Everything

Burger Review: Game Burger, Antler

Posted on April 3, 2017 by Ricky in Everything | Leave a comment

Screen Shot 2017-04-02 at 5.12.20 PM

Welcome to part 2 of the Burger Review. Just for the newbies, this is a series based on a top 10 list of burgers published in Toronto Life.

Antler is #6 on this guy’s list and it’s always a restaurant that scores high on the Toronto food scene so naturally it was with plenty of excitement that we tackled this place and it’s burger.

The burger that we had was as follows:

Game Burger – Wild boar, bison, deer, hot mustard, garlic aioli and house smoked cheddar – $18

Before we begin the review, a reminder that the control burger is the Skyline burger (that is the middle of the pack) with the upper range being Casino El Camino’s Amarillo burger from Austin, Texas. I know that is unfair, but so is life, deal with it.

The Verdict
The burger, at it’s heart, is best served as a simple classic. It’s like the idea of America. Simple, once you start to complicate it a bit, then things can go sideways easily. This was our consensus on the game burger.

Let’s start with the positives – the bun was amazing. They take things very seriously at Antler and so everything is made in house. This meant the bun was fresh, soft and buttery good. It was the best bun I’ve had within the burgers we have tried out.

The burger seemed very interesting, it’s a combination of three animals that roam the plains of North America – wild boar (I don’t think there is a domesticated boar), bison and deer. I don’t know what type of deer, but it’s definitely Bambi.

At first, I was excited about the concept of eating 3 animals combined into one. Here are our renditions of what a bison-deer-boar would look like.

The modern art rendition:
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And my scientific one, which is how I envision this animal would look had the chefs at Antler shot it in the Ontario wilderness:

Screen Shot 2017-04-02 at 5.45.43 PM

So initial thought: 3 meats, 1 patty = exciting.

However, burgers are basically meat grounded together. This mean that each animal, which tastes slightly different, will have their meat combined together. This might work if each type of meat hits you in a different part of the eating experience but I didn’t really get that feeling. I’m not so sure the three meats enhanced the experience. I think that having one animal might end up being better since you get the distinct flavor. The burger had some game taste to it but was overly juicy which soaked through the bread and decreased the scoring in a new category I completely just made up – handfeel.

HandFeel – How does the burger feel in your hand? from the beginning of the experience to the bitter end. Did it feeeeeel like a burger? Was it a comfortable grip? Did the feeling change?

This burger started off with a reasonable handfeel. However, the juiciness of the burger was overwhelming and by the third or forth bite, the grease had soaked through the bun, making this a greasy experience. In some places, that is okay but you got to remember Antler is a fancy place and like I had a serviette on my lap so this was surprising.

Complements
The burger came with smoked cheese, garlic aioli, mustard and also lettuce and tomato. The garlic aioli tasted great but at times also served to overwhelm the taste of the burger. But it was good. The lettuce I think failed to do it’s part. Lettuce, with it’s crispness, has two roles in a burger:

1. Alleviate guilt by adding a piece of vegetable in an otherwise meaty meal
2. Cut into the taste smorgasbord of cheese/fats/meat with it’s crispiness.

The lettuce used was red lettuce which isn’t as crispy as say, iceberg lettuce and as a result, the grease from the burger overwhelmed it and it became limp and lifeless. Like, a really weak scratch on your back..not even sure if it was necessary.

The burger also came with fries which were delicious.

Overall
Antler’s Game burger is a distinct take on the burger idea, making a few subtle tweaks to the formula. The bun was great and I appreciated the burger being cooked medium rare, but aside from the slight gaminess of the burger, it failed to meet my expectations for a burger with 3 animals in it.

Here was fellow burger enthusiast Sarah’s take on it:
“The first bite was great, but unfortunately it was not a one bite burger”

Burger Scale

Amarillo Burger, Casino El Camino – 10$ USD
Prime Beef Double Cheeseburger, Museum Tavern – 19$
Skyline Burger, Skyline Diner – 14$
Game Burger, Antler – 18$

Having said all that, the charcuterie plate at Antler was amazing and I would definitely go back to eat that and everything else.

Antler Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

SXSW Review; Matt Maeson, Agnes Obel, March 17, St. David’s Sanctuary

Posted on March 25, 2017 by Gary in Concerts, Everything, Music, South By Southwest | Leave a comment

 
I saw two acts as part of the “traditional” (for me) Communion Night at St. David’s Sanctuary this year.

Matt Maeson

Matt Maeson
As with each new generation of pop music, Matt Maeson’s songs are full of emphasis. They are overt and attention seeking. It’s something worth putting on Instagram but may not stay with you by happy hour Saturday evening.

Even though they were delivered in a church with just a guitar, the dramatic pauses, the obvious epic-tempo, the produced and formulaic melody and structure asks one to listen, but can’t produce the substance and soul.

I’m probably doing it wrong – I don’t have the acronym and meme vocabulary of an 18 year old to correctly comment on this. Nonetheless, I don’t have any sentiments against Maeson – he certainly has the vocal range and talent, and no one doubts his authenticity. Yet a music video where a pastor synchronized his punches to music really made me (and everyone) cringe, just a little.
 
Agnes Obel

Agnes Obel
I have heard cello concertos in an orchestral setting, and always felt that they were simply alternative, deeper voiced violins. But that’s mainly because they can be buried by both the composition and the sheer number of instruments. I haven’t appreciated their power (albeit amplified) and versatility until now. Perhaps Agnes Obel is right in her more pared-down and focused approach to composition. Whether it’s completing sentences of opposites or driving a marching bass line, the cello proved incredibly apt at supplanting the air conditioners in supplying the atmosphere. That was a surprise that the recordings never did convey.

When the red lights came on before she took the stage, I thought that it would pass. But Obel constructs everything intentionally, and of course lighting is the other half of the ambience. And the lighting is best bloody dark. She was visibly annoyed when this illusion was broken and shafts of light peaked in with the swelling audience mid-song. She sang the main registers here and left the flourishes to the percussionist. It was no surprise that she would play “The Curse”, the 2013 hit that first drew our attention to Obel’s song writing. And of course “Familiar”, the single from her new album Citizen of Glass continues in that austere tradition. Beautifully flowing, intense yet personal, it’s a successful way to integrate classical elements for modern sensibilities. You are led to follow each melodic development instead of a fully-assembled harmonized sound.

SXSW Review: Totally Mild, All Our Exes Live In Texas, March 16, Brush Square Park

Posted on March 25, 2017 by Gary in Everything, Music, Reviews, South By Southwest | Leave a comment

Totally Mild

I will admit that I had never heard of them until this year’s SXSW, but Melbourne-based Totally Mild ended up on my list on the strength of “Move On” from their last album, Down Time. It’s a bubbly vocalized piece with a music video that showed the band members drinking and regurgitating milk. Hearty, mind-bending, sardonic stuff. Since then, they have delivered another short album titled Alive in Denmark.

The lead vocalist Elizabeth Mitchell has a naturally high-pitched and clear voice that resonates well. She needs to – their music is moody, expressive and forlorn with twisting passages spanning quite a range. “The Next Day” is a good example. It’s like a slower version of a coloratura’s training scales. Listening to them in the BBQ tent really made me feel like an exemplary irony. Should I feign philistine and continue to shove food down my throat, or stop chewing midway to better hear the lyrics? Test this out for yourself with “More” – I’d stop half way.
 
All Our Exes Live In Texas
Fluttering women have no patience to stay in Texas – they belong in Sydney, Australia. That’s why they left all their exes in Texas. At least that’s the story I made up. In truth, members of All Our Exes Live In Texas are from Sydney, and so are their exes. The Texas came in for a rhyme and dime.

All Our Exes appear to have coalesced as a revenge band – and playing at SXSW while their male counterparts (also a band) fester in Sydney gave them some degree of satisfaction. One would be hard-pressed to say that they are performing out of spite. They were playful and energetic (that would be anything other than head-bobbing in folk music). In a short set consisting of just 5 songs, each is enjoyable with bright melodies and close harmony. The rendition of their showcase “Boundary Road” is fairly true to the recording. It’s fun to guess who would be singing which part, as each seem equally capable of a similar range. All in all, not bad for their first time singing live in Texas.

SXSW Film Review: California Dreams, Mike Ott, 2017

Posted on March 23, 2017 by Gary in Everything, Movies, Reviews, South By Southwest | Leave a comment

california-dreams-2-cory-zacharia-photo-credit-mike-gioulakis_orig

Life is perhaps at its cruelest and clearest when aspiration and reality collides (and reality wins). If that’s true, then California Dreams is both. Having watched the film, however, I cannot differentiate it from reality TV, pure screenplay, or a bastard child of the two. Interestingly, director Mike Ott was being intentionally ambiguous. From a naive perspective, California Dreams plays on the quintessential Hollywood rag-to-riches trope. Many people in the Inland Empire look to LA and dream of becoming successful actors or actresses, even if their lives circle in the gutters from meal to deal to meal. Ott begins with Cory Zacharia, a 28 year old layabout with no skills. And I do mean ZERO. Comically illiterate, innumerate, and struggles even to form a sentence for a Taco Bell resume, he nonetheless believes that he can make it big. If only a decent audition tape (oh and also $900) could just “occur to him”, he could join a German friend in Berlin. This friend had worked tirelessly to arrange for Cory a role in a big budget film. Everything is falling into place, ready for his arrival. We are also informed that Cory share this dream with a 6-flags attendant from the Philippines, a wannabe alpha-male bounty hunter, a screenwriter in the Church of the latter day Taco Bell, and a down-and-out old lady.

Blurring the lines between fiction and reality seems to be Ott’s modus operandi. Dreams’ structure is eerily similar to Pearblossom Hwy, his 2012 film starring the same hapless Cory. Zacharia was supposedly discovered by Ott in a Home Depot parking lot. The set piece elements here have been lifted from an universe so blatantly child-like and outlandish, that I nearly mistook it for a tribute to Wes Anderson. For example, the whole motley crew in Dreams all live in the same tidy roadside motel. They all seems to get on with their lives despite hardships. And everything works out in the end: Cory eventually found the cash he badly needs when it literally fell from the sky, blown into a straight-line like offerings from the dried branches along the path of his favorite highway trot. All this skepticism aside, it is worth noting that the cinematography is quite breathtaking. If you have ever been to the Californian desert, you might agree that it’s nowhere near as mystical and forgiving as Dreams depicts. Cinematographer Mike Gioulakis made it LOOK like like a well-spring of dreams. Ott made an effort to convince us that these are not actors. By speaking on camera to Cory, he is in reality trying to break the 4th wall. We are supposed to believe that these are real people whose dreams are exactly as told through their audition for this film: they are simply acting out their own lives. Actors, playing themselves.

I am still not sure how to feel about the power structure behind this film. Is this exploitation? Or perhaps any talk of exploitation is irrelevant because Ott is fulfilling these dreams? I am indifferent to whether this is staged, transcribed from real-life then reenacted, or reality TV with impeccable-fortuitous camera placements. Even though many of the nesting references and breadcrumbs are too trite and tiresome to follow, it still contains honest and interesting messages. What I’m actually annoyed with, is the same way you would notice that I stopped mentioning any of the other characters. That’s because none received any development or mention at all after they were introduced. Completely superfluous and expendable, they were living and dreaming furniture, no more important to Cory’s dream than the chair he sat in while enjoying a lap dance. It certainly took a step back from the plural title – I was fully expecting an expose on 2+ dreams. With ambiguity comes ambivalence, I guess. I am about as likely to recommend this as I would a box of cereal at afternoon tea: you won’t feel deprived without (just biscuits and scones thank you very much), and you won’t read too much into it if you do. It’s just, there, being it’s own meta-self.

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