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The Burger Shoppe688 Queen Street E., 416-850-7026. Dinner for two with tax: $28

Craft Burger573 King St. W., 416-596-6660. Dinner for two with tax: $25

Terra Burger, 532 Eglinton W., 416-483-8372. Dinner for two with tax: $35.

How hard is it to make a good hamburger?

I've always found it straightforward: a pound or two of grocery store ground beef mixed with a whack of horseradish and barbecue sauce and an egg and pepper and about twice more kosher salt than seems reasonable, tossed in a bowl with well-washed hands and then formed, ever gently, into thick, roundish pucks.

I'd rather cook burgers over charcoal, but I'm lazy, so most of the time I use a cheap gas grill. Or if it's winter, I'll sear them in a pan. Nothing says dinner like a fog of aerosolized grease.

But what about a gourmet burger?

Well that must be hard. I should know: I ate at three gourmet burger joints this week.

Mustafa Yusuf and Saeed Mohammed opened the Burger Shoppe a while back, fronting their little store just east of the Don River with a few stools in the window and pledging to make burgers the way they used to be.

This meant fresh patties made from local beef, plus simple toppings (no mango-tango-dill mayo here, thanks), excellent milk shakes, and hand-cut, double-cooked fries.

Mohammed and Yusuf couldn't make the partnership work, so Mohammed bought Yusuf out, and Yusuf opened up his own place, called Craft Burger, on King West, across town.

And Craft Burger, built on its own boldly original concept, promised fresh burgers made from local beef, slightly less simple toppings (no mango-tango-dill mayo here, thanks, although they do have one with blue cheese, avocado and rosemary-garlic mayo), excellent milk shakes, plus hand-cut, double-cooked fries.

I can't really tell the difference between them. Both places offer, in addition to the usual stuff, an organic burger, made with beef from The Healthy Butcher (the burger's worth the money), the excellent but breathtakingly expensive concern with shops on Queen West and Eglinton.

The mayo at Craft Burger is straight mayo, whereas at The Shoppe it's spiced, and a little more runny. The fries at Craft are better, but that's not saying much - the fries at The Shoppe are runny.

The burgers, grilled over gas at both places, are thicker than the usual fast-food ones, and they taste of grill, which is nice. They're good, but anybody who didn't fail ninth-grade home economics can make a burger better than this.

I'm still dreaming of a gourmet burger shop that actually does what a gourmet burger shop should: that is to hire somebody who actually knows how to cook, as opposed to somebody who knows how to flip burgers, and then to give them a stack of good beef and a grinder and a few boxes of well-sourced fixings each morning and set them to work.

I had hopes that Terra Burger might be that place. Terra (well-meaning, slightly unfortunate company slogan: "Bringing you back to earth") is a virtuous gourmet burger shop, located in Forest Hill.

Everything here save the onion rings is organic, and when you bus your tray at the end of a meal, there are receptacles not only for garbage and recycling but also for compost. Penance, maybe, for all those Forest Hillians who drive X5s.

I feel confident saying that there isn't a single other self-service burger shop in the country that uses better ingredients as a matter of course. Terra buys its buns from Brick Street Bakery. Terra offers an elk burger. And a peppercorn-encrusted bison burger. Its meat comes from The Healthy Butcher.

Terra's beef is Ontario-raised organic Black Angus, dry aged for 21 days. Even most white linen restaurants don't offer 21-day dry aged beef (although it's coming). Here they grind it up and form it into patties. And then they cook those patties to a shade of grey that resembles dust.

Terra's buns are thick and dry and crumbly, but they're soggy-bottomed, too, because they're served refrigerator cold, wrapped up in waxed paper with hot, pallid, steaming beef. The elk burger is so gamey (and I love game meat) that I can't manage more than a single, bracing bite.

The basic burger here (called the Terra Firma) costs $7.95. The All-Terrain (bacon inside the patty) goes for $10.50. You want fries with that? They'll cost you $3.25.

I'm off burgers for a while now - I'm abstaining until autumn at least. And then I think I'll make one myself. Not a gourmet burger. Just a good one will do.