The Burger's Priest Toronto: It's so good I have the stains to prove it

I don't know much about fancy burgers and I'm not a beef purist, so you can go ahead and proceed to eat my shorts when you tell me I should buy a plain burger at a joint like this. I like bacon, I like cheese and I do what I want, so you can spend your hard earned cash however you want too.

Anyway, as far as I can tell the basic premise of The Burger's Priest is American style cheeseburgers, cooked on a flat top and always fresh not frozen. Nothing processed or pre-made (I guess aside from the sliced cheese (but they do apparently use fresh cheese to stuff the mushrooms?)) just fresh, clever and tasty options put together the way you want.

On top of the standard cheeseburger you can get stuff like deep fried jalapenos, bacon, your patty fried in ballpark mustard, grilled cheese as the buns and this crazy cheese stuffed mushroom, breaded and deep fried. They call that "The Option" and you can get it on anything or as a vegetarian...er option. There's a secret menu as well, so you can go ahead and scour the net for the details so you can impress your friends when you get there.

Like a lot of places downtown this one is kind of a shoe box with nowhere to sit, so you basically gotta make your order, wait outside until its ready, then enjoy it on a a curb outside next to a homeless dude. Yes there was a huge line and the place was busy, but since they're not frying frozen meat into oblivion the turn around is actually pretty quick. There were about 5 people behind this tiny counter working hard squashing down and flipping those fresh patties. all part of the experience right?



Being as charismatic as I am, of course I actually managed to arrive late and totally cut in front of like 15 people while kicking over the dog-water drinking bowl next to the outside lineup. Either Canadians really are that nice or they were so shocked that I pulled a smooth move like that, that they were speechless. After ordering, I then proceeded to stand outside posted up against the doorway, in the puddle of water, right in front of the people I just cut in front of (like a Boss).



The "American style" burgers there are kind of like a more creative Five Guys but actually good...just as expensive though. Nice fresh balls of ground beef that are loosely packed, thrown on the grill, squashed down and in my case cooked to a medium rare. You can also get it jarge-style, which is when they throw it down into ballpark mustard and squash it down on that. It's not often that you can get something cooked "a bit rare" in Toronto without the whole diarrhea thing (just kidding...or am I?), but their meat is legit and you didn't need to fry the hell out of it.

For all you dragonboaters out there it's just up the road from Ashbridge's Bay too, sandwiched between the KFC and Harvey's on Queen St. (go figure). I can see myself totally cancelling out any 3 km post-practice runs in the near future since the distance to Priest is actually shorter than even half the run itself. BTW, I managed 17 mins flat for 3.1 km this week.

Anyway, here's what the burgers look like.



The Priest off the standard menu: fresh beef patty, cheese, stuffed mushroom, bacon, onion, lettuce and tomatoes. Let me tell you that the cheese stuffed mushroom tastes good...real good. I'll probably get 2 next time.

This will run you $12 with the extra bacon, but fortunately the stains on my shorts were free. A better view...



Below off the secret menu is a burger with all the options possible except the stuffed mushroom. It's called The Vatican City: two grilled cheese sandwiches made with burger buns as the bread, stuffed with two fresh burger patties jarge-style, bacon, lettuce, tomato, onions, cheese and fried jalapenos.

The co-captain of Swordfish got this burger - that's why he's our captain (and jacked).

It'll run you a smooth $15 after the extra burger swag.



All in all I think I prefer that style of burger over something like Woody's or Johnny's North End. But watch out, because just like Krispy Kreme you can probably eat a half dozen or so like two of them before realizing what just happened.

Also, the Jazz Festival also started that night too and we managed to check out the over-crowded streets of Toronto once again. I "saw" Aretha Franklin for a bit, and by that I mean that it was so crowded that we couldn't really get near the stage and just watched her briefly on some big screen setup in the middle of a street (in yet another crowd). We were so far away from the action that I couldn't actually even see her broken cankle in person, but only heard the sounds coming from a stage somewhere off in the distance. Just like last week in Burlington, people were just everywhere.

Let me tell you that she really is a diva - she made people wait over an hour before actually coming on, then did about 3 songs, left the stage to go and eat spaghetti, then came back on to finish her set...at least this is what I perceived to have happened, but I could be wrong...

People just love free events.



Bixi is pretty dumb... Up next: Big Smoke Burger.