Thursday, January 8, 2009

McCleary's mediocre Pub

So two days ago my mom sends me a text while I was at work that said, 'Can you call me right now?', and thinking there is a great emergency I called immediately. Turns out she just discovered a bar she wanted to try, and I was heading to her house that day, and would I have time to look at the website and check it out. So I check it out and it looks fine and we plan to go.

The directions that they post on their website are seriously wrong, and after a phone call to the hostess we finally arrive, both very bitchy and in desperate need of beers. We are seated in the bar area and look at the beer list - they offer about 50 bottles and have 12 on tap. Being the city snob that I am, I made a smart comment about how I have already had every beer on the menu, and I thought this was supposed to be a beer bar, and my mother reminds me that I am in Marietta, PA, and would I please shut up and pick something. Fransiskaner it is. I don't even know what she ordered, I was too crabby. She liked it, and we both got in better moods soon after the beer arrived.

Appetizers - we chose the seared tuna, which I ordered as rare as could be please, and it was delicious but overcooked for my taste. It was served on a seaweed salad. We also got a crab dip which was decent, served with celery and crackers and toast points. After the appetizers we got a second round of beers. The menu said Spaten and I assumed it would be the Lager, but I was served the Oktoberfest. Unexpected in January! But this is Marietta.

I had the crab cake sandwich and my mom had a blue cheese burger. Both were delicious, mine was more crab than cake and hers was cooked just as she wanted it. The menu claimed they would be served on kaiser rolls and neither one was. Both sandwiches came with a mountain of waffle fries that were very good, although we chose to eat the sandwiches instead and bring the fries home for our dogs. We did not save room for dessert, or as the website says, 'desert'.

Before the table next to us filled with recent college graduates drunkenly talking about the girls their boyfriends were flirting with online, I grabbed the cocktail menu from their table - ours didn't have one. They had a whole page of drinks made with that gross P.I.N.K. energy vodka, a list of what can only be called martinis because they are served in a martini glass, and lots of coffee cocktails, but no actual cocktails for grown folks who want to taste their booze. I was a little disappointed.

The whole purpose of our visit was for my mom to scope this place out as a new weekly spot for her and her friends as they are tiring of their old standby, Klingers. We decided it was fine once, but we probably wouldn't go back.

The dogs loved the fries.

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