Bloomfield Hills, MI - Moose Preserve Bar & Grill; People know I'm always looking for exotic food and wild game fits that appetite.  After several recommendations to try Moose Preserve for their exotic dishes, I had high expectations. I had to lower my standards throughout the meal to make sure I wasn't going to leave disappointed.

We started with the Wild Thang, an appetizer plate with spicy venison sausage, rabbit ravioli, duck tenders, whitefish pate, and BBQ buffalo balls. This should have enough wild game to satisfy Paul Bunyan and Big Blue.  Paul probably would have said, this is suppose to be what?  The only item that had a distinct flavor was the whitefish pate.  Everything else, it seems as though the dish is designed to be more of a gimmick so people can order it and say, wow, that meat didn't taste so bad at all....  The dish is not for the foodie who wants to taste rabbit, venison, buffalo, or duck.  The venison sausage was fine, but could I have said it had the nice rich flavor or venison, nope. How about the rabbit ravioli?  Well, I barely knew there was any meat in the ravioli, especially rabbit.  That was my biggest disappointment since I really wanted to taste what rabbit was like.  It's mixed with so many spices, that you really can't taste much of anything.  Duck usually has this nice rich greasy flavor that is very distinct to it's meat.  I almost could have been eating chicken tenders, I wouldn't have known the difference.  I guess it wasn't bad, but was it duck?  Lastly, the buffalo was better than the rest, I'll give them that.  They were tender and flavorful, sauce was nice and I'm glad I ended on that component of the dish rather the others.

Ordering the ribs was a bit of a cluster f...  I ordered a full slab so I could share them with others, but then the server came back and said sorry we're all out of full slabs, but I can give you two half slabs.  She explained at first the chef didn't want to combine them because he wanted to make sure he had enough for other orders.  After doing some calculus for the server and chef (adding how many bones are in a half times two compared to how many are in a full) since they equal the same....isn't it the same thing?  After this discussion, they finally agreed to put two half slabs together for one.  I didn't realize I needed my JD to convince a jury to order my food.

The ribs arrived and I was going to say, yabba dabba doooo!  They were the ribs from the Flintstones when they arrive at the window.  They really are very very large.  They were tender, not falling off the bone, but still tender.  I appreciate when they are not boiled so they fall off to retain some of their flavor.  It had a nice dry rub on them and combined with the sauce, they were decent.

The shepherds pie I also thought was decent. The mashed potatoes where nice on top and the minced meat underneath I thought was cooked well, seasoned well, and still juicy.  The pie had the size close to the ribs, so you'll be taking some of it home as well.  It's a large dish, so be prepared.

Lastly, to complete the meat trifecta, we saw boar sausage on the menu and were compelled to try it.  We thought it was good, on the sweet side which we didn't expect at all.  However, the surprise to us was when the manager came around to see how our meal was that evening.  We explained about the craziness in the beginning, but then we told him we enjoyed the boar sausage and asked the question, what was in it that made it sweet.  His reply, "Well I'm not sure, we don't make it here, so sorry. I'm glad you enjoyed it though."  Seriously? That's your reply? You don't know what's in it nor can you go and ask the chef what's in it? Really? That's not really the response I was looking for, but thank you.