Stephen Fung vs. Fraiche’s Full Sized Burger Slider and Fries Challenge

This past Wednesday I battled traffic all the way out to the North Shore mountains to sample a burger created by the culinary minds at Fraiche Restaurant. This restaurant, nestled amongst the treetops is located in the heart of suburbia in West Vancouver. In fact, I didn’t even realize you could put a restaurant this far into a residential area. I guess even the Uber Rich get peckish after a long day of mergers and acquisitions. Of course, a 7-11 simply won’t do.

So, after having a morning business meeting in Coquitlam, I ventured off to meet up with John Chow and Ed Lau to take on this new gourmet burger on the block. As you are well aware, I’m no stranger to gourmet burgers. Both the late great Feenie Burger and it’s less decadent replacement, the dB Burger have fallen victim to my voracious appetite.

Fraiche Restaurant’s take on the gourmet burger starts with an 8oz organic beef patty. They then add truffle pecorino, foie gras butter, caramelized onions to the mixed followed by pancetta, and a side of house-made fries with sea salt. Without the Foie Gras or the Poutine Fries, it clearly isn’t as decadent as the late great Feeenie Burger, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

Since we never do anything normal, I ended up ordering three of them, making it into a Fraiche Restaurant Full Sized Slider Challenge! Check out the video below to see me take down three of Fraiche’s finest!

As many of you are aware John Chow likes to bet and win and he bet me that I couldn’t eat all three burgers which was the original challenge. After realizing how stupid that was, he said I had to eat a side of fries, which I was OK with. The chefs put more than THREE sides of fries on that plate as you can see in relation to the single order picture above. The extra fries were purely for bragging rights and you always order your sliders with a side of fries. He did everything possible to stop me by trying to add more fries to my plate. Luckily there were witnesses, his ruse was stopped cold and he was forced to pay up.

This was definitely one of the tastiest challenges I’ve undertaken. Even though I went as fast as I could, I could really taste how fresh the ingredients were. The flavours really popped. The only thing I would have changed were the fries. They were a little too salty for my tastes and could have used a little less time in the fryer for a bit more tenderness in the middle. The staff there were so amused by this they started taking pictures. Hopefully you’ll see them on their Facebook Page really soon.

So in the battle of Stephen Fung vs. The Fraiche Restaurant Full Sized Slider Challenge, Stephen WINS!

More pics by Ed “Lazy” Lau after the break…