Mushroom Burger
The reason to stop at a Burger Baron: a big beef patty smothered in sautéed mushrooms and a thick, creamy mushroom sauce. It is soupy, salty and a little tangy, more like a hot open sandwich than a tidy burger, and it needs a fork by the end. Every restaurant makes it slightly differently, yet they taste remarkably alike, and in Alberta it has outlived the chain that invented it.
The story
Rudy Kemaldean did not bring the recipe from Lebanon. He found the sauce at the Edmonton Burger Baron he bought in the 1960s and passed it on to the relatives and apprentices who opened their own restaurants. The base is an open secret: Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, poured over canned mushrooms. The rest is guarded. When the writer Omar Mouallem, whose own family ran a Burger Baron, asked owners for a 2022 documentary, they admitted to soy sauce, Tabasco and Worcestershire and denied, or would not discuss, anything more. An Edmonton Journal critic in the early 1980s compared four local burgers and found that the mushroom burger won outright.
What’s inside
- beef patty
- sautéed mushrooms
- mushroom sauce
- bun
Make it at home
There is no copycat of the Mushroom Burger yet. Until there is, these recipes on the site come closest to it, judged by what goes into the bun.
- Shares beef and mushrooms
Portobello Mushroom Burgers - Shares beef and mushrooms
French Onion Burgers - Shares beef and mushrooms
Mushroom Swiss Smash Burgers with Truffle Sauce - Shares beef
Delicious Grilled Hamburgers
Variations
The Mushroom Burger, taken somewhere it was never meant to go.Similar burgers at other chains
Built around the same things as the Mushroom Burger.- Culver's · beef and mushrooms
Mushroom & Swiss ButterBurger - Hardee's · beef and mushrooms
Mushroom & Swiss Thickburger - Good Times · beef and mushroomsMushroom Melt
- RocoMamas · beef and mushrooms
Mushroom Swizz
About Burger Baron
Jack McDonnell founded Burger Baron in 1957, in Calgary or Lethbridge; even the location of the first one is disputed. It was the first drive-in chain in Western Canada and spread quickly, then struggled once the big American chains arrived. The franchise company went bankrupt, and since nobody bought its name or recipes, Burger Baron became something unusual: a brand without an owner, used by independent restaurants that share a sign but not a menu.
Dozens of independently owned restaurants, mostly around Edmonton and in small Alberta towns, plus one in Kelowna, BC.
Not affiliated with Burger Baron. Trademarks belong to their owners. The photo shows my home version, not the restaurant’s product.