Wild boar, lion and python among choices at burger restaurant on El Camino Avenue

It happens often: you’re in the mood for a burger, but you happen to feel like Teddy Roosevelt and want to be a little more adventurous. No, you won’t be hunting for any antelope or wild boar, but there is a place where you can find some to eat.

The Flaming Grill Café is a bright red building with large, black pick up trucks adorned with flame graphics parked in front across the street from a church on El Camino Avenue near Howe Park. It’s hard to miss this place when driving down the street. The atmosphere is really different from most places you’ll eat at this year as well.

There is no real indoor seating. The interior is more like a room that is missing half a wall. The weather becomes a part of the meal, apparently. As the outside will tell you, the inside of this place is bright red. Murals of different animals that seem to be made out of fire grace the walls, a slight reminder that you are not here for a normal beef patty and fries.

The menu is riddled with all sorts of different types of meats including python, kangaroo, wild boar, alligator and even lion at the beginning of each month. Sadly, the lion runs out within a few hours of the first day it’s offered. For those who aren’t as adventurous, they also offer the usual items you’d see at a restaurant such as chicken sandwiches, beef patties and an assortment of salads. But let’s be honest – it’s the exotic meat you want.

Wild boar. That is what you should order. A quarter-pound of the most succulent, interesting tasting meat you could ever have. Served on a ciabatta roll that could be a perfectly satisfying meal on its own with tomatoes, onions, lettuce and house sauce, which seems to be Thousand Island spread, the wild boar burger is one of the best burgers Sacramento has to offer.

Not everything the Flaming Grill has for sale is culinary greatness, mind you. The deep fried python offered as an appetizer, while utterly delicious, is as rubbery as chewing on a piece of tire. Fries are served with the burger with the option to upgrade to garlic fries for a dollar more, but these fries are drenched in a garlic sauce that leaves them soggy, unlike normal garlic fries. Even after asking to make the fries crispier by recommendation of the waitress, the fries still came out like wet paper.

If you’re ever out and want to eat what you could hunt while out on safari, the Flaming Grill Café may just be your place.

Flaming Grill Cafe

2319 El Camino Avenue  Sacramento, CA 95821
Open Monday 11AM–4PM, Tuesday–Wednesday 11AM–9PM, Thursday and Friday 11AM–10PM, Saturday 12PM–8:30PM, Sunday 11AM–5PM
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Price range per meal: $10-20 Meal for one