Indoor Barbeque Burger with Strawberry Salad

Sportscaster Sid Waddell once said, “That’s the greatest comeback since Lazarus.”  Unlike Lazarus, I may not have been literally dead, but this blog certainly hasn’t had a heartbeat for a few years.

It has been two years since I graduated from VIU and, while I have visited the campus on occasion, the opportunity did not arise to dine at the cafeteria during that entire time.  Of course, it’s difficult to write a food review blog without tasting the food.  Fortunately for me, I managed to have an appointment on campus recently that would end at approximately the same time that lunch was being served in the cafeteria.  A quick check of the VIU Food Services Facebook page revealed that an “indoor barbeque” was on the menu.

 

I confess that when it comes to the topic of barbeque, I can be a bit of a gourmet chef, myself.  In the past when I have had the opportunity to grill, I have made everything on the barbeque from biscuits with a cedar plank pork loin to a smoked peach upside down cake with caramel sauce.  One day a frequent dinner guest of mine was telling me about how he had bragged to his co-worker about my barbeque skills by saying that I “could probably barbeque Jell-o.”  After I had a good laugh at his comment, I took it as a challenge and actually created a recipe for making Jell-o on the barbeque.  Trust me; I know how to barbeque. 

Initially I was enthused about having a barbeque burger from the cafeteria; however, I have to admit that I was skeptical of the fact that it was an “indoor” barbeque.  An “indoor barbeque” is an oxymoron.  Unless you are cooking with an indoor smoker, or a giant cooking pit that is well ventilated (such as the kind that can be only found in smokehouses), you are actually cooking on an indoor grill.  A grill does not impart the flavour of wood smoke.  A grill cannot infuse the meat with the primal taste of the burning wood.  True barbeque flavour needs true smoke, and to the best of my knowledge the cafeteria does not have the means to infuse this smoke flavour into its food while simultaneously eliminating the actual smoke from the kitchen.  

Sometimes it’s nice to be proven wrong, however.  I found the cafeteria burger to have that smoky flavour.  It was a mild flavour, mind you, but at least it wasn’t the strong essence of liquid smoke.  The meat was not exceptional, unfortunately, and had the loose texture of a processed patty that was purchased from the freezer section of a grocery store chain.  The bun appeared to have come from a bakery, and was not made on campus.  As a matter of fact, I was a little unimpressed that guests at the cafeteria had to retrieve their bun directly from the plastic bag.  I may not have taken a food safety course, but I was rather turned off that my hand was reaching into the same bag that many other unwashed hands had been into.  All I could do was hope that the other hands were somewhat clean prior to handling that food.  Personally, I would have preferred the buns to have been removed from the bag by one of the cooks or servers, just for the reassuring knowledge that only clean hands had come into contact with the bag.

One might think that a burger is just a burger and that is the end of this review, but let us not forget the condiments and the sides.  While the cold staples such as cheese slices, mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, and relish were all traditionally produced by off-campus sources, I am happy to say that the caramelized onions were not.  The caramelized onions must have been made in the kitchen on campus, and they were delicious!  In retrospect, I should have asked for a double serving of them.  The savoury, yet sweet taste of softened, thinly sliced onions were a delight to my taste buds and balanced quite well with the salty and chewy bacon slices that were also cooked perfectly and added to my burger.

I opted to pass on the French fries and have a salad as my side dish, and much to my delight it had a raspberry vinaigrette and strawberries.  I confess that strawberries are my favourite food, so perhaps I am a little biased when it comes to anything with strawberries in it.  It has been a while since I have had strawberries in a salad, and the combination of berries and lettuce tasted wonderful.  The strawberries were unusually strong and sweet, which initially confused me.  Local strawberries, which are normally the only kind of naturally sweet and flavourful strawberries that you can buy, were not quite in season at the time of this lunch.  How did the chefs manage to find such a bold berry?  I suspect that the strawberries in the salad had been imported and marinated in a combination of large amounts of sugar and artificial strawberry flavouring.  Unfortunately this strong flavour of strawberry overpowered the both the strawberries and the raspberry vinaigrette that I chose.  I would suggest that next time the chefs either scale back the sugar and artificial strawberry flavours that are added to the imported strawberries, or better yet leave the strawberries alone and make a vinaigrette from a combination of natural strawberry juice, olive oil, and a balsamic reduction.

Overall, I would say that it was a flavourful lunch, which was not what I expected from an indoor barbeque and, as always with VIU food, it was reasonably priced.

It was good to be back for a visit to try the cafeteria food once again, and I look forward to my next visit when I hope to enjoy a meal in the Discovery Room.   Just don’t expect this to be my final blog entry, as I am certainly not dead.