Astoria-based burger joint Bareburger has enjoyed their fair share of popularity this year; CU readers wouldn’t have voted them Columbus’s best new restaurant of 2014 without good reason. At Bareburger’s flagship restaurant in NYC, a new executive chef has been hired, and along with new blood comes a revamped menu. If you’ve been a fan of Bareburger since the beginning, don’t worry – you can still customize your burgers to a tee, choosing between elk, bison, duck, wild boar, turkey, and the standard beef for your base, alongside a massive selection of toppings, buns and sauces.
“Mainly, the new menu is more chef-driven and simplified,” said Columbus franchise co-owner George Mathew, when asked about the changes. The new menu uses premium ingredients (and more of them than before) to increase burger-building flexibility. Here’s a small sampling of the dishes the current menu has to offer:
First up, the Fire Quacker. It’s a duck burger on a brioche bun, with an even dose of heat from habanero-chipotle sauce, pickled jalapenos, and a slice of pepperjack cheese. A sprinkle of sunflower seeds adds crunch, and red onion slices add a crisp offset to the rich duck meat.
The new salads are built to share, arriving at the table in a family-size ceramic salad bowl. Cali Fresh lives up to its name, with bright circles of sliced watermelon radish atop a bed of baby spinach, bean sprouts, alfalfa, red quinoa, tangy lemon-tahini dressing, and a creamy scoop of hummus. The Hudson, spinach topped with bleu cheese, a fried egg, veggies, and scattered bits of duck bacon, is the more substantial cousin of Cali Fresh.
The Farmstead ‘burger’ is more along the lines of a vegan wrap, with hearty chunks of sweet potato and wild rice held together with cauliflower hummer, dotted with grape tomatoes and baby kale. The whole shebang is wrapped up in collard greens and sliced into substantial halves. It’s both vegan and gluten-free, one of the many new menu items that accommodates a variety of diets.
The Hot Honey Chicken sandwich was a dream come true. The piece of buttermilk fried chicken is brushed with hot honey sauce, topped with crispy wasabi carrot slaw, and balanced out with a dash of pineapple relish.
Bareburger is additionally launching a boozy brunch menu. Avocado toast, wild boar bread pudding, and french toast and fried chicken are a few of the options aside from standard breakfast fare like eggs and maple sausage (and, of course, a good drink menu). Bareburger is open Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. – 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. – 11 p.m., and Sunday 11 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
For more information, visit 463-n-high-street.bareburger.com.
