Auntie B's Wax

It was a cold and snowy night.  The dive was to be chosen by me and Husby so we decided to keep it local, avoiding a slippery and treacherous ride for Ruthie and Ray.  We chose the Beartown Bar & Grill, or Beartown Lounge, or whatever it’s called.  They don’t have a website but if you Google Beartown you can find some stuff on it.

Those are snowflakes you see glowing against the dark sky, not orbs from beyond the veil.

We walked in and saw on the floor a sign that said, Please wait to be seated.  So we did.  It didn’t take long for someone to come and greet us and she asked, “where do you want to sit, bar or dining room?”  We all kind of looked at each other, then let her know we would sit anywhere she decided to put us.  She hesitated.  I turned to Husby and said “if we can sit anywhere we want why did the sign on the floor say to wait to be seated?”  Well, someone spoke up and said dining room so that’s where she took us.

This is the bar, the place we didn’t sit.

This is the dining room, the place we did sit. It’s like we were put in the room of shame. Weren’t we cool enough to sit with the regulars?

We started out with some cocktails.  I must say the drink specials were hard to resist.  Buy one get one for $1.50, except for tap beer.  Ruthie and I got a couple of wines each, Husby got a couple of Greyhounds, and Ray got a tap beer.  The waitress asked if he was sure, because he wouldn’t get the deal with that.  Yes, he was sure.

Even though we were set away from the crowd in the bar the service was pretty good.  We actually had three people checking in with us throughout our visit.  So once we got our cocktails we ordered appetizers.

Ruthie and Ray got chips and salsa. The chips were pretty good. The salsa was more like picante sauce, not chunky, and not really enough was supplied for a whole basket of chips. It was all pretty good though.

Husby and I ordered the cheese quesadillas. It came with the same “salsa” as the chips, and also a couple of tubes of sour cream. Tasty and cheesy.

In case you’re new to the dive night reviews, each couple orders an appetizer and we all share.  So far you might think this is going to be a Mexican meal considering the appetizers we chose, but that’s not the case.

I ordered the fish fry special and I totally forgot to take a picture of it so you’ll have to rely on my description.  The waitress said “sometimes they give you a choice of cod or pollock but I don’t know if you get a choice tonight.  If you had a pick which one would you choose?”  I told her it really didn’t matter, and I have no idea what kind of fish I got because I’m not a fish connoisseur.  It was white and flakey.  However, the batter was pretty greasy and was pretty nondescript as far as flavor is concerned.  My dinner came with waffle fries and seasoned sour cream.  I also got a side salad which was also pretty nondescript, but salads are always pretty nondescript to me.  I ate it all up so it must have been good enough.  And now on to the other meals I remembered to photograph.

This is Husby’s French dip sandwich with onion rings. He liked the onion rings because he could bite them without having a string of onion sliding out of the batter. He didn’t have much to say about the sandwich. “It’s okay,” he said.

This is Ruthie’s chicken with waffle fries. The cup of white stuff is seasoned sour cream for the fries. She said the chicken was okay but “it could have a little more seasoning.”  The dinner allowed two pieces of chicken and she got her choice of what pieces she wanted.  She chose two thighs.   She also had a side salad with her dinner.

Ray ordered the meatball sandwich with onion rings. The sandwich looked great with its toasted bun and six meatballs with sauce and cheese. When I asked Ray (whose mother is an excellent Italian cook) how the sandwich was he responded “it’s kind of bland.”

It was very clear that none of us was overly thrilled with our meals.  We came to the conclusion that seasoning is not high on chef’s list of priorities.  The appetizers were fine, so we decided that if we had been sitting in the bar and were half in the bag with a big case of the munchies the appetizers could satisfy a need for food.  Going for dinner?  Never going to happen again.  I was extremely dissatisfied with the food at the Beartown Bar & Grill, although as I said before the service and drink specials were good.

I can’t close out this post without mentioning that this restaurant used to be called Big Ben years ago and served the best pie in town.  Like, the best.  The Beartown doesn’t even serve pie.  Although if they did they’d probably have canned filling and soggy crust.  None of us was happy with our dive experience at the Beartown, but we all agreed we’ve been pretty lucky over the past few years with the other dives we’ve tried and we deserve to come across a clinker once in a while.  Beartown is definitely that clinker.

Ruthie says, “Not.”

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