Oh, hi there, welcome to another entry of my blog! I'ma talk about eating at restaurants I'm excited about, and want to love, but end up disappointed and feel required to shit all over them (i.e. said restaurants)! Sound familiar? Okay, good. Let's get 'er done.
So, I'm a bit behind the curve w/r/t Boon. I heard about its impending arrival long before the intended spring launch, and it seemed like the building had been painted and everything was ready to go for a few months before it finally opened up. The concept(*) was intriguing, and the location good, so I was interested, to say the least. Then, it opened, and the word on the street was overwhelmingly positive. One heard stories about the Boon folks running out of food on the first couple days it was open, people were flocking to it in such high numbers.
My enthusiasm was tempered somewhat by reports from the Constant Dinner Companion (who visited Boon without me!(**)), whose praise was qualified, and less than overwhelming. He still enjoyed himself overall, though, so it was with moderately high expectations that I finally made my way to Boon on a Friday evening.
The room itself is tiny, but Boon makes clever use of the space they do have by setting it up family-style. Two long tables with picnic-esque benches both maximize the available seating space and create a loose informal vibe. The down side, of course, is post-meal lingering is implicitly discouraged: done? Git ta fuck out. Anyhow, you order at the till, and are served food as it is ready. It was jam packed during our visit, and seating was at a premium. We got lucky and nabbed a seat, but it's definitely possible for your order to come up and there be nowhere for you to sit to eat.
On to the food: I'll start with the good. Actually, the GREAT. The vegan mushroom gravy Boon serves is fantastic, and not "fantastic for vegan gravy," but unqualifiedly fantastic, stack it up against any other gravy, anywhere, anytime fantastic. Rich and thick and deep in umami flavour. Yup.
The burger itself: I ordered the Boon burger--seemed the best place to start. Now, I enjoy veggie burgers, so I'm definitely not going to fault it because it fails as a hamburger, which it is not trying to be at all. And the Boon burger was not bad. It was fairly fall-apart-y (is it possible to make a vegetarian burger patty that actually holds together?) and the advertised peach chutney so scant it failed to register at all, but still fairly flavourful. The bun was quite odd--a square, almost foccia-like slab. And too big! Goddamn. Once again, the burger law: area of the burger > area of the bun. All in all, though, not bad; fresh! I also had bites of my companions' soup and salad, and both were fairly tasty.
HOWEVER.
The french fries.
Actually, the "french fries". It does say on the menu that the "fries" are baked, but you have to go looking for it, it's in the section where they tell their little stories about the food. On the menu proper, it just says "fries: sm, lg". And call me crazy, but when I read "fries", I assume there will be some frying going on.
And they do look pretty good, nicely browned and sprinkled with sesame seeds. And they may have tasted good, had they been served straight from the oven. But they were not. Oh lordy, how they certainly were not. They were stale, and dry, and chewy, and served luke-warm AT BEST. They tasted like they had been sitting under a heat lamp for three hours, because I'm pretty sure they had literally been sitting under a heat lamp for three hours. And when I say "chewy", I'm not fucking around. They were literally hard to eat.
Now, I can understand wanting to be health-conscious and all that bullshit, but come the fuck on. If you're looking for an alternative to pulling potatoes out of a frier full of hot, delicious fat and serving them immediately, let me assure you that baking them first thing in the morning then sitting them under a heat lamp all day is not it. These fries were so bad, I felt personally insulted by them. And the fact that they were dressed up in "gourmet" clothes really made them even worse. Maybe fresh from the oven, the sesame seeds pack some massive flavour punch, but in the desiccated state they were served to me the sesame seeds just seemed like misdirection, a culinary sleight of hand to distract me from the fact that I was being served sub-cafeteria-food garbage.
So, again, I have to ask myself if a single terrible dish should utterly decimate my opinion of a restaurant. In this case, it's impossible to overlook a blunder so huge. Regardless of anything else going on in that kitchen, making me pay $$$ for "french fries" that bad(***) is completely unforgivable. Sorry, Boon Burger. You fail.
Location: 79 Sherbrook St.
Price tag: Burger + fries = around 12 bux.
Website: www.boonburger.ca/
*And here I'll just take a second to bellyache about the fact that Winnipeg gets a gourmet VEGETARIAN burger restaurant BEFORE a REGULAR gourmet burger restaurant. Sheesh. Okay, I'm done.
**Fuckin' jerk.
***What I'm wondering now is, should I have said anything? I very, very rarely send food back. I can only think of a single time, at Dandelion, where I sent back roasted potatoes that were served still crunchy. (Never really had a good experience at that place, actually.) In this case, I have to doubt it would have accomplished anything. What could they have done, tossed them in the microwave?
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