I’ll Take a Chicken Burger, Hold the Guilt

I’m definitely part of the 49% of Canadians who feel guilty after eating fast food. That being said, I love me a good burger. So the other day I went to Nuburger for the first time. As I entered the Manitoban fast food restaurant, I rolled my eyes at their tagline written on their storefront:

Nuburger: Burgers with benefits

Come on, I thought annoyed. If you want a burger eat a burger. It’s like people who go around making cauliflower-crust pizza or black bean brownies. If I’m going to treat myself, Imma go AAAAALLLLL the way. I’m going to eat pizza with an all-purpose-flour-based crust and for desert I’ll have sweet sugary brownies. Despite my opinionated self, I ordered Nuburger’s El Luchador burger with potato fries.

The bun was warm and soft, the caramelized onions were sweet, the homemade corn salsa was flavourful, but the chicken was the best part. Exceptionally well-grilled, the chicken was tender and juicy and—I know this is going to sound wack, but the chicken was stress-free. At first, I couldn’t figure out what was so different about it, but then I saw Nuburger’s wall and it all made sense: I was eating free-ranged, Manitoban chicken. I didn’t taste the stress of a chicken who spent its life locked up in dark, small confines or who travelled long stressful distances from one province to another. Free-ranged chicken is stress-free chicken, and stress-free chicken tastes gooood.

And it’s not just Nuburger’s chicken that’s Manitoban. Their beef and pork are too. This restaurant is so proudly Manitoban that even their buns are from the Winnipeg bakery Stella’s. Since I’m broke, I’ll admit I wept a little while paying for the $9.99 burger and the $3.49 fries. But knowing the delicious meal was made from local ingredients dried my tears.

Like many Canadians, I LOVE food grown and cooked in the same province (or at least in the same country) in which I live. It’s healthier for my body, yummier in my mouth (stress-free meat is a delicacy), great for the Canadian economy, and helloooooo it’s better for the environment (global warming is real, people).

And the fries! Oh, we MUST talk about Nuburger’s fries! When the server brought them, I noticed they were chubby and came in different shapes and lengths. It was love at first sight. Have you ever gone grocery shopping and picked up an apple that’s so perfect it’s suspicious? You look at the apple thinking, “What did we pump inside you?” I usually ditch those apples and go for the imperfect ones—the ones that don’t look so processed. The server at Nuburger explained that my beloved fries were so refreshingly imperfect because they were cut in-house by hand. But, as we all know, looks don’t mean everything. It’s what’s inside that counts. And when I bit inside those fries, my love for them deepened. Their crispy, salt-sprinkled skin crunched with a soft crsssk! The smooth, warm potato filling exploded inside my mouth. Indeed, the fries were beautiful inside and out.

To the 72% of Canadian men and the 80% of Canadian women who aim to maintain a healthy diet, I say ditch the cauliflower-crust pizza and check out Nuburger for a good juicy burger with benefits.