Burgoo (Main Street)

Burgoo
4434 W 10th Ave
3 Lonsdale Ave
3096 Main Street (Location visited)
Vancouver, BC

If you have been following Anita‘s tweets, you will find out she is going through a “foodie nightmare” right now. As a friend, I checked with her if she was up to a “last meal” before she started that procedure. She was good but, the usual question popped: Where? I provided several options, including Zakkushi and The One. In the end, we ended up going to Burgoo. After all, comfort food, right!

Because we had different plans that night, we ended up actually going for late night eats. Despite it was a weekday, by 9:00 p.m., there were still several customers. Unfortunately, due to the layout and lightning, had I used my Speedlight, that would have attracted a lot of attention, something I didn’t really want to given some of the customers were couples. As a result, the pictures here are mostly “best efforts”… -_-;;;

As mentioned above, Burgoo is known for comfort food. Of course, the definition of comfort food varies from culture to culture and country to country. In their menu, they have listed several countries, from the US to France to Ireland to Morocco and so on. Now, it is not that they have all classical dishes, just selected ones. Because of that, both Anita and me were confused as to why they didn’t have fried chicken… But, rather than crying over spilled milk, instead, we decided to order what was available. Once order was made, eventually all the dishes arrived at once (it was in part because we wanted it that way).

Crab cake. Sorry, the lightning does not necessarily show the best of this dish; however, while the real thing looked a bit better, the end result was a bit of a disappointment. We didn’t taste that much of the crab as much as filler as potatoes. While that is something that a lot of other restaurants are also guilty of, the let down was the fact it was overdone at the bottom, a no-no with these. Regardless, neither one of us were vowed by these.

OK, something I didn’t mention above: Given it was quite late, we didn’t order entrees in the straight sense of the word; rather, plates to share. And another plate to share was the tapenade. The crostini was crunchy so, from that perspective, it was fine. However, the tapenade itself was a bit of a let down. Probably because of the olives (and because it is usually brined), we thought it would be salty. Instead, that saltiness was absent and, instead, it was a light olive taste. Nothing wrong with that; I guess it was rather expectations.

Again to share, we ordered brie fondue, which came with chunks of bread, apples and grapes. The bread was a bit stale, which, for the most part, was fine. That is because the cheese “sauce” was quite good. It had a thick consistency, yet, still liquid enough to dip the bread, apples and grapes. While the fondue is brie based, there was one flavour that dominated it: garlic. Now, not the pungent garlic taste; rather that of sweet garlic. I think this would be something I would order again and probably eat eat it myself!

Girls love their dessert and Anita won’t be an exception to that rule. In the “spring” menu, they had strawberry rhubarb clafoutis (I guess it should have been technically called a flognarde…), something I have some fondness to, and, as a result, I was good with that idea. However, when we were served the clafoutis, I will have to admit I was a bit confused. It looked more like a cake than the clafoutis I am used to (OK, the menu admitted it was a cake but still…). Now, if we call it a cake, it was a warm cake and, at the bottom, the strawberry/rhubarb combo provided some acidity to balance the sweetness of it. And the ice cream was a bit generic but, at least, it provided some balance to it (hot/cold).

What’s up with “serving” the bill in a bamboo steamer basket???

While some of the dishes were misses, I will have to admit I like the concept of Burgoo. Sure, they might try to hit all over the map but, in the end, what matters is the end result. Those that missed, were narrow misses; the hits were good enough. To me, that deserves a revisit, next time, hoping for the mac and cheese. And, again, hopefully, they will have fried chicken as well…

Tagged under: Late Night • Vancouver