Now nonsense isn't new to me
I know my head
I know my feet
But mischief knocked me in the knees
So just let go
Just let go
Another Tuesday... another Taste! I'm extremely pleased our entry this week takes us to one of the cooler streets in the very centre of this large megalopolis we call Toronto (insert your film joke here if you please).
The street I'm referring to of course is St. Nicholas Street... a north-south side path (southbound it eventually gives up and just becomes an alleyway) pressed between the high octane stretches of Bay and Yonge. Yet, St. Nicholas Street has this wonderful power of feeling so distant from that downtown bustle. Something about the rows of old brick townhouses, the iron fences, the globe-shaped street lamps, how the street itself appears to narrow every step south you take... it's so magically out of place among the surrounding concrete towers young and old.
Condo development (please try to act shocked) threatened to erase all of this about a decade or so ago... yet in a rare miracle for the soul of the city, the plans were mostly scrapped and much of what would've been lost still remains today. This is the kind of stuff that still makes Toronto cool: sneaky little downtown streets like this that have history and character, uniqueness and charm. You can't strip all that away and think a modern artificial vibe is an on-par replacement. That's when a city stops being a city and just a place to exist.
That latest remark on urban existentialism now out of the way (surely what people come to a food review for)... lets talk about Cabano's Cheeseburgers! Another place I'd say I discovered via social media word of mouth: I'd heard the name several times previously and knew it was in my old teenage neighbourhood... it just so happens I rarely visit the area of my high school haunts anymore, thus why this took a while.
It does seem Cabano's (which was previously known as "Cabano's Comfort Food") opened up on St. Nicholas sometime in either late 2017 or early 2018, the brainchild of chef/owner Kevin Boyd who previously worked the kitchens of highly regarded restaurants in Chicago. Boyd first opened Cabano's up in Vaughan a couple years earlier, though finding more concrete information about that location (or any of these other phantom ones throughout Toronto that it seems Cabano's have also had) is strangely vague and difficult. Even looking at the previous years in Google Street View yields hardly a scrap of evidence of any Cabano's location, while their actual website for the actual Cabano's that currently exists gives only an elegant 404 about how the website has expired. Mysterious!
Well, we know the St. Nicholas location exists for sure (probably) and so that's where I found myself one recent Saturday in the early evening... I mean it was just after 5pm which isn't quite early evening, but it was also already completely dark outside making it hard to describe as "late afternoon." November! Gotta love it.
There's definitely a studio loft type of vibe to the place. The brick walls (which does match the building itself), the high chairs and thin sleek wooden counters. A thin screen television showing random Saturday afternoon hockey (which I guess is a thing?). Plus a touch of a street art mural to give it all some character rather than feeling like you're in a spacious Starbucks.
If a burger place is offering any kind of fries with a cheese sauce... odds are its going to find a way into my review (and my stomach). Cabano's wisely offers theirs as both part of a chili fries dish or just a side of said cheese sauce, which you see here. On first taste it seems like a typical nacho cheese-like sauce with its thinness and bright yellow cheddar flavour. However, there was a sneaky little spice to it on the back end... a little sharp tingle of something just enough to wave at you from a distance. Very peculiar but definitely a positive for this cheese sauce, which I did quite like. It's good for tasting absolutely how it looks, but without getting clumpy, too oily or tasting plasticky in any way.
The fries (which are described as 'beef tallow') are nice and salty, with some floppiness to them but also lots of crispy edges. It is nice to see so many of these new burger places (I know Cabano's has been around longer but still) really treat french fries as far more than an afterthought, which you do see quite often in both fast food chains and certain old school places. These are great fries too! And they keep that flavour and crispiness even once cold. So far, so good. Very good, even.
So I confess to, in the moment, not noticing that the cheese is actually below the beef patties not on top... which is apparently a thing that Cabano's does intentionally. Something akin to "letting the cheese hit/coat your taste buds first" to (badly) paraphrase Chef Boyd. Well I can't really comment on that specifically since... I um... didn't realize it was on the bottom... but for curiousity's sake I can speculate exactly how they do that. Do they put the cheese on the bun first and then the hot beef patty on top, allowing the recently grilled side to melt said cheese quicker? Or, do they cook a cheeseburger normally (cheese on the flipped side that's already cooked) but then flip it again so that the already melted cheese side is now touching the bottom bun instead of the top? Does either method offer an advantage over the other? Is there a third way of doing this that I haven't even thought of?
Oh right, the actual cheeseburger. This is indeed their namesake Cabano burger, with two beef patties, an easy-to-rant-about cheese, shredded lettuce, burger sauce and, most intriguing of all... deep fried jalapenos.
Despite the visible experiments in cheese melting, this fromage is still way more melted than any big chain fast food burger you're likely to find.
This burger here is, well... this is an extremely good cheeseburger. Extremely good seems the perfect description, really. I've reviewed a lot of smash burgers in the past year or so, enough to where I can really separate the fairly generic quality ones (which for the most part are still okay) from the places that either really get it precisely right, or have a different type of spin on it that itself is interesting and tasty.
Cabano's is more that second category, though not to take anything away from their clear dedication to the craft of (burger) smashing. It hits all the right smash burger beats: melted American cheese coating the mouth, the greasy griddle taste running through the beef, the shredded lettuce is definitely more of a classic cheeseburger touch, the squishy, lightly sweet potato bun... it's all there and all done very well.
The extra element I really like, on Cabano's Cheeseburger's Cabano Burger (say that fast several times) are the deep fried jalapenos on here. A lot of places would treat such a topping on a burger as a novelty, giving it a minimal presence and not much conceptual thought. Not this one. The deep fried slices of jalapeno are actually quite small and plentiful, giving both a consistent taste and texture throughout this burger. They're crispy! Which is just delightful. Plus, the spice itself is rather sneaky (smaller bits after all, not large and prominent) combining crunch and noticeable heat into a cheeseburger that is already doing a lot of things right.
Finally, I will say that the most dominant flavour here is that beef... which shouldn't be all that surprising with a double patty. Some great lingering taste in the mouth (I swear I got a hint of onion in the patty... maybe onion powder or something of the like), the beef itself is quite juicy and firm (though crumbly enough to pull apart) and it also just smells like a classic cheeseburger. I couldn't help but think, considering the similar construction, that this was a McDonald's Big Mac actually done well: most of those same elements only done with better quality (and fresher) ingredients and much more care. I didn't get much a sense of Cabano's burger sauce and the shredded nature of the lettuce does lend itself to seeming more of an afterthought than a real factor on this thing... but that's all I can really quibble with. The rest is simply excellent.
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Overall! A definite winner. There are so many damned exceptional cheeseburgers in this damned enormous city now that I've completely lost any sense of which one is the best/my personal favourite. This Cabano's wouldn't take the crown for me... but without question it's on the edges of that conversation. Combining great execution with a sharp creative add (the little fried jalapenos) I'd absolutely recommend checking this one out.
Everything was on point. Good fries, good cheese sauce... and most importantly a fantastic smash burger that is more than good enough to separate itself from a still rapidly expanding herd. Give them a visit! And also take the time to look around St. Nicholas Street. Nowhere like it in the downtown core of Toronto.
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Reviewsmas!
As I mentioned last week, I've been doing Reviewsmas! 12 reviews in 12 days, of which this article you're reading now is the eleventh day (11 pipers piping and what not). Here are the other ten!
#2: Crown and Dragon Chicken Wings
#7: Detroit Pizzeria Deep Dish Pizza
#8: Euro Food Adventure Finale
#9: Shake Shack Chicken Avocado Sandwich
Tuesday Tune
It's been the year of R.E.M for whatever reason...
That's it for this week! We'll have the grand conclusion of Reviewsmas tomorrow, but until then... stay safe, stay warm and most of all... don't spill that mustard.
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