Campus Cafeteria
Burger and fries
$7.48
Presentation and service
Jason: The burger actually looks pretty good, and you get a lot of fries for the price of the meal. I particularly enjoy the amount of pickles. Personally, pickles totally make the burger for me. A burger without pickles is like The Doors without Jim Morrison.
Tyler: And, unlike The Doors, pickles are in no way historically overrated. Comparing this meal to the caf sushi, it’s a great deal. Comparing it to the caf stir fry, still the cafeteria champ all these weeks into this Worth the Trip experiment, it’s not such a great deal.
Taste
J: Taste, hmm, well, there’s not a lot of it. The patty is bland, to say the least. It’s a flavourless, texture-less, slab of brown protein, but the bun was good, and the veggies were fresh. The fries are pretty tasteless as well. Thankfully, there was seasoning salt.
T: It’s not so much that the burger tastes bad. It tastes fine. But the texture of the burger patty is… sub-optimal. I’d love it if it didn’t remind me of late-night 7–11 runs during my teens. The fries, on the other hand, feel like home. This is because they use the industry standard McCain’s that everyone uses, and my home is a pub.
McRae’s Bistro
Burger and fries
$11.76
Presentation and service
J: McRae’s is pretty nice. The service was a little slow when we were there, but they were all really pleasant. The burger looks tasty, and I can tell that the patty was made with actual ground beef. You can also order a beer with your meal, which is a big plus.
T: We didn’t even have a beer. On one hand, that means we aren’t alcoholics. On the other hand, there was a little bit of a wait. But the food came out in under 10 minutes after we placed our order, which is actually even cooler than making fun of the new Metallica/Lou Reed album.
Taste
J: It’s a real burger. The texture and complementing flavours really remind you that the burger was made in-house, and not a frozen puck of undisclosed meat. The fries were a lot like the ones at the caf; pretty bland, but the burger makes up for it.
T: Major props to the unsung hero of the burger, the noble bun. McRae’s burger had a soft, moist bun that could stand up to the firm, angry grip of even the hungriest burger-biter. Also, exactly the same McCain’s fries as at the caf, so I guess home really is where the heart-clogging food is.
And the winner is… McRae’s
Verdict: McRae’s has a solid burger, nothing too fancy, but it’s tasty. So no contest against the daytime television of burgers: the caf burger, which is just filler. Also worth mentioning is that McRae’s is by far the closest bar to Camosun and, let’s be honest, much like us here at Worth the Trip, you have plenty of reasons to drink.