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Burgoo Bistro (Main Street)

Posted in Bistro, Cheese, Dessert, Dinner, Group Dinner, Joyce, Mr., Neighbourhood Gem, Seafood, Vancouver, tagged Burgoo, cheese fondue, Guinness-braised lamb, Irish Stew, Kentucky Burgoo, paella on January 4, 2012| 2 Comments »

I made a promise to myself that I wanted to go to Burgoo before my birthday in December. Why? I’ve heard some good things about it which got me really curious about this restaurant, yet every time I went it was just too busy that I couldn’t bear the long wait. Finally came the day I celebrated my birthday with some friends, I told myself I had to make it happen. No matter what.

So, I tweeted them asking if they took reservations for a party of 8; they advised me to phone and they’d try to accommodate. Unfortunately, when I called to make a reservation, I was told that they don’t take reservations on the weekend. I was then advised that I should get there by 5pm or 5:30pm if I wanted to secure a table for 8.

Burgoo Bistro

So here we were on a Saturday evening, Mr. and I got to Burgoo on Main Street at around 5:30pm. Sadly to learn that there’s already a party of 9 in front of us waiting, so likely they wouldn’t be able to seat all 8 of us together. It would need to be 2 tables of 4. Well, I said I would make it happen no matter what, so I did. I took their offer. When it’s finally our turn to be seated, about 20-25 minutes later, our two tables were a bit far away, not the ideal side-by-side situation. Close, but not close enough. We ended up having one less person, so 7 of us tiny Chinese people ended up squishing around a table of 4. Seriously, we made it work. Cozy but it worked.

Food

After this long-winded intro, let’s talk about food. I heard the cheese fondue was good, so I ordered not 1, but 2 fondues. The Fonduemental uses Gruyere and Emmenthal, the fundamental (lol get it?) ingredients of a traditional cheese fondue from Switzerland. It was rich and savoury, and I could taste the pungent flavour of the two cheeses as well as white wine and herbs. The Brie Fondue, on the other hand, was creamy. It’s rich, but relatively lighter, and the roasted garlic definitely popped in this one. The 7 of us shared these as appetizers, and it didn’t take long before we finished them all. We even got a second serving of bread. Tummy felt really good afterwards and I was looking forward to entrees.