Day 46: Harvey's Veggie Burger - vs - Meat Burger

Left: Harvey's Original hamburger. Right: Harvey's Vegetarian burger

Harvey's is a Canadian fast-food chain that offers ease, convenience, and a little personalization of their burgers. In fact, the jingle for the chain "Harvey's Makes A Hamburger A Beautiful Thing", written by ad genius Jerry Goodis  is recognized by pretty well any Canadian you ask.


We chose to go to Harvey's to find out what kind of vegetarian options they offered.  While there, we ordered two different burgers -- a veggie patty and an original beef patty burger.  As you can see, they look very similar, and it is difficult to distinguish which one is which.


We were not sure which one was the veggie burger when we set down the tray.  You can see from teh picture that both burgers look alike.  They have very similar colour, look, and size.  We put identical toppings on the burgers in order to directly compare the two.  Each one has lettuce, tomato, pickle, onion, ketchup, and mustard.

Even when we looked directly at the patties, it was not easy to differentiate between vegetarian and meat patties.  Both have good colour and grill marks.  Can you tell the difference?  

Upon closer examination, the veggie burger (left) has a lighter, more pale, almost orange varying colour to it.  It has the grill marks to make it look more like beef.  The beef burger (right) has the same grill marks, but shows a darker, more uniform, flat colour.  This may be from the fact that both burgers are cooked on the same grill, with no worries about meat contaminating the vegetarian patty.  (We had some concerns, though.) The buns are average white or wheat bread with very little texture or appeal.

When we cut into the burgers, we could clearly see that neither of the burgers had specific texture or grain to them.  Both were uniform in texture and mouth-feel.  We did notice, however, that the veggie burger was a little more smooth than the beef burger, where it felt as if the ingredients had been pureed, for lack of a better description.  This was not appetizing when thinking about eating just the patty without toppings or bun.  A good texture is half the fun of eating something yummy.  The beef patty did not have the grainy texture that we expect when eating ground meat.  That was expected of a fast food burger.


As we began to eat the burgers, we both agreed that Harvey's offers a pleasant, basic burger with very little identifiable flavour, and that eating there becomes all about the toppings that you choose to put.  The condiments we chose really enhanced this burger.  Of course, we could have added mayonnaise, but that is egg-based, and we are avoiding that.  Other choices included barbecue sauce, hot sauce, relish, and hot peppers.  There is also the option of purchasing bacon or cheese (or both) to top your burger.   


We found that the serving size (weight) of these burgers is the same -- the veggie burger is one gram smaller than the beef patty.  And, as expected, the veggie patty has less fat and fewer calories overall than the beef patty does.  We were not surprised with any of that.  What did surprise us, though, is the  was the amount of sodium in each of these -- the beef patty has 980 mg of sodium, whereas the veggie patty has only 580 mg.  Originally, we would have thought this to be the reverse situation, since usually the veggie patty would need the enhancement for flavour.

Overall, this would be a fine choice of veggie burgers when stopping at a fast food restaurant.  There was nothing that made us believe it was a bad burger, and it had a pleasant flavour, good size, and filled us adequately.  For the five dollars we spent to buy the meal (burger, fries and drink) it was absolutely worth it.  We may hold reservations about the two burger patties being cooked on the same grill, though, and would prefer that they were not.  But, we like to believe that all the meat juices are scraped off and burned off before placing a veggie patty on the grill.  The worker at this particular Harvey's did tell us that they scrape their grill regularly, but we don't know how often "regularly" actually is.


Knowing that Harvey's offers a vegetarian burger puts this chain up on the list of acceptable places to eat during Great Lent.  We know there are other choices, but this is often the most accessible.  We were, overall, happy with our experience there and pleased about our selection of the Veggie Patty.  Put on the toppings you like, and enjoy.