In a while will the smile on my face
turn to plaster?
Stick around while the clown who is sick
does the trick of disaster
For the race of my head and my face
is moving much faster
Is it strange I should change I don't know
Why don't you ask her?
Another Tuesday... another Taste. Another burger joint with a name that immediately reminds me of a song:
Hey, I like that one a hell of a lot more than "Happy" by Pharell. But will this Riverside burger (coincidentally across the street) likewise be better or at least as good? We're about to find out.
Much like Alpha's Shawarma last week (which feels like three months ago) backstory information on Riverside Burgers is not abundant on them interwebs... so it's back to Sherlock Holmes-like deduction! (forget this food reviewing thing I'm just gonna write mystery fiction instead). We know for sure that Riverside Burgers began its existence at Queen and Broadview in late 2019, replacing another longtime neighbourhood burger spot called 'Burger Shoppe' which was part of the now defunct BQM chain (I'm also pretty sure I briefly worked with one of the founders of Burger Shoppe when I was a teenager and he left the Drake Hotel to get into the burger game).
Thing is, in 2019 when BQM Burger Shoppe turned into 'Riverside Burgers' they pretty much kept the same sign design, only adjusting the font and the actual name. At the time I recall noticing the change and just assumed it was a rebranding rather than a totally new and different thing. Adding more to the eyebrow raising is when you compare their menus: both places feature(d) an item called the "Riverside Burger" with the exact same toppings... not to mention the old "BQM Burger" is identical to Riverside's "Broadview Burger". Hmmm!
None of this really matters since like I said, BQM closed it's last official location over half a decade ago... I'm just saying there's most likely some kind of lingering affiliation/inspiration going on here.
But there's more! Riverside Burgers' website lists a second location on King Street West near Dufferin... a location I can find no evidence actually exists (I mean I could call the number on the website but... well I hate calling people). Google Maps has this King West address currently listed as a momo restaurant and the photos I can find appear to back up that reality. I did stumble upon a stray photo from 2024 of a gray building in a state of renovation with a "Riverside Burgers" sign out front... and that's all I got. See? It's a great beginning for a fictional mystery tale... "The Problem of the Phantom Patty"...
Back to things that definitely exist (as in, not my mystery writer career) I remember BQM making some pretty tasty burgers, so if Riverside Burgers is on a similar level then this should be good! Walking in, Riverside Burgers is a very tight squeeze should there be more than one other patron inside with you. Truly they've optimized the amount of seating the best they can with the small red tables and chairs, plus the narrow counter by the front windows.
To my pleasant surprise they offer some impressively affordable walk-in burger combos on the sandwich board out front. Alas... I felt it made the most sense to try their namesake burger with a side of small fries, considerable savings be damned. The things I do for this gig...
The smell of beef and bacon on a sizzling griddle wafted through the
chilled air (unavoidable since when the place is that small you're by
default sitting next to the front door). After a decent wait (they were
steadily busy this particular Monday evening with walk-in orders and the
usual delivery fetchers) my meal arrived.
Starting with the french fries as we always do... these very much have your "skins on" type of grittier texture and flavour. Some good crispiness all the way through and nice fluffiness within, solid. I would say however that they're a bit too salty. Not anything close to a lethal dose or anything but it is consistency noticeable on every fry. Also on the oilier side. Still totally fine as fries I'd say. Nothing amazing just quite solid and with real potato flavour well above any frozen/fast food chain option.
Onto the namesake, the Riverside Burger. Beef patty, cheese (menu says mozzarella but that's clearly cheddar) bacon, shredded lettuce, one onion ring, BBQ sauce and a garlic aioli.
On first glance you can see the balance of things is quite askew here, as that's a lot of onion ring-plus-bun occupying the real estate. However this is not a smash burger (hooray a reprieve!) and so the beef patty is a bit thicker (5.5 oz according to the menu) than a single smash would be.
There's a lot to like about this burger without there being much to truly love. The beef itself is very tender though not all that juicy, giving it more of a chew. Fortunately the flavour of said beef is quite on point with distinct beefy grill taste and a peculiar lightness in spite of a notable fatty element (probably speaking to the strong quality of the meat itself).
Considering this isn't a very sauce-heavy burger either (I forgot there was even supposed to be BBQ on here until starting to write this) and the enormous onion ring... this thing could've been a crumbly dry slog. It isn't, thanks to the melted cheese existing primarily to soften the texture and a deceptive amount of the shredded lettuce (it must've been hiding in the center hole of the onion ring).
The garlic aioli is... well it has the similar off/sour zing of a McDonald's Big Mac Sauce and little actual garlicky punch. It's fine I suppose but not my preferred style of creamy garlic sauce. You get a lot of that onion ring also and it brings a really good hollow crunch with sweetness within, yet nothing all that noticeable in the batter itself or any kind of seasoning. Very average as an onion ring, so it's also fine. Same with the brioche bun: nice and soft, definitely fresh... but no hint of any buttery undercurrent to really bring it up a notch.
All of this is very 'just above average' for a more refined type of fast food burger except for the bacon, which they nail perfectly. Tender, greasy, very "bacony" (really the best term to describe it) with the right balance of fatty chew and crispiness. Plus, unlike many other bacon cheeseburgers... you can taste the bacon on every single bite. If their bacon is consistently like that, they could fill the Queen Street East void left by the now long deceased Rashers and also feature bacon sandwiches on their menu if they wanted.
Overall! These are always the toughest ones whether to recommend or not. It's a good burger, even very good in a few ways... but not truly great. The best aspects of it by far are the meats: excellent bacon and a terrific beef patty that I wish there was a little more of (and remember I'm the guy who usually doesn't go for double burgers).
It's too good to be forgettable but not good enough that I think I'll be craving it again in the future. This isn't one where hours later I found it's memory slowly growing on me either. If this were a pizza I'd be stamping the "B" grade on it with extra ink.
Hmmmm. Well... they're open late (a rarity on Queen East) and those sandwich board specials are rather solid for the good quality you're getting. Call it a 'soft' recommendation wherein Riverside Burgers isn't a burger you absolutely have to go out of your way to try... but if you're in the area (and not feeling a smash burger from Happy directly across the street) you won't be disappointed. This one neither drowned below or exceeded my baseline expectations, it landed exactly in that median.
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Closing Time
You see I wasn't even planning to write a review this week (despite having enough free time these days to probably write War And Peace if I wanted... ugh I hate winter). Then Sunday I got word of Steve's Music closing down nearly all their locations...
...then Monday (the day I'm frantically writing all this) I find out the Cineplex here in the Beaches is also shutting down imminently...
...and well, I didn't want to wait a week to get some thoughts in on all of this (plus who knows in the meantime what crazy shit might happen in the world to make all this seem even more trivial... what a time to be alive!).
I'm not really one who goes out to movie theatres all that often anymore, though that probably has more to do with me and my own interests rather than the state of the film industry and the movie theatre experience itself (which I hear can be frustrating). Anyhow, these guys below have far more knowledgeable insight and theories into that stuff specifically (it's a great watch I recommend it).
I think what I'm more interested/concerned with is what exactly replaces these things and (in the case of Steve's especially) just in general how fewer physical options there are throughout a city as massive as Toronto. We've lost quite a few great little music stores here in the East End in recent years (Cask, Scarborough Music School to name a couple) and Long and McQuade, while fine I guess, is an enormous company and so all things being even I'd much prefer to support a smaller more independent business... of which there are increasingly fewer and fewer to choose from (most of which are also now very far away from where I am).
Call it synonymous of a much much bigger problem that clearly exists with oligopolistic corporate capitalism here in 2026 (not to mention the difficulty for smaller stores competing against the massive convenience of online behemoths like Amazon, which is a different conversation entirely).
Likewise, I'm not shedding any tears for Cineplex as an entity losing a theatre... but it is unfortunate because it both takes away something distinctive about this area and creates a void for potential movie-going residents here in the East End who now have to travel either downtown or up to Eglinton Square/Golden Mile if they want to catch the latest blockbuster (there is the Fox sure but that's a different type of theatre). On public transit that could take an hour either direction, probably resulting in many of those people not wanting to even bother.
I guess what I'm getting at is... well my fear of this city becoming culturally diluted to the point of featuring nothing but the same generic big box everything stores, familiar brand restaurants and of course condos! Lots and lots of identically empty condos. Am I being alarmist? Oh definitely! The true soul of a place, a city, is never lost overnight. Yet time passes and one day you blink and realize most of it is indeed gone. For instance the area I lived in during high school is now nearly unrecognizable (slathered in characterless modern glass and concrete) which wasn't even two decades ago.
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Caps Off To Buck
Changing the subject drastically, legendary Blue Jays broadcaster Buck Martinez announced his retirement this past week. I'm certainly one of the many Jays fans who grew up with Buck (he was manager of the freaking team the first summer I really began following them!) and his genuine passion on the broadcast was such a big part of following the team and just summertime itself.
Sure, in later years he'd have his annoying 'old school baseball guy' moments and the voice could wear on the ears somewhat... but the times he would jump into some insightful tale about a game he played in 1982 or working with a pitcher he was catching, or just general baseball lore (he played in the majors at the same time as Willie Mays, Bob Gibson and Hank Aaron!) was truly priceless.
Cheers to a hell of a baseball life! I imagine there must be a spot waiting for him on the Level of Excellence sometime soon. In the meanwhile, a video of some of his best broadcast calls.
Tuesday Tune
I was absolutely certain I'd used this song before in one of the previous 145ish Tuesday reviews... but apparently not? Time to change that.
That's it for this one! Don't know when we'll be back again... maybe next week? Next month? Who knows! Depends how much I feel like leaving the house I suppose. Until I do! Stay safe, stay warm, fuck ICE and most of all... don't spill that mustard.
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