Anytime you see the word “organic”, think “expensive.”

And even though organic, to me at least, means coming with no additives; you still have to wonder if it’s worth the price.

Food is getting more expensive by the day; and while it not be a bad idea to eat food that is unadulterated; it’s virtually impossible to find products that are within one’s budget.

So enter the “organic burger”, brought to us by a New York chain, catering to, as they say in their promotion piece, a demographic that thinks healthy and supposedly has disposable income.

Like yuppies!

(That's why one of their locations is in Hoboken, down the block from where my daughter lived.)

Bareburger was born in a closet-sized kitchen in a Brooklyn music club.

Now, it's a burger chain with more than a dozen restaurants set to open its first New Jersey locations this year in Edgewater and Hoboken.

Eurepides Pelekanos, the CEO and co-founder of Bareburger, was one of the owners of a music venue in Brooklyn called Sputnik. In 2002, he and his partners got the idea to sell organic burgers and snacks to guests.

It caught on. Soon people were coming to Sputnik for the food, not the music.
So Pelekanos and his partners decided to build a whole restaurant around the idea of servic organic, locally sourced comfort food.

In 2009, the first Bareburger restaurant opened in Astoria, Queens, almost four years ago to the day.

And by late September, Pelekanos expects to open the New Jersey locations, the 14th and 15th Bareburgers. The Edgewater location will be in the Promenade, right on the Hudson River, while the Hoboken restaurant will be on Fifth and Washington streets.
"There's plenty of young families in Hoboken and our demographic is there," Pelekanos said.

That demographic is young and educated with expendable income, Pelekanos said. A family of four can expect to spend $60 to $70 for dinner.

As for the food itself, the key word is organic. The meat is free-range, pasture-raised and antibiotic-, gluten- and hormone-free.

"The pride of our restaurants has always been organic food," he said.

I’m still captivated by the price of an average meal. A family of 4 can expect to spend $60 to $70 for dinner.

For burgers!

I don’t care how much money you have, you’re not spending 60 to 70 bucks on burgers.

And even if you do go out for burgers, you don’t do it everyday.

Burgers are a guilty pleasure, not to be messed with. Loaded with cheese, mushrooms, bacon, you name it.

Do you feel organic burgers are a healthy alternative or ruining a good comfort food?

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