Burgers for the weekend
Burgers have come a long way from “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame-seed bun,” there’s a time and place for those, no doubt.
Fast food joints to upscale bistros make burgers, some refined and tame, others more exuberant and overflowing.
Here’s a short selection of burgers, with many more possibilities out there.
Crazy Canuck, Waterloo and downtown Kitchener
With two locations to pick from, Crazy Canuck has about a half-dozen burgers in its repertoire, including the eponymous “Crazy Canuck (not pictured here):” two patties, two-times the bacon, mushrooms, twice the cheese, crispy onions and other fixins.’
The Bent Elbow, Kitchener
The burger menu changes regularly: it could be beer-braised beef with horseradish and Provolone, or it could meat patty with a tube steak inside. Often, it’s custom ground beef with beer-braised onions (when Harold cooks, it involves a lot of beer, in a couple of ways) and house-cured bacon.
Beertown, Waterloo
On occasion, Beertown has slammed a couple of onion rings into their burger (as pictured), but the standard one, the Beertown Big, is good too: two ground beef patties, smoked bacon, Cheddar, special sauce, lettuce, tomato, pickles, toasted sesame bun. That sounds kinda familiar.
Obies Bar & Grille, Cambridge
Obie’s towering burger know as the Cliff Hanger “isn’t on the menu” (wink wink), but there are other slightly smaller options too, including an interesting chorizo and elk burger.
