard to get a good burger in this town. When I heard of the new Le Gourmet Burger, near Concordia’s downtown campus, I had a glimmer of hope that finally somebody in Montreal might get it right. I promptly set out to investigate.

For my late lunch mission to Le Gourmet Burger, I recruited my friend Krzysztof as an authority on veggie burgers, for the benefit of the meat-disdaining readers of this paper. Krzysztof is a fellow Polak who, much to my chagrin, has forsaken our glorious sausage-munching heritage to become a vegetarian. Having sworn off animal murder over a decade ago, he has eaten his fare share of veggie burgers and is in a much better position than I to assess their quality. For once, his vegetarianism became useful to me!

The concept at Le Gourmet Burger is simple enough. For five bucks, you get a generously sized patty of beef, chicken or veggie pâté packed into a brioche bun with sliced tomato, lettuce and caramelized onions. For those with a smaller appetite, there is a $2 mini burger that is about half the size. To your basic burger, you add your choice of cheeses and condiments.

There is an impressive selection of 10 cheeses to choose from, ranging from the basic cheddar and Monterrey Jack ($1) through Swiss, blue, smoked Gouda, provolone and Brie ($2), to premium choices such as chèvre, Boursin, and St-Guillaume ($3). The inclusion of the creamy and garlicky Boursin strikes me as a particularly original and saliva-inducing idea.

The selection of 15 condiments includes a few standard items such as bacon, pickle and fried mushrooms, a few not-so-standard items such as guacamole, hummus, fried egg and marinated eggplant, and a few truly original items such as pickled beets and fig and walnut confit (all toppings $1 except mushrooms and fig and walnut confiture $2). If you want to add some bling to your burger, you may also request a glug of truffle oil ($3) or a small slab of foie gras ($5).

I ordered the beef burger with smoked Gouda, bacon and fried mushrooms. The burger that arrived some minutes later at my tiny table looked good—a handsome brioche-type bun, a robustly sized patty, a thick slab of the smoked cheese and several slices of bacon, together emitting a tantalizingly smoky aroma. Saliva gushed inside my mouth. Was I about to be blasted to burger nirvana? Alas, no.

For all its nice-looking ingredients, this burger failed to take off. This I blame on the patty, which was far too dry. I don’t think it was overcooked; rather, it was just too lean. I do not go out for burgers in hopes of doing my arteries a favour. Gimme some fat!

My accomplice Krzysztof ordered a veggie burger topped with blue cheese and the fig and walnut confit. He was quite pleased with his burger, and particularly with the rich, moist slab of veggie pâté that was his patty. I had a couple of bites and I must concur that it was quite good—better than my beef patty, I’m tempted to say. As with the Gouda on my burger, the blue cheese was piled on generously. Unfortunately, it overpowered the smear of fig and walnut confit. This however was not so much the restaurant’s fault as it was a poor choice of toppings on the customer’s part (no offence, bro). I think a more mild, creamy cheese, such as Brie or chèvre, would have better complemented the subtle fig and walnut flavours.

We both very much enjoyed our sides of sweet potato fries, served in a paper cone ($3). They were covered in a light, delightfully crispy batter and perfectly fried in fresh oil. We dunked these in the various addictively flavoured mayonnaises that were available from pumps at the counter. I also smothered my stillborn patty with one of these, the “spicy” mayonnaise, hoping it would reanimate my burger by compensating for its lack of fat. This approach, I admit, yielded limited results.

It’s probably not worth going out of your way to visit Le Gourmet Burger. But, if you happen to be near Concordia and happen to have a craving for a burger—especially a veggie burger—it might not hurt to stop by.