Night Music: Mali Music

Relish Burgers

This has been a miserable month, to be honest, with a two-week flu followed by a week’s break and finished off with another week suffering under a very heavy cold.  Miserable, indeed.  So, when this morning found us both feeling a lot better, we needed to treat ourselves. So, we went for brunch again, taking the #20 to the south end and visited Relish Burgers at 2290 Commercial.

Relish Burgers is a small New Brunswick outfit that decided to expand into Vancouver — and very welcome they are too.  As the name states, they make burgers and — other than fries and cole slaw — that is all they make. And they are good. No, they are superb and memorable.

 

I had the Nordique (shown above) which had brie cheese, back bacon, grainy mustard, and carmelized onions. There were lots and lots of carmelized onions which is perhaps why I didn’t taste the bacon. That notwithstanding, these big juicy patties, requiring an inexhaustible supply of napkins, were a delight.

What’s more, their fries were perhaps the best restaurant fries I have ever eaten; they were well-cooked, crispy on the edges; perfect.  And their complex “cool slaw”, with an apple and ginger dressing, was an excellent surprise.

Now, this doesn’t come cheap. You can get a pretty good burger and two sleeves of beer at the Dime for about what you pay for a burger alone at Relish, with fries etc extra.  Also, the post-industrial food court ambience, all concrete and chrome bars, might not be for everyone. Still, they are delicious, satisfying burgers so once in a while, why not?

As an aside, sitting in the window seat at Relish allowed me to see just how much walking traffic now uses that block; I was impressed by the volume.  The development of the Marquee certainly helped and that has encouraged other businesses on both sides of the Drive, including the repainting of the Legion.  Good to see this evolutionary change happening.