After much hype, Wahlburgers has come to town.
Yes, it's in the Soho Hotel, around the corner from Luckee. Yes, it's the new hot thing. But sadly, no, it's not that great.
So just to be clear, there's nothing particularly wrong with it (unless you count the rotund fellow wearing a FORD NATION shirt, while chowing down with his family. But seriously, there's nothing "wrong with it." The burgers seem fresh, the buns are fine and everything is just, well, fine. But that's the thing - they are not particularly flavourful or there is nothing about the meat or the sandwich that screams "THIS IS A WAHLBURGER!" If I was to blind taste test a series of burgers I would not know I had one.
We tried the BBQ burger, which came highly recommended, with the sweet potato tots and macaroni salad on the side. I think the macaroni salad was my favourite thing we ate. It tasted like it had been made from scratch, not too much mayo. Just fresh. Good.
Pricewise, the burgers seem pretty reasonable at about $9.75 each but none come with a side, not even fries. So if you want a burger and, oh I don't know, maybe some fries, expect to pay the usual overpriced Toronto standard of $15 and up.
Another thing that was sort of presumptuous was that 18% gratuity is added to any and all bills. The service wasn't bad, other than a mix up that had the food runner "selling" our plate because he didn't know what table to bring it to, but it would have been nice to know before ordering that 18% was being tacked on just for transparency's sake.
There are TVs all around the restaurant and at the bar that show basically one of two things: sports games and clips from the Wahlburgers reality show on a loop. It didn't appear that anyone who was in the restaurant gave a dingo's kidneys about either. I mean, it's in the tony Soho hotel so that doesn't exactly scream Boston sports bar. This is Toronto baby; we're too cool for everything.
I guess final verdict is that in a city that is so inundated with burger joints, one would thing that Wahlburgers would bring something more to the table other than the fact that it bears the name of the Wahlbergs.