I like Game restaurant. I like it a lot. It’s the only place I know of where you can get exotic kangaroo, alpaca, wild boar. elk, and venison burgers and more, and where you can get intriguing veggie burgers, too.
But I learned an important thing about getting takeout fare from Game the other day: If you live more than about five minutes away from this little free-standing shop on Lexington Road, you might want to consider ordering your burgers very rare, or waiting until you feel comfortable dining in to partake.
We ordered a selection of meats and a veggie not-meat burger the other day, and thanks to the inexorable physical phenomenon called carryover, all the animal flesh – ordered medium as the guy on the phone recommended – cooked right up to well-done before we got it on the table.
I’m not going to say it still didn’t taste good. It tasted very good indeed. But cooking meat to well-done does a number of undesirable things to your ration: It dries out the juices and toughens the meat. In other words, if you want Game’s delights at their best, you want to enjoy them as soon as you can get your teeth into them. Or get one of the estimable veggie burgers, which didn’t suffer from carryover cooking as the meats did.
Please don’t understand this as a complaint about Game, though. It was my own greedy fault for wanting to eat those tasty meatballs at home. I’m not sorry we got this bunch of exotic meats and veggie protein, I’d just do it a little differently the next time.
More than a dozen meat choices include the familiar (prime angus, dry-aged or wagyu beef, local bison, duck, rabbit and more) and the exotic (venison, wild boar, alpaca, elk, even kangaroo).
They’re available as three-ounce meatballs or larger burgers. You may choose them dressed as the chef recommends or build-your-own with your choice of meat, cheese, bread, dressings, toppings, and sauce. The build-your-own options range in price from $11 (for prime angus or a salmon burger) to $17 (for wagyu or kangaroo). The chef’s recommendations add a buck or so.
Where does all this exotic meat come from? It is acquired from local farmers who raise exotic animals for sale as high-quality meat, the Game website assures us.
If you’re not down with this level of carnivorishness, Game also offers three meatless burgers. A portobella burger ($12), a fried green tomato sandwich ($11), and a garbanzo-poblano-corn burger ($11).
There’s also a short list of sides and a couple of desserts, but the name of the game here is, well, Game.
Game is currently open for inside dining, carryout, curbside and delivery. We put in a phone order for curbside pickup and got quick, friendly service.
We sampled three kinds of meat and the garbanzo burger plus two sides.
A wild boar meatball and an elk meatball (both $4) and a venison burger with the chef’s pick of toppings ($15) proved to be more similar than different. In fact, the two meatballs were put in the same box with no clear way to identify them, so our feast turned out to be something like a blind tasting of fancy wines, looking for nuances to help distinguish each varietal … er, animal.
We started with the sandwich (also pictured at the top of the page), which we knew was venison. Even cooked through, it was typical deer meat, similar to beef but tougher, even in its coarsely ground form, with a hint of earthy taste akin to beef tongue. It was topped with blue cheese that nicely complemented the earthy venison; dressed with wild lettuce and a slice of pale winter tomato, and served on a tasty everything bun in lieu of the usual pretzel bun, which was out of stock.
Identifying the two meatballs was more of a challenge, particularly since the carryover cooking had dried them out and diminished their flavor. One meatball was relatively coarsely ground; the other fine-ground.
The finer-ground meatball definitely fell in the beefy category, with a gamey back note reminiscent of beef liver, and the fine grind suggested a response to tough meat. We’re putting the elk label on this one.
The coarse-ground meatball had a subtle minty-herby undertone, and we later noticed that tiny cubes of what appeared to be fresh ginger were ground into the mix. Its good flavor lacked the distinct beefy-liver character of the other, earmarking it as the wild boar.
The meatballs came with a tub of smoked truffle mayo and cranberry jalapeño jam, Game’s standard condiments.
The grilled corn poblano, garbanzo veggie burger ($11) consisted of two falafel-style patties stacked on a simple brioche-based burger bun. Chopped poblano peppers and yellow corn kernels added flavor pops to the mashed garbanzo patties, and bits of brie, smoked truffle mayo, lettuce and tomato added flavor accents.
Sides of hand cut fries ($3) and gilled asparagus ($5) made it home in good shape, but I wish the chef had discarded the stringy asparagus ends so I didn’t have to.
An excellent meal for two was $44.52, plus a $10 tip.
Game
2295 Lexington Road
618-1712
wildgameburgers.com
facebook.com/louisvillegame
