Impossible is a typoRunning my pants off and loving myself along the way

FitGirl: What should we have for dinner?

FatGirl: Bareburger.

FitGirl: Quinoa pilaf? Brown rice?

FatGirl: Bareburger.

FitGirl: No seriously. What are we having for dinner?

FatGirl: Bareburger.

FitGirl: C’mon, we can’t have burgers for dinner again. Salmon? Protein shake?

FatGirl: Bareburger.

FitGirl: For goodness sa….

FatGirl: Bareburger.

FitGirl: If you say “Bareburger” one more time…

FatGirl: Bareburger.

FitGirl: Look, I know Bareburger is tasty and organic, but..

FatGirl: I’ll buy you a milkshake.

FitGirl: Bareburger it is.

May I introduce Bareburger

Bareburger - Just your friendly neighborhood Burger joint, just bike on up!

A friend dragged me to Bareburger about a month ago. OK, fine. “Dragged” is a wee bit forceful.  Let’s go with “enthusiastically suggested and I capitulated”. Look at me with the SAT words! I’m not a big burger fan, not because I don’t like burgers but because when I want a good burger, 9 times out of 10 I’m totally disappointed in what arrives on my plate. She added “They’re organic by the way” to entice me further. And I’ll admit, I rolled my eyes at that. As a marketeer, I see “organic” tossed around with little care and used mostly to justify a price mark up. Yeah, I’m a bit biased, but more on that in a second…

So, we go to Bareburger on 31st Ave in Astoria. All the employees were so nice, it was almost uncomfortable. In New York, you sort of get used to pleasant but brisk and efficient service. Our server chatted with us like we were real human beings, like folks from the neighborhood, while also providing pleasant and efficient service. We had a 10 minute conversation about burlesque hair styles while we waited for our dinner. I began to feel there was something a little bit different about Bareburger.

"Bare-y nice to meet you!" Get it? Very... Bare-y... yuk yuk

It was all over the moment my burger and onion rings arrived.

Remember when I said that 9 out of 10 times I’m totally disappointed in my burger experience because it never lives up to my expectations? All burgers will now have to live up to the standard Bareburger created for me.

Picture... 1,000 words... you get the drift.

So, the service and vibe in Bareburger is exceptional and the food will make you an instant fan. But there was still something nagging at me.

Good vibes at Bareburger, cool and cozy

The whole “organic” thing. It’s hard for me to get past seeing it as anything but a marketing gimmick. Like my favorite coffee place features “organic” coffee. OK great, that’s awesome right? But the milk they serve for your organic coffee is not organic. So what’s the point of having one and only one element of your meal being organic when it’s overwhelmed by all the non-organic ingredients? It’s like what’s the point of having a diet Coke with your 3,000 calorie Blooming Onion? Sorry, I’m a bit soap-boxy about all this.

See, I WANT to fall madly, head-over-heels in love with Bareburger. I WANT to believe that its NOT a gimmick, and cheerlead the cause.

Keepin' an eye on things

So, I went to the source – Owner, founder, creator Euripides Pelekanos.

EP, as he signs his emails, shared that the ideas behind Bareburger started almost by accident. In 2001, EP opened Sputnik, a live music and art venue in Brooklyn. They served food, but food, while not quite an afterthought, wasn’t what Sputnik was about. Until they put an organic burger on the menu. Now, this was before burgers became the new cupcake, before Five Guys and Shake Shack showed up in NY, before burgers were cool and trendy. People started hitting up Sputnik just for the burgers and the music and art started to come second. In that moment, Bareburger began to take shape.

“But there was one thing that didn’t make @#$%’ing sense”, (Sidenote – Hanging out with EP is like hanging out with that kid you grew up in the neighborhood with, straight forward and very personable, relaxed but really passionate. He kept apologizing for cussing. It was cute). “It just doesn’t make sense to have an organic burger and then pile it with non-organic toppings.”

Hello Mind Reader!

“Organic isn’t just a trend, it’s where the food industry is going”. EP had me consider that all the processed, mass produced, factory food we grew up on was driven by big business in the 50s. World War II ended, the Baby Boom was on. We changed how we lived and what was important to us. We stopped shopping at local markets and started going for convenience and speed. Organic is now becoming big business and will (heck, already is) change the way food is produced and consumed. Now hold that thought…

Bareburger opened in 2009 in a TINY 1000 square foot former bakery that had been closed “forever”, EP says. And he would know as he, and the other owners of Bareburger, all grew up in Astoria. Back in those days, (yeah I know, “3 years ago” is not an eon but things can change really rapidly in NYC neighborhoods) Astoria didn’t have a lot of “fancy” food. You had your typical local restaurants, heavy on the Greek flavors, being an old immigrant neighborhood, but you wouldn’t find many foodie blog write ups about Astoria. Doing a fancy hamburger in a working class neighborhood was risky enough, adding the organic element was nail-biting. EP says they did ZERO advertising except for an 8 1/2 X 11 printout in the window saying “Bareburger. Organic Burgers. Opening June 12, 2pm”. On opening day, with EP in the kitchen, they expected 5 or 6 people at the door. About 60 showed up at 2pm. After a bit of a bumpy start, they knew they hit a nerve. Three years later, the 11th Bareburger will open very very soon in an undisclosed location (Yup, I know where it is, and Nope I’m not telling), and EP joked that they’ve probably served over a million burgers.

And now back to Big Business… EP said that sourcing ingredients and staying profitable can be a challenge when you’re talking organic and all natural ingredients. It’s a challenge on both the farmer’s side of things and the buyer’s side. Licenses and certifications are expensive, then there’s shipping, storage, and probably a bazillion things I’m not even thinking about. “Once you start dealing in volume, costs come down and you have greater control over the product”. Then we talked bacon. Ah, bacon, it always comes back to bacon. EP shared how, because of the volume Bareburger deals in with soon-to-be 11 shops, he can get suppliers to craft products just for Bareburger like special cut, cured and smoked bacon.

At Bareburger it's all about the ingredients

Bareburger wants to have that one-on-one relationship with their suppliers so they know exactly what they are buying. Why? Because they want YOU to know it too. Each table has an FAQ that gives you, in almost overwhelming details, the fat percentages, origin, chemical usage, certification of pretty much everything on the menu. It’s rather impressive.

Guardians of the FAQ

That little FAQ sheet will also tell you that Bareburger is about as green as you can get without building from the ground up. They use recycled vinyl for their booths, reclaimed wood for the tables, and recycled and re-purposed furnishings wherever they can. Again, EP noted how absurd it is to serve organic food on petro-chemical plastics. Bareburger has seen some crazy growth, but you probably won’t see Bareburgers popping up in your local mall. It’s a Main Street, neighborhood kind of joint. Manager Steve told me that one of the things he loves about working on 31st Ave is that it is a neighborhood, all the shop owners are buddies rather than competitors. “Its like you can go next door and borrow a cup of sugar if you need to”.

Green, sustainable and organic are not gimmicks

Yeah, I know your thinking “hey, this is weird, Amy isn’t talking about how delicious the food is”. Just trust it’s crazy pants delicious, but for god sakes, what ever you do, do not have a milkshake. That’s right, step away from the milkshake. Just back off, alright. I will go all Mr. Blonde on you if they are out of vanilla ice cream because you ordered the last vanilla milkshake. Just sayin’ – alls fair in love and war and milk shakes.

I'm not sure they have enough ice cream

OK, so you know the food is beyond good, the service is top notch, and they are organic as part of the fabric of the company. But this is what sealed the deal for me:

No, you can't have a bite.

I asked EP about the logo – what the heck is up with a bear riding a unicycle with a beer and a burger in its hands. He smiled and said “Why not a bear riding a unicycle with a beer and a burger in its hands? Look, after a couple drinks, it seemed like a good idea and it just stuck.”

Sold.

Why not indeed

I grew up on Long Island where you can’t drive a mile without passing at least 3 pizza shops. And we’re talking good pizza. The pizza all other pizza in the world wish they could be. Crisp yet chewy crust. Cheese that oozes all melty in your mouth. Sauce that bursts with sweet-tart tomatoey goodness. Whew, I need to sit down just at the thought. Mike’s was our local pizza shop growing up. I can close my eyes and remember the rich yummy smell of my dad walking in the house with a pie, half pepperoni, half sausage, with soda. Pizza night was one of the few times we were allowed soda growing up.

Pizza for me is the most perfect food on earth, and yeah, I’ll own it, I’m a total pizza snob and super righteous about it, which is completely justified as I had to suffer three years of pizza in Japan where “normal” ingredients were corn, potato and squid ink. Just sayin’ you don’t mess with pizza. I won’t eat pizza outside of a 50 mile radius of New York City anymore because what other people do to dough, sauce and cheese in the name of pizza can be a monstrosity.  Seriously, stop putting pineapple on your pizza, people! You want to go all crazy and put truffle and duck confit on dough? Great, call it “flatbread”, stop calling it “pizza” for god sakes! It’s just wrong and goes against all the laws of nature. No, worse than that, it breaks the Laws of Pizza Physics.

So when I got an invite to the preview of “SkinnyPizza” at Roosevelt Field Mall, I was concerned and dubious. “Skinny” and “Pizza” shouldn’t really be in the same sentence together unless of course you’re saying “Look at those skinny girls, someone should get them a slice of pizza”. I was more than pleasantly surprised by SkinnyPizza, shocked actually as it was really really good.

The shop is sleek and modern. Airy, with really clean lines, not sterile at all but also not a place you’re going to sit for a few hours with friends. This is a pizza joint after all, not a diner. They have an outdoor table area which is nice and not very common on Long Island.

SkinnyPizza Counter Service

“Shut up and tell me about the pizza!!!”

OK OK.

Sheesh.

SkinnyPizza is obviously thin crust pizza. So you’re not going to get that bready, doughy, crispy, chewy mouthful of my beloved Mike’s. Now, I’ve had a lot of “low cal” and thin crust pizza in my day, and with the first bite, it crumbles to dust, leaving your toppings to slide down your front, and you get home and find a random mushroom in your purse. Thin crust crispy pizza can be like having Saltines with pizza toppings – a serious transgression against the Laws of Pizza Physics. This is NOT the crust you’ll find at SkinnyPizza. The crust is crisp but still has the chew you expect when you bite into pizza and totally stands up to the classic New York Fold. What? You don’t fold your pizza in half? What is wrong with you? You have to fold your pizza in half or else you get sauce and cheese all over your face. Sheesh, that’s the First Law of Pizza Physics – Fold Thy Pizza. The Second Law, in case you’re interested is “If you have to eat it with a knife and fork, it’s not pizza”.

SkinnyPizza Classic - Big Flavor

The SkinnyClassic delivers on taste. The sauce is bright and bold (and that’s because they make it in-house with organic tomatoes), it comes THIS close to being overpowering but doesn’t cross the line. The cheese doesn’t do that scary non-melting thing you sometimes find with low fat cheese that makes you wonder if it’s a dairy product or a plastic. The flavor profile (I know, snobby foodie term) was exactly what you want from a classic cheese pizza just with out the calorie count. Yup, you read the card right. It says “253 Calories” and that’s for a whole slice. And not a shabby micro slice, but a real normal human sized slice.

SkinnyArugula from SkinnyPizza - BIG taste

The SkinnyArugula was the first slice I tried. HUGE flavor, the arugula adds something-something to the normal pizza experience. While it was super tasty, it was a bit hard to eat. I kept losing greens and those tasty little cherry tomatoes kept popping off and shooting across the store. Classy. Maybe salad on my pizza is beyond my hand-eye coordination skills. And salad pizza does break the first two Laws of Pizza Physics. Tasty, but hard to eat.

SkinnyBuffalo - I could eat this every day

OK, I won’t lie. I had a second slice and seriously considered a third slice of the SkinnyBuffalo. Yeah, I know, this breaks like 47 Laws of Pizza Physics but Holy Handbags Batman, this was crazy delicious. It was like eating a plate of the best buffalo wings you’ve ever had without the messy fingers and the morning-after regret. The chicken chunks were chunks. I mean CHUNKS. Look at it, those little chicken jewels, they’re moist and dipped in some crazy sauce that comes close to being too spicy but is just perfect with the blue cheese sprinkled on top. I know this was not a classic pizza but man, I seriously could eat this every day.

Pasta at SkinnyPizza

Just so you know, SkinnyPizza also does pasta, which I did not try. I mean, seriously, after two slices, OK FINE, three slices, I was getting the food woozies and couldn’t contemplate the choices. SkinnyPizza offers whole wheat and gluten free pasta options with their house-made sauces. Which is really good news as gluten-free anything is hard to come by locally. And topped with SkinnyPizza’s bold sauce, I know I’ll be back to try some. Check out their menu for salad, wraps and soups!

There was a secret hidden surprise at SkinnyPizza which, by itself will have me back at SkinnyPizza again and again…

Boylan Soda at SkinnyPizza - Best soda ever

Boylan Soda. I am not a huge soda fan but if I had a Boylan soda fountain in my house, I would never leave, I’d bathe in it, put it in my coffee and morning cereal. I discovered Boylan years ago and it’s hard to find and I’ve never seen it in anything but glass bottles. Boylan uses actual sugar, not corn syrup, in their beverages which gives them this crisp sweetness that is remarkable and distinctive. The diet black cherry is like a sparkling dessert. It’s that good.

Tasty and calorie conscious food should be enough to get you in the door but what the company stands for will keep you coming back. The owners and creators of SkinnyPizza are childhood friends and grew up in and around the restaurant industry. When they started having families, they started getting really interested in what ingredients were going into the food their families were eating. SkinnyPizza uses organic and all natural ingredients where ever possible and source suppliers that are hormone and antibiotic free. And they want you to know what you’re eating too and “we want you to have a second slice!” one of the owners said to me. Scanning their menu you’ll see calorie counts, notes as to what’s organic and hormone-free and even the fiber count of the pasta. Who does that? Apparently, SkinnyPizza does. OH and they do have Weight Watcher’s Points Plus values for most menu items if you ask.

Green SkinnyPizza

SkinnyPizza also uses as much recycled and green products as possible. I wish I grabbed a shot of the beverage cups, as they looked just like regular plastic cups but were made from plant based materials. The menus are printed with soy-based ink on recycled paper.

So, you’ve read this far and now I want you to do something. Here’s the problem. There are only 2 SkinnyPizza locations - Roslyn Heights and Garden City (Roosevelt Field Mall). Go to the SkinnyPizza Facebook Page, tell them you want a SkinnyPizza in YOUR neighborhood. Trust me, you’re skinny jeans will thank you.