I’m not banging on the place, I think what I’m actually doing is coming to the realization that I in fact myself have become a Docker wearing corporate fart catcher. Figuratively speaking that is – I don’t actually wear dockers. Scarier is that it’s not that bad, in fact some things are better than ever with this new found white collar. So, what does this have to do with the truffle burger at Main Dish?

Well, the truffle burger sounds kinda snobby in an ascot wearing pipe smoker kind of way. Much in the way that it is easy to judge in the envy of affluence, so too is it easy to judge this burger without trying it. Putting aside my own social hang ups I bit into a blue collar burger that simply worked hard and made good by itself.

Bun 27/30
Main Dish serves up this burger on a fresh Ciabatta bun. Though it is not the Costco ciabatta bun, it kinda feels a bit like they have introduced a Costco element to the mix. That 80 lbs bag of ciabatta buns from Costco you get for pennies is a scourge. It has both seeped into my writing and it’s one of only a few things that has me willing to endure wading through Costco’s fatty, upper middle class suburban soup of a “I need 3000 rolls of toilette paper to effectively wipe my crevice for a week” store. That and they sell cost effective business casual.

Do not confuse my rant on floral printed housewives with no purpose left but to consume, with the bun chosen for the truffle burger at Main Dish. This was the right choice for this hamburger.

Meat 29/30
I can’t bring myself to a perfect score ever. I’m one of those people that is never so sure that anything can achieve perfection. As close as I can get is giving this patty a 30/30 off the record and scoring a 29 officially. We have encountered high quality meat in other quests, but usually there is something a touch off in texture. With this patty your teeth hit a layer of crusty jewels that validate the legitimacy of this burger – which then melts into the warm satisfaction of a perfectly balanced textural experience. This warm feeling starts in your mouth and travels down into you Dockers and that’s just because because it’s so good you’ve peed your pants.

Toppings 28/30
I am not sure at what point it happens, but at some point in our growing years a part of the human palate can no longer justify the chemical taste of exclusively existing on wonderbread and cheese wiz. Something awakes a craving for things that taste more akin to sweaty socks left in a Louisiana gym locker over the summer then buried like thousand year old eggs til a musty awesomeness is abound. You think I’m lying? Try giving your kid a Limburger and truffle sandwich for lunch… Oh you don’t like that either. Well there’s always hot dogs with ketchup for you.

Sweet glorious truffles.

All fungus was the devil when I was a kid. My mom would put them in everything and I would take them out. My kids do the same except on those occasions when as a parent I feel out of control in my own life so in a tough love moment I insist that they can’t leave the table until every thing on there plate is eaten.

Later when I am doing the dishes, scraping mushrooms off my kids plate into the garbage, I could be thinking of how I’m a failure as an authoritarian but no – I’m usually thinking about how crazy it is that I crave these fungal morsels. This thought quickly evolves to one of my most crazy of cravee thoughts – the pinnacle of fine fungus- Truffles, sweet glorious truffles.

The ragu made by the essence of the celebrated fungus is not to be described; it is to be tasted. Bite after bite you fall deeper into its potion only coming out of this spell when your teeth tear into your knuckles because the burger is gone and your still moving your teeth.

Other considerations
I want to apologies for dominating this review with a rant on big box store living and fat empty nesters. It is not people’s fault they get lazy and spoiled. It’s Gods fault and its in him we trusted when we set out to build that great country that influences the greedy in this country. The greedy can always count on God to never complain when they blame him. What they don’t know is that he simply returns the favor by removing your willpower to stop going to Costco. Oh, and since your see if they got golf shirts on sale – doesn’t matter what color – they all look good with beige.

Main Dish your review was hijacked by my whim as it is not fun nor easy to write about a burger this good. It should be enough that you are at the top of the list, well played now let’s retire to the study for pipes and snifters.

Final Evaluation: What would you do to have one of these again?
I would shop exclusively at Costco to eat this burger again.

There are hundreds of species of truffles. The fruiting body of some (mostly in the genus Tuber) are highly prized as a food: French gourmand Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin called them “the diamond of the kitchen”. Edible truffles are held in high esteem in Middle Eastern, French, Spanish, northern Italian and Greek cooking, as well as in international haute cuisine…Looking for truffles in open ground is almost always carried out with specially trained pigs (truffle hogs) …The female pig’s natural truffle seeking, as well as her usual intent to eat the truffle, is due to a compound within the truffle similar to androstenol, the sex pheromone of boar saliva, to which the sow is keenly attracted.

Diamond of the kitchen? Haute cuisine? Highly prized? Sex crazed pigs? Let’s get it on.

Overall experience 7/10
Main dish is more of a take out place, so the place is not primed for creating the best atmosphere. Keeping that in mind, it is pleasant, the staff is friendly, and it is clean. Let’s just skip this part and got on to the burger.

Bun 28/30
This is a fancy pants burger start to finish, so it of course comes with a ciabatta bun. Normally, I am not a fan of this kind of bun since it is far too dry for most burgers, but in this case, the bun was the perfect choice to absorb all of the juices and truffle goodness found in this burger. It has a nice firm crust on the outside, which gives it great handlablity. Here comes some more knowledge from wikipedia:

Ciabatta (Italian pronunciation: [tʃaˈbatta], literally slipper bread) is an Italian white bread made from wheat flour and yeast. Ciabatta is somewhat elongated, broad and flat and is baked in many variations

A toasted sandwich made from small loaves of ciabatta is known as a panino (plural panini).

Two things to note:

1) Slipper bread? Only in Italian can you get away with naming a bread after footwear. I just don’t see it happening in English. “yes, I’ll have a sandwich on hightops.”

2) You now have the knowledge to be one of those guys, who goes to a place and orders something off the menu only to note to the person you are ordering from that, in fact, panino is the correct way to order one sandwich. To be a douche or not, it is up to you.

Meat 30/30
This meat was made with care, as the guy who took our order is also the guy who prepared the burger. He could sense our enthusiasm and took the time to ensure that high quality patty had a crust on both sides covering every inch of that burger. It was juicy, cooked perfectly and had me wanting more with every bite. The truffle flavour is a bit hard to identify at first, but with a few more bites, it starts to stand out and just overwhelms your senses with deliciousness. Just thinking about it is making me salivate, which makes me think that I am like a dog in a conditioned reflex experiment. More wikipedia coming at you:

The concept for which Pavlov is famous is the “conditioned reflex” (or in his own words the conditional reflex: the translation of условный рефлекс into English is debatable) he developed jointly with his assistant Ivan Filippovitch Tolochinov in 1901. He had come to learn this concept of conditioned reflex when examining the rates of salivations among dogs. Pavlov had learned then when a bell was rung in subsequent time with food being presented to the dog in consecutive sequences, the dog will initially salivate when the food is presented. The dog will later come to associate the ringing of the bell with the presentation of the food and salivate upon the ringing of the bell.

Two things to note:

1) It seems that there always is person who worked with a more well known person associated with a discovery, who gets no recognition. People talk about Marx, but no Engles. Pavlov, but no Tolochinov. I’m pretty sure it’s due to the fact that they don’t have catchy last names.
2) If someone rings a bell and teases with this burger and doesn’t bring it out, there will be consequences.

Toppings 25/30
No tomato, lettuce, or even cheese. At first glance, I scoffed at the burger, thinking that a burger without a tomato would not be worth eating. But I learned a lesson that day – the specialty fancy pants burger has much to offer, even if its main topping is mushrooms. I think the chef wanted to keep this simple and let the flavours remain uncompromised by avoiding competing flavour interests. It worked and it was delicious. It even had arugula, of which I am not a huge fan, but was not out of place here. The toppings score suffered because of the absence of cheese. I think that if this burger had swiss, or a similar cheese, it would achieve perfection. Wikipedia meets arugula:

Eruca sativa (syn. E. vesicaria subsp. sativa (Miller) Thell., Brassica eruca L.), is an edible annual plant, commonly known as salad rocket, roquette, rucola, rugula, colewort; or, in the United States, where it is very popular, arugula. Salad rocket (arugula) is sometimes conflated with Diplotaxis tenuifolia, the perennial wall rocket, another plant of the Brassicales family, which in the past was used in the same manner. Salad rocket is a species of Eruca native to the Mediterranean region, from Morocco and Portugal in the west to Lebanon and Turkey in the east.

One thing to note:

1) Salad rocket is pretty much the best name for a lettuce ever. I would eat so much more of this flavourless weed if it was called salad rocket all the time. It reminds me that pomegranates, in other languages, are ofter referred to as grenades. Someone should start a line of health food called rocket fuel and stuff a bunch of salad rocket and grenades in a bag with cool graphics.

Other considerations
Just have this burger. Nothing else to consider.

Final Evaluation: What would you do to have one of these again?
I would fight a sex crazed truffle pig for one of these.

Overall experience 8/10
Main Dish is a great little place located in Bridgeland – a community that is turning itself into quite the destination for foodies.

MD’s speciality is food you take home and heat up yourself, but they have a thriving lunch business going on thanks to their great hot offerings. It seems like the type of place where everyone who works their enjoys food a great deal. They have sampled the menu, can make strong recommendations, and are proud of what is coming out of the back. The food is served quickly, allowing you to get in and out in under 30 if need be.

The crowd is slanted somewhat towards boring looking business guys – but then I realized I AM a boring looking business guy….so I guess that’s OK.

Bun 26/30
Far too many chefs have been foiled by the temptation of Ciabatta. Sure, it seems like a good idea to use something with a touch of international flair, but if not carefully managed, a Ciabatta bun can be the downfall of any burger (or sandwich for that matter). Plus, I have no idea how to say this word and therefore end up looking like a maroon when I try to do so. Is it See-Batta? See-Ya-Batta? Chi-Batta? Well according to Wikipedia it is “tʃaˈbatta]”….so I still have no clue.

Regardless, when I saw that the MD’s Truffle Burger used Chi-Uh-Baytta bread, red flags were risen.

But this bun proved to be a perfect choice, thanks to spot-on toasting delivering just the right amount of crunch, while not drying out the bread.

Meat 29/30
6 ounces of some of the best meat we’ve had on the quest.

What makes this beef soar is the preparation. The chef walked a very thin line between cooking the beef to a perfect crisp and outright burning it. The result is a patty that provides a most satisfying crunch, while somehow retaining delicious juices inside.

3 hours after the quest I found a tiny little bit of this fantastic char nestled in between two of my teeth. Let me tell you kids, I rejoiced in that discovery and savored the tiny nibble. That’s when you know you’ve had good meat.

Toppings 24/30
This is where Main Dish takes some risks that for the most part pay off.

Traditional burger toppings are ignored in favor of a creamy truffle ragout along with mushrooms and arugula lettuce.

No ketchup
No tomatoes
No cheese
No mustard
No pickle

Needless to say if you are expecting typical burger tastes you will be disappointed…at first. But after getting through a first few bites, I recalibrated myself recognizing this was not standard burger fare. Once this mental reset button was hit, I really started to enjoy my meal.

However, I have to be honest that I still found something to be lacking flavor wise. By no means am I suggesting that MD load this burger down with tons of toppings, but a simple addition of a nice piece of Swiss, a slice of bacon or a single condiment would offer a bit of sweetness and/or tang that is somewhat lacking.

But I can’t honestly say with certainty that this would indeed improve the burger. Moreover, you have admire the courage to keep the burger simple and elegant.

Other considerations
This burger is an award winner. According to the Main Dish:

“2010 Main Dish Celebrity Burger Cook-Off Winner created by Executive Chef Ryan Bourquin and Team CJAY 92”

Cool eh? But what exactly was CJAY 92’s contribution? Was Forbes in the kitchen offering up inspiration through a series of fart and dick jokes? I don’t have any issues with CJAY – hell they’ve been one of my presets as long as I can remember – but for some reason mentioning them seems to downgrade what this burger is.

Perhaps someone can convince one of the CJAY boys to do a quest with us to prove their burger prowess. The gauntlet has been thrown.

Final Evaluation: What would you do to have one of these again?
In the spirit of Bridgelands Russian roots…I would mud wrestle Vladimir Putin (dude would kick my ass) to have one of these again.