Saturday, August 10, 2013

Bareburger Revisited


Last weekend I was majorly craving fries, so we went to Bareburger. This is the second time going back, and I was prepared for a feast.




After much deliberation, I got the California on brioche with buttermilk fried chicken, which is apparently a favorite there. Hubby got a beef burger on brioche. Sadly, we didn’t see any sweet potato fries on the menu, so we opted for the salted fries and onion ring combo.




To top it off, we got a peanut butter and banana shake. Apparently you can add as many ingredients as you want, and the waiter asked me if I wanted to add chocolate to make it into a half and half. I had to resist because that would be way too dangerous for my calorie intake in one day.




The fries were…disappointing. They were too salty and not crunchy enough. The onions on the other hand were pretty crunchy.




Surprisingly, the burger was pretty good. The California is exactly that – a whole avocado, spring onions, lettuce, tomato, and arugula. It tasted like a Mexican salad inside a burger. The buttermilk fried chicken? Best I’ve ever had – it was crisp and tender, and tasted like real chicken! Not like that fake chicken stuff you get at fast food restaurants these days. Even hubby was saying how much avocado they put in there (literally, a whole avocado).




The shake was out of this world. I thought it would be a little too much to handle, but the creaminess of the ice cream plus the real banana they put in there was just right. There were even real traces of peanut butter on the side of the metal cup. I was slurping that thing down like a person dying of thirst. I found out later that they use Bluemarble ice cream in their shakes – no wonder it tastes like an ice cream party inside your mouth!



You have to use your spoon to stir it a bit before gulping down.



Hubby wolfed down his burger pretty quickly, but I was taking my time between sips of the shake and the fries (that he didn’t like either).




Towards the middle of the meal, a manager looking guy came over to ask us how we were enjoying our meal, and I asked him if there were any sweet potato fries. He said yea, they always had them, but they were just in midst of changing their menu. So he was nice enough to give us some free, on the house! I was yelping for joy (literally, on Yelp sending tips to fellow Yelpers).





The sweet potato fries hit the spot – it was so sweet and delish that I had to keep on eating, lest it turned soggy the next day.




In the end, I had like ¾ of my burger left-over, and about ½ of the fries (combined from the first combo and the sweet potato) left. Needless to say, I was pretty stuffed (though I think I could have kept on going to finish off the fries). What can I say? I’m a veggie and potato girl.




For all that, the tab came out to $45. Definitely worth it for an upscale, organic burger experience. Next time I’d love to try the Wowie Mauie, with pineapples and bacon. Maybe with elk meat or ostrich. Plus a chocolate and raspberry milkshake. And definitely ask for the sweet potato fries right off the bat.




The leftover burger was kind of disgusting. No matter how much I tried to resuscitate it with ketchup, it tasted lifeless, especially the chicken. The fries even more so. I had to chuck most of them out (sorry spuds!) because they were basically inedible, unless you wanted to chew unchewable pieces of starch that got stuck to your throat everytime you wanted to swallow. Yea, didn’t think so.



After the meal we walked to the Greek White Castle pastry shop to look at chocolate mice. Much cuter than real mice, right?




**** (4/5)
$$

Bareburger

33-21 31st Avenue
Astoria, NY 11106




1 comment:

  1. milkshake in a metal cup, just seems so much more authentic.

    i had sweet potato fries from ruby tuesdays last week, those were really good too. really long too.

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