Brereton Lake Resort

Brereton Burger
$14.99 (platter)

Tex Mex Burger
$12.99 (platter)

Deluxe Burger
$12.99 (platter)

Hamburger
$10.49 (platter)

Come for the beautiful Canadian Shield and stay for the burger! Greg and Kim Ftoma bought the Brereton Lake Resort in 2002 and promptly expanded the restaurant. It’s bright and airy with comfy tables and a bar across the double-sided fireplace. There’s a spacious patio, ice-cream stand and beach within walking distance - necessities in the summer. The resort is open all year long including a store stocked with camping essentials, gas station, boat, snowmobile and cabin rentals.

Greg’s a super guy with a great sense of humour. Well staffed in the summer, he draws his labour force from the young cabin dwellers in nearby cottage communities. “They're loyal - I work them like slaves and pay them poorly but they keep coming back” Greg joked. Greg’s background is a Criminology degree which he put to good use bartending for 30 years. He learned to cook with his steel worker father and says they “cook food the way we want to eat it.”

The burger is huge with chili the defining feature. The kitchen prepares 30 lbs of the rich, meaty sauce each week – Winnipeg Old Country ground beef, cumin, chili spice and garlic. The line cook ladled not one, not two, but three large scoops onto the flagship burger. They patted scoop #2 flat as a platform for the last dollop. Scott paraphrased 'City Slickers': “If chili were people, my burger would be China.”

Karen reviewed the Brereton Burger: “This was an immense burger with a prodigious serving of first class fries/onion rings. The first bite festooned my Frings with chili spatter. The cheese was lost in all the chili along with the bacon. The patty by itself was firm and fairly plain in seasoning. Quality ingredients. Lots of tomato and lettuce which I love.”

If chili isn’t your thing, the Deluxe Burger is the one for you. What it lacks in chili it makes up for in mayo and comes with all the groceries, bacon and cheese.

For a spicy stack the Tex Mex Burger is topped with grilled onions, jalapenos, green pepper, spicy mayo, BBQ sauce, cheese, bacon and fresh produce. Stan scribed: “I loved the TexMex. Just the right amount of spicy. Still got the flavour of the excellent patty. Bun held together until the last 10% which was better than expected. Really enjoyed it!”

The choice of sides is stellar. I *loved* the coating and furrowed texture of the Beer Batter fries. The Frings were popular as well, because, why should you have to choose between fries and rings? If you opt for coleslaw you get a juicy pile and today’s pro-tip is hoist your burger off the plate before the bottom bun gets soggy from the dressing. Little Brown Jug on tap was an unexpected bonus!

Sandy's Snack Shack (Geppetto's) - Richer, MB

Hamburger - $5.50


Cheeseburger - $6.00


Adirondack Burger - $9.75

If you travel from Winnipeg to cottage country in The Whiteshell and Kenora, you probably know all about the kitschy wooden signs and fun lawn art creations at Geppetto’s along the Trans-Canada highway. What you may not know is that Geppetto’s wife Sandy also cooks up great food at the Snack Shack. Keep an eye out for the flags about 5 miles east of Richer (N49 39.748 W96 21.236). You can even phone in your order at (204) 422-8809.

The menu includes, perogies, chicken fingers, pulled pork, fries, hot dogs, and of course, my favourite - burgers! The star in the burger lineup is the Adirondack which sells for $249 but includes a chair. The chairs are John’s real talent and the Geppetto’s shop is where he builds his red cedar patio furniture. You can try out one of his lawn swings and enjoy your burger in comfortable shade.

If you don’t have room for any more Adirondack’s on your porch, you can have just the burger for $9.75. It’s a double burger with cheese, grilled onions, bacon, chili and all the usual groceries. Sandy hand forms the patties and cooks them up hot on the grill while you wait. It’s a firm, moist patty and tastes of beefy goodness.

She uses Bothwell cheese and the buns are fresh from Harvest Bakery. It’s a soft, light bun that held together nicely. There were three, thick, curled up slices of bacon and a liberal amount of chili that was more sweet than spicy.
Enough to make it messy, but not so much you needed a change of clothes afterwards. I also quite enjoyed the mess of fried onions. It’s a delicious, filling, burger.

The Adirondack was served wrapped in foil-paper with an exaggerated cocktail stick to hold the assembly together.

Karen opted for the smaller cheeseburger with chili and really enjoyed it. The standard condiments, mustard, relish and ketchup are on a side table for you to apply as required.

Another reason to stop at Geppetto’s is the fun 18 hole miniature golf course John had professionally designed and built. It’s challenging, with plenty of water features (and hazards) and some tricky breaks. It also shows that they’re big Bombers and Jets fans.

Geppetto’s celebrated their 20th anniversary on Labour Day in 2013 and John and Sandy put on free fish fry for anyone that came by. John fried up Red Snapper he’d caught in the Florida Keys and served it with beans.




They snowbird for the winter, and this spring returned with a crazy looking fry-guy, his girlfriend and a burger buddy.



If this all sounds like heaven to you, you may want to consider being married at Geppetto’s because John also performs marriages.

Walker’s – La Coulée, MB

Walker Burger - $6.00

Fatboy - $5.50

Chili Cheese Burger - $5.00


The spring melt has begun and soon burger stands will be opening like crocuses across the countryside.

As Winnipeg travelers head east on #1 to Whiteshell and Kenora cottage country, the first burger stand along the highway is Walker’s. It’s at Road 40, one mile east of Paradise Village (49.662774, -96.550352). There are shaded picnic tables, a little turtle pond, and an indoor taxidermy display to make the burger stop a fun family outing. Walker's is quite lively on summer weekends.

If you’re a Manitoba fisherperson, you can also get live minnows and leeches. In fact, there’s a 24-hour, self serve cooler for the early bird, where you drop payment in a pill bottle through a pipe in the wall.

I quite enjoy the burger at Walker’s. It’s a nice homemade patty - thick and juicy enough to be hearty although I usually make mine a double. The patties are cooked fresh in the burger shack and served on a nice, soft bun. You can also get piping hot fries and a selection of other items including farmer’s sausage, perogie dinner, smokies, poutine and chicken fingers for the kiddies.

Walker’s has my favourite chili sauce. It’s not too sweet, not too spicy, meaty, and creates it’s own layer in the burger assembly. I rode in on a quad for a burger one day, and as I was walking away with my foil wrapped chili burger, Craig Walker came running out shouting a warning “Don’t try and ride with that – it’s messy!” It is, and I’m not that good that I could ride one-handed while eating a burger. I sat in the sun and enjoyed it.

Craig Walker is another reason for going to Walkers. He’s a character. One time my wife and I were heading over to pay for our pork sandwiches and Craig was already at the counter filling a baggie with leeches for a customer. As his eyes met Karen’s, he pretended to swallow a leech. At least I think he pretended ….

Did I forget to mention the pulled pork? Every Friday in the busy summer season, Craig roasts up a pig and you can stop in for a fresh pork-on-a-bun sandwich for $4.99. It’s delicious. Sometimes there are a couple of young ladies at the pulled-pork stand deep frying up fresh sugar donuts you can have for dessert still hot. Just try and stop at one. You can also go inside the store and have an ice-cream cone for dessert. At the little deli there are perogies, bread and farmer's sausage for sale.

A few years ago Craig got some of Danny’s Whole Hog’s old BBQs and now he’ll sell you a fresh pig so you can host your own pig roast.  The first time I got a pig from Craig I didn’t realize they were fresh; I’m used to it being frozen from Danny’s. As I was handed the hundred pound floppy pig the night before our roast, I asked Craig what I was supposed to do with it. He said “Keep it cold!” Now I ask you, where would you put a 48” long fresh pig to keep it cold? We cleared out the beer-fridge and duct taped the door shut for the night.

Sherwood Forest Chipstand - Gull Lake, MB

Friar Tuck Burger

Platter - $7.95


It’s March, the cold has snapped, and visions of summer burgers are dancing in my head!

If you're heading to the Northstar Trail, Victoria Beach, or Powerview this summer, travel the less beaten path and let highway 12 lead you straight to the Sherwood Forest Chipstand. The home of the Friar Tuck burger is nestled in the trees at the corner of #12 and Stead Road near Gull Lake (50.400075, -96.491142). You can buy gas there - a good thing as gas stations are sparse in the area - and visit a wonderful little store offering all the essentials including treasures you'll only find in the country and fresh smoked sausage waiting on the counter. It’s a popular gas station with plenty of pickups, gravel trucks and ATVs coming and going.

The Sherwood Forest Chipstand has its own little park complete with picnic tables, shaded by some big Cedar and Birch trees. If it’s raining, there's a screen room with plenty of spacious tables and benches. The Sherwood has a welcoming, country “at-home” feeling. Families go there for supper, teens go there to flirt with their dates, and the grownups have a party picnic table on the path between the Chipstand and the store. The only word of caution - the guest facilities are an outhouse, so if you’re not that much of a naturalist, plan ahead.

They do a good business of take-away and catering, so depending how busy they are, you might get your burger quickly, or you might have some time to enjoy the scenery. When Karen and I visited it was full, people were ordering ice-cream sundaes, and they were cooking up mountains of food for a function that evening. It's window service - as burger stands are – and I was greeted by a smiling lady working the kitchen by herself. She took our orders and was quite happy to fry up some onions to go on my burger.

Still, it didn't take long for my gigantic sandwich to be prepared – and I really enjoyed it. The burger was juicy, tasty and filling. There were two big hot-off-the-grill, finely ground and fairly firm patties on my Friar Tuck. The fried onions, combined with the cheese and plentiful bacon, created a third layer of happiness. Condiments added just the right amount of messiness. The tall stack presented a challenge to keep my burger assembly from sliding apart, but I like a challenge.

It’s quite inexpensive - the Friar Tuck with fries or onion rings is $7.95. If for some inexplicable reason you don’t feel like a burger, they also make pizza, perogies, corn dogs, Jalapeno mozza sticks and deep fried breaded pickles! What more could you ask for?