The Best Restaurants & Sports Bars thread

You can never go wrong with a Morton's steak or a meal from Cheesecake Factory.

As for sports bars... this is slanted toward St. Louis, but Ozzie's is great and Albert Pujols' restaurant is pretty damn good for a newbie.

 

Did not know this. We had our hockey draft there three years running... The National Sports Grill and Bar across from Angels Stadium is a great place to go after Angels games; players come in all the time.

Restaurants -- if you're ever in the Palm Springs/Coachella Valley area, run, don't walk to the Chop House. Steaks that make Ruth's Chris taste like dogfood. There is no comparison. None. During Samsung week last month, me and my two cohorts took five top-shelf golf writers to dinner there. One of the five didn't order desert, thus denying me the pleasure of dropping the company card down on a $700 check.

Sports Bars -- The Beer Hunter, La Quinta, Calif. Great, great place. Also, see the National Sports Bar and Steak House (I think that's the name) in downtown West Palm Beach. Good food, great sports ambiance.

 

Since I havent been back in 2 years, none....
But they've paid it forward so to speak

 

Restaurants: I'm hard-pressed to find one better than Bern's Steak House in Tampa.

Sports bars: Coolidge Corner Clubhouse in Brookline, Mass., used to be pretty good, but I don't know if it's still around.

 

Sports bars -- Minnesota nominations.

Stub & Herb's -- Dinkytown
Joe Senser's -- Roseville
Grandma's -- Duluth.

 

I know casino bars sometimes should be in a class all their own ...

But in the sports bars category, Amerisports Cafe, Kansas City, Mo. Inside the Ameristar Casino.

Seriously. Just go. Even if you're opposed to gambling.

 

The Iron Horse -- Missoula, Mont. Good food and my favoriite mixed drink . . . Strawberry Sex.

 

what makes a sports bar good? is it access to TVs? food? beer selection? all of the above? i don't really go to sports bars any more but when i did when i was younger i found the food to be pretty much all the same -- wings, burgers, nachos, fish & chips and couple supposedly more upscale things like salmon or halibut.

 

I'll try that leo.

Good, honest bar food at decent prices. Joe Senser's, for instance, gets the nod largely due to its great sandwich menu.
But you have to have a few things that are different than the normal nachos, cheese sticks, burgers.

Good tap and bottled beer selection. I don't need hundreds, but a decent selection.
Most overlooked thing about whether a bar is good or not: Do they keep the fucking beer cold? Any place with icy cold bottles will get a second visit from me.

Plenty of TV's and options. If I want the UND college hockey game, you'd better have it.

Friendly and knowledgeable wait staff.

Bars are automatically disqualified for: Being in a strip mall, being lit like a strip mall, being a national chain, having bingo, or trying to be a sports bar and a nightclub at the same time.

 

The Blue Goose, Mimico, Ontario. Place celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2009. It's an old railway hotel that still rents rooms by the week. Family run for the last 50 years. (If you've seen the movie "Men with Brooms" or the great series, "Slings and Arrows", the bar scenes were all shot at the Goose.)

No credit cards, no tabs. Great wings and a Sports Wall of Fame with pics of local sports heroes like Brendan Shanahan. Cheapest beer in Toronto. Servers who routinely insult the customers. Place is self-policing. Haven't seen a fight there in years. However, do not, under any circumstances wear an Ottawa Senators jersey in the place.

Mostly yuppie-free except for Sunday afternoons when the Pie Guys, the house R&B Band play.

Mr. FoF still maintains it's a dive but us locals know better.

 

ok zeke, i like that set of criteria, especially keeping the bottles almost icy cold. and mugs should be kept in the freezer so that when beer goes in you actually get ice on the glass, not just slightly cool.

 

Restaurant -- Majestic steakhouse in KC. Nothing touches it. Nothing.