Welcome to Bay’s Best Bites
Here, I will try to guide you to the best burgers, poutines and pizzas in the North Bay area. While there are plenty of other foods that I could explore (and I’m not discounting the possibility of doing so), these 3 are fairly common menu items that can be prepared in a variety of ways, which allows for more comparison.
For the sake of consistency, I’ve had to set myself a few ground rules:
- I will only be trying places that are within one (1) hour’s drive from North Bay, according to Google Maps
- When possible, I will be ordering the closest thing possible to my standard order (e.g., for pizza, I try to order pepperoni, sausage and onions)
- I will be eating at a location when I can. If I am getting takeout, I will be tasting the food before travelling to my destination, unless I expect to be traveling less that 10 minutes.
- I will be rating as many independent restaurants as possible, but I will include a few family restaurant chains for perspective on burgers and fries. I will not be including fast food chain burgers/poutine in my reviews (at least not in the early stages of the site)
- Due to the scarcity of independent pizza places around these days, I will have to include some chain pizzas in my ratings.
Disclosures/Biases:
-I will not be posting reviews chronologically. I have already amassed a backlog of reviews, focusing on visiting as many seasonal restaurants as possible and I don’t know exactly when I visited certain locations. I will instead try to intertwine reviews from different types of establishments as I build up the site.
-I have preferences that can affect my ratings, so I will try to describe items thoroughly enough so that someone can decide if they wish to try it regardless of my rating. In terms of some of my fundamental preferences/beliefs, here are a few:
-almost all burgers can benefit from a toasted bun
-iceberg lettuce is easily the best burger lettuce
-hand-formed patties are almost always better than pre-fab patties
-hand-cut fries are almost always better than frozen fries (the worst hand-cut fry poutine will probably fall in the low 6s for me whereas the very best frozen fry poutine is unlikely to score more than a mid 7)
-poutines are not invalidated by using shredded cheese over curds
-pizza is best when kept relatively thin.
I also want to point out that I’m not here trying to hurt any of these businesses. My scores are based on my preferences and also my experience on the day of my visit. I know that when you visit a restaurant can have a huge impact on on how good of an impression a restaurant can make on you, so I truly hope people will still try these restaurants for themselves despite my ratings/rankings.