Bareburger: How To Get Some Wild Game on Your Plate

There are some foods that I have been dying to try and wild game is one of them. Living in the city, there is no way to can buy a piece of game in the meat department of your local supermarket. The closest to game was frozen quail in Chinatown. Sometimes I hear you can get rabbit, but it's not wild. The reason I long for wild game is because I know it's not raised on a farm. I was invited by a cousin to try Bareburger known for their use of organic meats and wild game in their burgers. She highly recommended their burgers and I thought it was a good chance to catch up on things.
Getting to Forest Hills would normally not be a problem for me even though it meant transfers. The problem was that all transportation decided to go on a Saturday schedule due to a holiday schedule. The trains I decided to take would not go in the desired direction. What should I do then? Thankfully I checked beforehand a number of routes I could take. One of them involved a bus to train transfer that was doable. So I took the bus and got off my stop to transfer to the train. Who would have known that once I got there, a large sign was pasted on the turnstalls "No trains going in __ direction." The remainder of the trip involved another transfer, but luckily all trains were going express. I ended up getting at Bareburger earlier than my cousin.

At Bareburger, I didn't take long to order. I had a clear objective in my mind, the only question was which one I was going to pick. The wild boar? The elk? Or the bison? The Grindhouse appealed to me the most on the menu. You have the choice to switch out any ingredient on the burger. I happen to stick with the original. Described on the menu, the Grindhouse has an elk patty, manchego cheese, a slab of country bacon, piquante relish, green leaf lettuce, paprika mayo, on a brioche bun for $11.90. I also got myself a ginger ale for $2.85 and together we shared fries for $4.85. I took a look at the restaurant decor. It had a very rustic kind of feeling using brick and wood as their main material. Their menu is a one pager printed on this thick plastic-like material. Your water is served in a glass bottle so you never have to wait for refills. We had our fries come first and it came with three different sauces; curry ketchup, paprika mayo, and a special sauce. The curry ketchup was too pungent for my tastes and I would have preferred just plain ketchup. The paprika mayo was one of my favorite sauces. It's sweet and savory with a little bit of acidity. The special sauce I can only guess that it's mayo based with a smokey BBQ sauce. This one was also one of my favorites because it had a very sweet flavor.

When our burgers came, I dived in to cut a slice. I prefer using a fork and knife to eat burgers. The elk patty is a thick one inch patty. It took me time to slice it apart because I didn't want it to be messy on my plate. The brioche was buttered and toasted until golden brown. The lettuce was a single piece of green leaf from the outer part. It was really crunchy though. I personally thought the cheese was fairly non-existent. You can't really taste the cheese and it didn't seem to add or subtract from the burger itself. I thought bacon was always done crispy so it was nice to see it fried for the first time and not dark and curly. Now, the main star was the elk. I took a bite of the elk. It was refusing to leave my fork since it was so compact and I asked for it to be cooked well done. Maybe some people would consider this to be way too tough, but this is nothing compared to "tougher meats". It wasn't dry, but it can't be called juicy. However I did notice it had a strong meat flavor. I wonder if this is the game taste that some people don't like. It didn't taste like an abundance of spices, but an actual good piece of meat. It was very lean like I had heard and had a strong flavor of meat like a good piece of beef. It has a similar feeling to beef, but not exactly.

The piquante relish gave me a surprise. It is actually a pickled red pepper with little heat and acidity. I think it goes pretty well with elk. The ginger ale I ordered was more like a carbonated sugar water. There was not much ginger flavor in it. In fact it tasted more like ginger juice that was not freshly grated. I know this because I've made grated ginger before and the juice can change flavors within the hour. I walked out of Bareburger very full. In comparison to other burger places, they are going for a more higher end type of restaurant, but still within an affordable range. Their concept promotes organic and homemade for the most part. You can't find a soft drink on the menu other than their homemade carbonated drinks. It's good for small crowds and I think family lunches would work out as well. For the most part, I think it was a good investment.