Little Bones Wings: 3.5/5

Bacon Double Cheese Burger
Score: 3.3
Platter: $13.00


Build-a-Burger
Score: 3.6
$11.00

Little Bones Wings, born as a Winnipeg food truck, opened a restaurant in the basement of the Royal George Hotel at 123 Regent Ave in February. In addition to their renowned wing selection, Little Bones has a DoubleBaconDoubleCheeseBurger and a build-a-burger on their menu.  The build-a-burger options are tantalizing!

We had originally planned to check out a nearby burger shack, but yet another monsoon rain changed our plans and we headed indoors to Little Bones. They recommend that you pre-order, but our last minute decision didn’t allow time for that and we showed up en-masse. We were lucky to find them open, as the previous weekend’s three inches of rain had found its way into the basement and LBW needed to mop up. Our waitress rearranged most of the furniture so that we could sit at one long table and that was appreciated.

Chef Alex needed time to prepare more of his secret burger blend from scratch, and our waitress had to make an emergency bun-run. Unfortunately she didn’t come back with the Brioche buns the menu described. Cutlery was delivered in a bucket for us to distribute. Some drinks were handed out, and some were placed on a nearby table for us to self-serve.

When the burgers finally came, they were piping hot and nicely presented in check paper lined metal baskets with an outrigger to dangle the coleslaw. The burger layers were architectural and made an impressive stack. The handmade patties were huge, variable in size and had a nice grill crust. They were quite dry. Interesting seasonings and flavors in the patty intrigued the pallet; sesame seeds added to the visual texture.

Toppings were pretty much limited by your imagination. Choices include an egg, taco beef, chicken pieces, shrimp, calamari, deep fried jalapeños and a selection of cheeses (among many other selections). Today the deep-fried pickles were just .. pickles. I can only imagine all the effort in the kitchen preparing the plethora of customized burger toppings, not to mention their regular fare of wings, wings and more wings.

I opted for calamari rings, deep-fried & crispy onions and provolone. I enjoyed my choices – there was lots of texture and flavour. What the assembly could have used more of was sauces to lubricate the big sandwich.

The burger comes with fries and slaaaww, and an upgrade option to checkered fries. Get the upgrade – the checkered fries were crispy, flavourful and fun – and served  hot. Esther had the checkered nacho fries and said they were awesome. I would describe the slaaaww as shoe-string cut cucumbers in a creamy sauce. Cool and delicious. One person had it on their burger and said it was messy – but they never said the burger was dry so maybe that’s where the moisture comes from.