Las Vegas Weekly

Are you game?

For anyone heading up to Brian Head, Zion or points north in Utah, a stop at the wild-game restaurant the Gun Barrel is a delightful surprise. The restaurant started in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and today resides in a building at the top of Bluff Street in St. George, Utah, which conveniently is an exit off of the I-15.

The restaurant is a cavernous, rustic affair, with wood-beam ceilings and politically incorrect taxidermy for décor. It also features the West’s largest collection of barbed wire and an antique gun display. Meats are cooked on a wood-burning grill, often using mesquite or hardwoods.

My choice from the menu is definitely the mixed-game grill, at $32.95 the priciest item on the menu but probably big enough for two. It’s a combination elk chop, buffalo prime rib and barbecued buffalo rib, although on my last visit, I was offered a venison sausage as one of the options, which I accepted.

These meats, especially the elk, are wonderful, and even the accompaniments, such as a baked sweet potato with maple butter, or a wild rice pilaf with mushrooms and pecans, are unusual and engaging. Starters like fried green tomatoes doused with chipotle mayonnaise and desserts like the homey deep-dish apple pie are fine, too.