Retro Burger — Restaurant in Ajax

Absolutely incredible! Best independent burger place around. I'd usually go to Harvey's for a burger, the Retro's 5oz bacon cheese burger absolutely blew Harvey's away!

This is far from fast food. It is so fresh, each burger straight off the grill as it's ordered. Fresh bacon is cooked on the flat top for each order. No mass cooked bacon that since in a bucket all day here!

It's nice to see the food being prepped right in front of you! They all do such a great job, working in unison to prep, cook, and serve. An absolute treat.

Great atmosphere too, I'd hate to call this fast food, maybe good food fast, and unlike similar establishments, all the staff seem to be in great moods, genuinely seem happy doing what they are doing. Grilling up burgers, hand breading fish, frying the most beautiful fries I've ever tasted!

Everyone is SO incredibly nice and genuinely seem happy to serve you. Maybe this comes from the fact that they can be so confident that their food is consistently amazing! No hit or miss here, every time I have been here, the food has been solidly consistent.

The 5oz burger doesn't sound like it would be much, but with fresh delicious meat, there is very little shrinkage and they do not seem to lose any size or weight once cooked! Those pickle slices, I'm not sure what shape to call them, are just incredible. I would love to eat the whole tray of them they keep behind the counter.

I had a 5oz bacon cheese burger earlier this week with a poutine and it was the best burger I have had in ages. Home BBQ burgers I've had don't even touch these.

The poutine is HUGE and DELICIOUS. Squeaky squeaky cheese curds that make that incredible sound in your mouth, mixed with that delicious gravy and the most succulent fries, oh my, it is heaven. And since it's so huge, there's also leftovers for later.

The price is great too. I believe my meal was about $13-14. For a comparison, this is what a meal at Harveys would cost(regular burger with poutine combo), but everything about the Retro meal is light years ahead of the competition. I wish there were more locations around, but sometimes just a few locations makes the experience more special.

I will definitely return every time I have an appointment in the medical building in the same plaza. I now look forward to doctor visits because I know I will be getting that delicious delicious Retro burger after.

Call me a shill, but that is not the case. I'm just a recovering fat dude who has been on a strict diet for 6 months and lost over 70lbs so this is certainly a treat. Once or twice a year going here make this such a treat I will forever look forward too.

The incredibly nice staff make the experience so much better.

My new favouite place ever. I'd gladly go here over a steak house any day. Mmmmm.

-Not so fat guy that loves this food!! Keep...

Food was ok, but my issue is with the service:

I came to pick up an order and there were about 5 employees in the store behind the counter. I was the only customer in the restaurant.

Upon entering I walked up to the counter and there was a man at the cash register who didn't even look up to acknowledge that I had entered. It took a few minutes of awkward silence for one employee to ask if I was there for a pickup.

I got my food and thanked the employee all the while the man at the cash register still had his head down without any acknowledgement of my presence. I don't know if he was the owner but if you're at the register you are the one who should be greeting customers.

I'm supporting your business. Remember that. I'm not asking for red carpet treatment but I expect you to have manners.

Edit: This is my response to the owner's response:

Hi, ok, fair enough you were in the middle of an order but you could have said that. Something along the lines of:

“One moment, I'm in the middle of an order" or

“I'll be right with you, I'm just in the middle of an order" OR

“[Employee name], could you please help this customer, I'm just in the middle of an order"

This is a customer service problem and it doesn't depend on how many cash registers you have.

Focusing on serving as many customers as you can really makes you look greedy rather than noble.

Your response is flat and insincere. I hope going forward you can improve the service as I did enjoy supporting your...

This is not the first time retro burger has let me down. It's not okay to send burnt food to customers. The first time it happened, they completely burnt my onions to the point it was pitch black, and since they packed so much inside, the whole burger was completely inedible. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt because mistakes happen, but this time around, the bread (both buns on BOTH (2) of the burgers I ordered) were completely BURNT, as well as the hamburgers! I'm not usually picky but at this point you just have to be completely careless, you saw the burnt bread and still continued to assemble the burger, because what, you don't want to waste your money on a piece of bread? I used to work at McDonalds and even we threw away burnt bread. I had to throw away both burgers, completely inedible, it's frustrating and upsetting spending lots of money for restaurants to be so careless. Won't be ordering from here anymore, and if the owners or employees are reading this, please do better.

UPDATE: Since the owner want's to try and be a smart head in their reply, I've ordered sautéed onions AND garlic butter on my bun previous times, the burgers were delicious and fine. The two times above that I pointed out were not a "sauce that makes it dark" nor "cooked more because of the garlic butter", it was BURNT, bitter and inedible. I've seen from other customer reviews you burn a lot of food. Avoid the sarcasm and take accountability for...