Industry Public House is pretty much the first gastropub I have come across in Pittsburgh. This is shocking, because I have been here for more than 9 months and I couldn’t go more than 9 blocks in the last city I lived in without coming across one. And, as much as I tired of every new gastropub’s attempt to find unique craft beers and craft burgers, I must say I was happy to find both at Industry Public House.

So, with a Bell’s Oberon to drink, I went ahead and ordered their Farmed Out Burgher. And no, that is not a typo. Because I live in Pittsburgh. Get it? Alas, this burger came topped with white cheddar, wild boar bacon, a fried egg and BBQ sauce. I ordered medium-rare, got some fries on the side and also made sure to confirm with the bartender that there would be no vegetables on my burger. Alas, I made the fateful mistake of not confirming that there wouldn’t be a pickle on the side, because lo and behold when my burger arrived I found one. And not only was it on the side, it was atop numerous fries now soaked in pickle juice that would have to be sacrificed to the white walkers.

But once I got past this, I found myself face-to-face with an exquisitely prepared burger. The egg was nice and runny, the bacon was crispy (and just like any other bacon despite originating in a wild boar) and the meat was nice and pink inside. It was also so juicy that I wished I had a Burger Lift and was relegated to placing the burger atop my fries between bites. And while the burger was prepared perfectly, it also came with a price I had once grown used to at such establishments. The only difference, I suppose, is that I expect to pay less for such a burger in Pittsburgh than I did in Los Angeles. Yes, I know this is biased, but it is how I feel and I stand by it.

So while Industry Public House did treat me well, I also recognized that it couldn’t be a regular eating establishment for me. Unless, of course, I get a hankering for great preparation at an equally great price.

What do you get when you combine an abandoned church with a brewery? The answer is Church Brew Works, a spot in Lawrenceville that might just be one of the most unique breweries/restaurants in the country. Nay, the world. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Beer is proof that God loves us,” and the use of the altar for the actual brewing might just be the best support of old Ben.

The restaurant menu had some typical brewery foods, but also things unique to Pittsburgh, like a Pierogie Pizza. I opted for the Wild Boar Pizza, which came topped with the aforementioned boar (pulled like pork), corn, onions and BBQ sauce made with their Pious Monk Dunkel beer. Per usual, I got mine without the onions. I had heard there could sometimes be a long wait for pizza, but on this day things went pretty smoothly. The pizza came out and, despite the inconsistent sprinkling of toppings, looked quite good.

And it certainly wasn’t bad. The wild boar flavor was a nice addition to the pizza, but was surprisingly dry for being pulled. The BBQ sauce was delicious, but the dough left me feeling like it maybe could have been left in the oven just a bit longer.

Not bad, but not especially good either. Yet, I couldn’t help feeling that the simple act of eating and drinking like this in a church was awesome, and for one of the few times in my life the atmosphere played a distinct role in upping the food itself.

For a nice little seaside lunch, we headed to Moonshadows in Malibu. I couldn’t stop myself from humming Cat Stevens as I pulled my car up next to the Pacific Coast Highway and headed in for my meal. Although the outdoor seating area was full, we found ourselves a nice little ocean view window with a door open nearby so we could get a little taste of the ocean breeze. I took a look at my menu and immediately knew what I had to order.

This would be the Niman Ranch Wild Boar and Cranberry Sausage with Stone Ground Grits. As if that wasn’t enough, it also came with Fuji Apple raisin gravy and fried hickory smoked bacon chips. I was deeply intrigued by wild boar being from a ranch. In my mind, that would make it a domestic boar and no longer wild, but maybe I just don’t know the first thing about farming swine.

I enjoyed my company and view as I waited for my boar, and when it came, it looked beautiful, except for the couple of pieces of green on top of it. I flicked these off and stared at my manly meal. There were two full sausages and plenty of grits to keep me happy. My recent grits experience had left me disappointed, so I hoped these would be better. I dug into this boarish concoction and was quite pleased. The boar was decent on its own, but tasted great with that gravy and those grits. The grits were nice and creamy and blended well with the gravy. The bacon was also a nice touch. It was perfectly crispy and there wasn’t too much of it to overwhelm the taste of the wild boar.

I was pleasantly surprised by my Moonshadows experience. A lot of the time, restaurants with great views can get away with having subpar food, but Moonshadows definitely delivered.

The 8 oz. Burger Bar in Melrose has intrigued me for a long time. It combines two of my favorite things, burgers and bars, into one, so I knew eventually I would have to see how well that combination works. I recently got my chance and even went online to check their menu before going. On that menu I saw something that made me want to go even more: Fried Wisconsin Cheese Curds. Cheese curds are one of my favorite things in the world and although I prefer them un-fried, I will eat them anytime I see them offered. Excited about these curds, I stepped into 8 oz. Burger Bar.

Then I looked at their menu and almost cried.

No cheese curds. Quick, unvegan, think fast. There could be a good reason for this. Maybe they are kind of a secret dish only for people who read their menu online. Perhaps they were recently added to the menu online yet, but they hadn’t printed out the new menus for the restaurant yet. Still full of hope, I asked the waitress and she replied that they no longer served them. Drats! I mean how hard is it to take them off the online menu? I checked today and they are still there. Had I never known about the existence of the curds, I would have been happy in my ignorance, but seeing them on the menu online and not actually serving them gave my visit an immediate bitter taste.

We tried to salvage my disappointment by ordering a few sides. These were the fries, sweet potato chips and truffled potato skins. Nothing like a few good starches to get your stomach warmed up. Each of these appetizers tasted good in their own ways, so I didn’t feel like I was getting a potato overload. The sweet potato chips were both the orange and purple variety, which didn’t really taste any different, but were a nice touch.

The potato skins were like none I have ever had before, topped with truffle oil and a light cheese and further cemented my thoughts that truffle oil makes everything taste better. They tasted quite good and were a nice change from the typical potato skins loaded with cheese and bacon (although those are always delicious). The fries were Kennebec…whatever that means. To me it just meant they were pretty damn good. Crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

But enough about the sides, you say, on to the burgers. Well their normal burger options seemed pretty uninspired from my unvegan point of view. Some started out strong, but then threw in items that would have just ruined them (vegetables). Instead, I ordered their Suds & Slider Sampler. This intrigues me because it offered up a couple of meats not found in ordinary burgers, namely Niman Ranch lamb and wild boar. The third slider was triple prime beef. I knew these wouldn’t be sliders in the real sense, but I thought the mini burgers would be nice.

When they came, I ate them in the order requested of me. First was the wild boar. This burger was cooked extremely rare, which is supposedly necessary with wild boar because otherwise it could get too tough. The flavor was very different from pork, and I think that’s a good thing. Next came the triple prime beef burger. This was a great blend and a great grind. Finally, I delved into the lamb burger. Of the three, this was definitely my favorite. It had a nice taste and was the best-cooked of all.

Just a few comments on the burgers in general. First off, the menu says that they are cooked medium rare to medium. This was a bit of an overstatement, because these burgers definitely seemed to straddle raw and rare. Some people love this, but I don’t know why. The meat in the middle of the burgers, especially the beef one, had a sort of slimy texture that is usually the result of uncooked meat. I couldn’t even finish the beef burger because of this. Also, the buns were pretty big for the size of the burgers. Maybe they just needed to be squeezed down a bit, but I shouldn’t have to open my mouth as wide as it goes to bite into mini hamburgers.

The burgers also came with beer pairings to fulfill the “suds” part of the sampler. I honestly have no recollection of what these suds were, except that they were pretty good and were well-matched with the burgers. Each one was 5 oz., which was just enough to satisfy my thirst.

One thing that 8 oz. Burger Bar has, that some pretentious burger places don’t, is the ability to customize your burger. This is a great option for unvegans, although I didn’t partake in this option. This restaurant has a lot of potential to be great, starting with remedying the cheese curds situation and finishing with cooking their burgers for a length of time not broken down into nanoseconds. If they could take care of these things, 8 oz. Burger Bar could be great, but until then I can find a better meal elsewhere.

As a child with an appetite pickier than a vegan, I remember going to The Moose Preserve in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and being amazed by the selection of interesting foods on their menu. I always went with a burger because I wasn’t adventurous yet, but as I grew up, I tried some more things. The Moose Preserve was the first place I ever tried a buffalo burger, and I loved it. In fact, at the time I tried it, I had never seen buffalo on a menu anywhere else. Despite trying buffalo, there was one thing on the menu I was always in fear of. This was the Road Kill Grill. Although not actually composed of road kill, this meal had enough strange (to me) animals on it to keep me away. On my last visit to Michigan, though, I decided it was time to take on the road kill.

My Dad and I arrived for lunch, and the place was mostly ours. We took a seat and I was surprised to find that this game-inspired restaurant was playing music like Fanfarlo rather than Ted Nugent. Nonetheless, the menu was just as I remembered it. For a few moments I toyed with ordering something like the Buffaloaf (Buffalo Meat Loaf), but I knew the Road Kill Grill was the ultimate unvegan choice. The menu describes it as,

A selection of roast venison, semi-boneless broiled quail and wild boar sausage with Michigan game gravy. Served with buttered corn, Minnesota wild rice casserole and an “I Eat My Road Kill” bumper sticker.

Although semi-boneless quail is not at all boneless in my mind, I was excited at the entire prospect of this feast. I was ready for it and ordered with a big carnivorous grin on my face.

My beautiful meal arrived as a pile of meat and grains. I decided to start out with the food that would be the most similar to food I’m used to, the quail. By looks, quail was a miniature version of a chicken, and the bones were especially small and brittle, breaking with the slightest bend. I decided to eat it like I would a chicken, but cutting the breast up, but leaving the drumsticks to my fingers. I took a bite and found it was like a combination of duck and chicken. It was oily like a duck, but tender like chicken. I offered some of it to my Dad, the ultimate picky eater, and he surprised me by accepting. In fact, after tasting, he didn’t make his usual comment of, “It doesn’t do anything for me,” like he has every other time I’ve seen him taste something strange. I think this spoke well for the quail.

Next, I tried out the venison. I was pretty disappointed to find that it had been grilled on skewers along with mushrooms. I had no room for fungus on my platter of road kill, so I de-skewered it and set it aside for some poor bacteria to eat. Then I got down to the venison. This was surprisingly similar to beef, and although it wasn’t as tender, I felt that if it went through some sort of tenderization process like beef does, it would have been hard to tell the difference. It also had a bit sharper flavor.

Finally, I had the wild boar sausage, which ended up being the least interesting part of the grill. It tasted very similar to a regular pork sausage, although there was definitely something to it that told you that you weren’t eating something normal. All of these combined with the rice, gravy and corn made for an awesome meal that is definitely worth trying for any adventurous eater.

By now you’ve also probably noticed that I didn’t describe any of my food as gamey. This is because I disagree with the very notion of “gamey.” Yes, some food is actually hunted as game, but the quail, venison and boar that I ate were probably raised in a farm. If they weren’t, they probably don’t taste any different than if they were farmed. No one would ever describe a tough cut of regular beef as gamey, but if they eat some tough venison, it is automatically described as gamey, which somehow is supposed to mean something more than just tough. Therefore, none of my food was gamey.

That tangent aside, the Road Kill Grill was awesome, just like everything else I’ve ever had at The Moose Preserve. To remember it, I have my own bumper sticker, which is actually more of a badge of honor than anything else. With it, I will always carry the all-important message that “I eat my road kill.”