The Tuesday Taste: Dairy Queen!

 

 

Shakey threw a party

that lasted all night

Everybody drank a lot

of something nice

There was an old fashioned band of married men

Looking up to me for encouragement 

It was so-so 

 

Another Tuesday, another Taste! It was a sad week for fans of the Toronto Raptors, who watched their beloved team fall in six games to the Philadelphia 76ers and their particularly annoying brand of complainy basketball. Still a great season for the Raps though, and with such a bright promising future on their horizon I thought perhaps this week I'd treat myself to a little dessert for the review. 

What? No, your segway was clunky! 

Awkward transitions aside, this week we're trying Dairy Queen. Now this is a fast food franchise I have an association with, especially the exact location I ended up visiting for this review. I spent a lot of my teen years in downtown Toronto as you may know, and once I really started spreading my bicycle wings I quickly learned of the completely different world that exists on the eastern side of the Prince Edward Viaduct... this particular Dairy Queen being an early landmark of that.

The story of DQ itself is an atypical one for fast food restaurants. They supposedly claim to have invented the concept of soft serve ice cream when they founded in the late 1930s, a claim which is disputed by other bits of evidence such as Charles Taylor's ice cream machine patent in 1926 (McDonald's uses this particular machine to this day). There's also some myth about Margaret Thatcher working as a food chemist in the 1940s and I can't even finish this sentence with a joke it's so ridiculous. 

Regardless, DQ first came into existence in the early 1940s and into prominence within the end of that decade, with the first Canadian location opening in 1953 in Melville, Saskatchewan (of all places). The rest of the tale is a predictably corporate one: big company buys the franchise out, bigger company buys them, unprofitable locations get shut down etc etc. How exhilarating. Let's get back to my teen years.    

There weren't many Dairy Queens in Toronto in the early 2000s (there still aren't) and so having a friend who lived on Mortimer Avenue, I'd usually treat myself with a Blizzard when I went to visit him. Well, all these years later that very same location right on the north-eastern corner of Broadview and Mortimer is still going strong. So, for the first time in possibly a decade I walked into a Dairy Queen ready to order some of that classic soft serve.      

It's important to note that different locations of Dairy Queen offer different items, or basically that some outposts only have their ice cream and dessert items available and not any of their burgers or fries. The Mortimer and Broadview one features the whole backyard, and so I hoped to taste the best of both worlds. Damn, I miss Star Trek. Rest in peace. Here's the burger:

 

 

Well... it certainly looks the part: all that cheese and mushroomey sauce genuinely dripping off this thing. I went for one of their "Stackburgers", and as an aside does it seem extremely bizarre how none their burger options (aside from the kid's menu I figure) offer a sandwich with a single patty? I'm not really a double burger guy (with celestial exceptions) and DQ's entire menu is double or triple patty burgers. Weird stuff. 

Anyhow, I went for the mushroom cheeseburger and lets start with the positives: legit mushrooms, plump, nicely sauteed and very flavourful. I'm certainly wary of vegetables from big fast food chains as their freshness/quality often drifts into "dry and/or gross" territory, but these mushrooms (even if likely previously frozen) skillfully maximized their presence. This is a very rich burger and unfortunately the biggest weakness conceptually is how there just seems to be one little something that's missing. An onion ring? Lettuce? Tangy BBQ sauce? Something with crunch? It's a puzzle with a gnawing void in the center. 

As is, we've got two burger patties, processed white cheese, mushrooms and mayonnaise. Lots and lots of mayonnaise. Hey now, I do like me some mayo in unhealthily healthy proportions, but this particular sauce has that weirdly sweet "this has been left out in the sun" type of taste. The cheese exists merely for gooey texture, the bun is fairly stiff and forgettable (lightly grilled in an attempt to save it, thus the marks on top, but alas)... so it all comes down to the beef itself. 

It reminds me of those sausage patties you find in a breakfast sandwich: the taste of a greasy grill is prominent and there's a similar type of fatty juiciness in each bite. Don't get me wrong, I would take this burger over the bland mince-beef of Burger King or a chemically designed McDonald's offering... but this DQ burger really lacked anything beyond grill grease, oily cheesy goo, and a mushroomy mayo disguise. Not terrible, and I wouldn't turn up my nose if offered another, but I wouldn't think of seeking it out either. 

 

 

Lets hit up Dairy Queen's main attraction, the ice cream. Did you know that legally Dairy Queen cannot call any of their products "ice cream"? It's true. Not off to an encouraging start! Okay actually, this is because soft serve contains far less milkfat than regular ice cream (about 1/3 the amount). Did you also know that what gives soft serve it's distinctively lighter texture is because of air volume? It also has to be stored above freezing temperatures to avoid solidifying. Science! I'll spare you the ingredients of the mix that makes the magic happen before we all lose our appetites. 

I went for a Turtles Blizzard and they were so happy together. *Clears throat*. First off, it'd been a while since I'd had soft serve ice cream and that irresistibly creamy poof that fills your mouth immediately hit me. It certainly lacks the dense flavour of high quality ice cream... that taste that lasts in your mouth like a long conversation with an old friend. Soft serve is more like a quick hello: you run into somebody on the street and catch up a bit for a moment. Enjoyable in its own way. 

Adding Turtles (and that chocolate-pecan goodness) to this equation was also an inspired choice I strongly recommend. More fun facts: statistically the most popular Blizzard is the Oreo one (I saw about three different Oreo combinations so I believe it) and while I understand that appeal personally I've never really been a big fan of Oreos... I find them too dry. Hurl your pitchforks at me accordingly.

Now, the real problem with DQ's Blizzard is how quickly it melts. I mean, I have to critique something... how the hell do you criticize freaking ice cream(ish-product)? Back in my absurdly skinny days, I'd get the biggest goddamn sized Blizzard and inhale the whole thing before it had a chance to melt. Now I'm in my mid 30s, I can't eat like a bottomless hole anymore without consequences in the belly region, so I went for a 'medium' size. Which was still too much, as this tragic photo will show.

 

 

Yeah, nobody wants that. In my defense, I wanted to eat the burger while it was still warm and I hoped the early May winds here in Toronto would keep my second course properly chilled. Sadly no... this was a goopy mess about fifteen minutes later. Unlike regular ice cream, which once liquefied can still be a delightful dessert soup... liquid DQ soft serve is not something I'd willingly allow entry into my mouth hole. It reminds me a bit of a sugar cereal when the milk and remaining cereal parts have merged into a lukewarm mush, a soggy monstrosity... tasting completely unlike either originator of the enterprise. 

 

Overall... burger meh... Blizzard yes? I suppose that's my general assessment. It's a very one dimensional type of "ice cream" flavour in that nothing lingers whatsoever beyond the fading taste of cream... but it's truly enjoyable when fresh off the counter (within that sweet spot of time before it oozes away). The burger... whatever. I've had much worse but beyond a disc encapsulation of a greasy spoon there's nothing super interesting about it.     

 

Burnt Ends -- Yes, I still continue to torture myself with episodes of Star Trek: Picard. Read my latest review of episodes 6 + 7 here! As I write this current sentence early Monday afternoon, I have yet to watch episodes 8 and 9... which await on my hard drive like a dagger of doom twirling above my poor brain. I intend to watch them before this article goes live, so Future Me will write a single sentence below to later express my thoughts after watching those two episodes:

Holy fucking moly can Star Trek just die now, please. 

 

Gerrard Square Ain't Square -- It's not a part of the east end I venture to often but I can vouch that Gerrard Street East has some uniquely changing vibes as you pass by. East Chinatown comes to mind of course, but on the other side you have Little India between Greenwood and Coxwell (I've seen this street popping well past 2am), the artsy Redwood Theatre right near Greenwood, then a sleepy residential stretch as a buffer before this emerging Gerrard Square/North Leslieville/East Riverside/whatever stretch. There's a neat balance of established longtime neighbourhood staples and new "hip" restaurants, well captured by this Toronto Star article, which really serves a nice reminder how communities grow organically because of people making it so. This is what makes a neighbourhood and even a city unique and appealing, not the boardroom designs of condo developers looking for some quick cynical bucks.    

Naturally, a condo development is being planned across from Gerrard Square. Sigh. Nevertheless, definitely a few places in that Star article I need to check out for myself.    

 

This Week's No Context Looney Tunes Image -- 

 

   

 

Tuesday Sip -- If it's clear and yella, you've got juice there fella! If it's murky and brown, you're in cider town!

 

This reminds me of those frozen cans of concentrate juice you buy and dethaw in the sink, then mix with tons of water of course. There's an initial sweet tang but little lasting crispness until an awkward alcohol poke fills the empty room. Bit of a letdown. It's a 7 percenter cider and you do get that in the aftertaste a bit, it's just kinda isolated without anything to support it. Brain, you can stay but I'm leaving. 

 

Tuesday Tune -- I've heard as a common question: "which celebrity's death hit you the hardest?". For me in my adult life, it was David Bowie... although in the moment I didn't realize it. I'd been a pretty casual fan up until then... definitely loving certain albums (Ziggy, Low, Hunky Dory). After his death in January 2016 suddenly I found myself for a solid month listening to nothing but Bowie records... both the ones I already knew and others I hadn't given much time to (Station to Station for example). I didn't even realize I was doing it! But then once I did, it truly hit me how much I loved the music this man had created... even if he himself didn't remember making some of it (again, Station to Station).

So enjoy this great tune, the opening track on the very damn good Aladdin Sane... he could eat you with a fork and spoon but he's only taking care of the room.

 

 

That's it for me this week! I feel like since I started doing these again that they've been too long maybe? Like I'm making up for the lost time by breaking my Word Counter? If these are indeed too verbose please me know, but either way hope you've enjoyed reading it and we'll be back next time! Until then, be kind, be well, stay safe and don't spill that mustard.