Chef On Call

By two in the morning, most of Waterloo's kitchens have gone dark and the question of where to eat gets short. Chef On Call is one of the few answers still cooking. The counter on Columbia Street West runs a full burger, chicken and poutine menu until two most nights and until four on Fridays and Saturdays, organized around its own delivery and pickup rather than a single third-party app. It sits in the University Plaza stretch near the campuses, where a late order is ordinary business rather than a special occasion. The doors open at noon and the kitchen works straight through, but its clearest role is the one it plays once the rest of the neighbourhood has closed for the night.

The burgers are where the kitchen makes its case, and it builds them tall. The Bacon Double Ranch Drip stacks a halal beef patty with jalapeño Havarti, hot peppers, slow-caramelized onions, bacon and buttermilk ranch — heat, richness and tang pressed into a single order. The Buffalo Ranch Crispy Crunch runs the same idea through hand-breaded chicken, folding crushed Doritos in for a second kind of crunch beneath buffalo sauce and ranch. From there the lineup keeps branching: the Gourmet Burger, the Honey Crisp, the Maple Crisp, the King of the Ring, each a different arrangement of the same maximalist instinct. The Classic Burger holds the plain end of the range with pickles, mustard, relish and American cheese. Curly fries, poutine, mozza bricks and an Oreo milkshake round out an order built for appetite.

Burgers anchor the menu, but they are not the whole of it. The kitchen also turns out hand-breaded popcorn chicken, a chicken Caesar wrap and pastas — the Gambino, a rosé penne — beside poutine done the standard way. From noon onward the counter works as an ordinary lunch and afternoon stop, the late-night reputation set aside; the same generous plates that answer a two-in-the-morning craving also feed a daytime table without much ceremony. The breadth lets a group order across the whole thing at once, part of why the place holds a student crowd that keeps its own hours.

What separates the counter from a generic burger stop is how specific those toppings get. Jalapeño Havarti, buffalo ranch crunch and a golden-seared halloumi patty are decisions, not defaults, and they hand a comfort-food menu more personality than the category usually carries. The Boomi Halloumi — that seared cheese against spinach, tomato, hot pepper and the house sauce — treats a meat-free build as a real burger rather than a token substitute. The kitchen cooks halal and says so plainly; the builds that carry bacon can be made halal by leaving it off. Portions come large enough that the generosity registers well before the bill does.

The name predates the Waterloo dining room. Chef On Call began as a delivery-first brand more than a decade ago, and the Columbia Street West kitchen has carried it since 2018 under owners Gabe and Rob. That history shows in how the operation is put together — organized around getting food out the door quickly, with a direct delivery and pickup path of its own. It leans more takeout counter than sit-down destination, and the menu is priced and built to match.

The usefulness is tied to the clock. In a student quarter where evenings run long and the options thin out past midnight, a kitchen that keeps the fryers going until four on a weekend is filling a real gap. The way in is simple enough to manage half-asleep: start with the Bacon Double Ranch Drip before the last rush, add the Buffalo Ranch Crispy Crunch to split across beef and chicken, and let the curly fries settle the rest. It arrives richer and stranger than the burger anyone was picturing, well after most of the night's other plans have wrapped.