Well, aren’t we lucky – Game Three of the NBA Finals falls on a Wednesday! Now if only we knew of a decent sports bar to go watch the game …

You think I’m kidding.

I mean, part of the reason we started this blog was for this very scenerio – so that when we need to pick a location on the fly we can easily catalog all the great places we’ve been dying to go back to. But in reality all it seems to do is remind us that all of those great places are nowhere close to our neighborhood. Seriously, people? TD’s Tailgate Grille? Too far. Muskateers? Too far and probably already crowded in the bar at 4PM. Delanie’s? Howie’s? See above. Windsor Pub? We were just there not long ago. Can someone please open something less than a 20 minute drive away that resembles one of these amazing places? For the love.

In any case, welcome to the long-winded explanation as to how we ended up at J. Dublin’s Pour House this week.

And not to say we hate this place … just more so that none of us were overly impressed with it the last time around … or the time before that, when it was Johnny Malloy’s.

So is this a revisit-revisit? I’m confused.

The reason we finally picked this place was two-fold. 1) it’s huge, so we knew we wouldn’t have a hard time getting a table. And 2) they also have about one TV per square inch of the property, so we wouldn’t have to worry about not being in the sight line of the game, either.

Priorities, people. These games only come around once a year.

As soon as Shane and I arrived (about 90 minutes prior to game time) it was obvious we could’ve waited a bit, as we were practically the only people there. I guess not everyone was as prepared as we were for crowd control. But I will say that it only took about an hour for the place to fill up – although if the crowd when we first arrived was any indication of what a normal non-championship-game night is like at J. Dub’s, let’s just say it’s a sure bet for that category of “we’re super hungry and want to make sure we don’t have to wait for a table.”

Which worked out well for Ted, who arrived about ten minutes after us and immediately declared his hunger to be like that of needing the food truck competition again to quench it. We had already ordered drinks (game specials were 5 for $10 buckets of tall Coors or Labatts cans) but as soon as the server re-appeared we went ahead and threw together a food order, too. Because nobody likes a hangry Ted.

Thanks to the pretty picture in the top corner of the menu, Shane gravitated toward the crispy bacon wrapped sausage as an app.

The picture on the menu was more convincing than this one.

And when it arrived, this bromance moment happened:

Ted: I don’t normally dig into your apps, but that looks delicious.
Shane: Are you saying you want my sausage?
Ted: Yes, I can’t wait to put your sasuage in my mouth

I asked if they wanted me to leave the table so they could be alone.

All 15-year old boy jokes aside, the sausage was really good. (That’s what she said. Boom!) It wasn’t spicy at all, but had a lot of flavor. As Ted put it, “it’s kielbasa wrapped in bacon and served with a side of stadium mustard. How can you go wrong?”

For meals, super-hungry-Ted got the Big J Burger – which when it arrived I realized was basically not one, but two burgers under one bun. Clearly he wasn’t messing around, nor was he lying about that whole hunger thing.

He also of course ordered it with no cheese, which caused the server to literally stop writing, put down her pen and stare at him to ask “Did you just say no cheese? That’s the best part.”

See, Ted, we aren’t the only ones who think you’re strange.

But I will give our server credit, because for all of her harassment about Ted’s hatred of cheese, she still told us later – when mine and Shane’s food came out, but yet Ted’s was somehow missing (because that always happens to the hungriest one, right?) – that she had sent the burger back before bringing it out to us because they had – take a guess? – put cheese on it by mistake. Nice catch.

Lots of meat, no cheese

In addition to solving cheese catastrophes before they occur, our server was also a mastermind at up-selling. Shane ordered a pizza for his meal, and was only going to get a medium … but when he asked about how big it was she just said “it’s actually a better deal to get the large.” No size comparison, no wishy-washy “well how hungry are you / are you splitting it with someone / do you want leftovers” schpeels … nope, just straight to the point, BAM, you look like you should order a full large pizza, sir, because you’re hungry AND frugal, and this is the better deal.

And of course Shane was sold, because clearly you need to twist his arm to get MORE food. Does she read this blog?

To make it even better, as he’s adding 8 billion toppings to his now large pizza, she tells him “You know, at this point you’re better off just to get the deluxe instead of paying for all these extra toppings.”

I like her.

It’s almost too pretty to eat. Almost.

For my meal, I got the chicken quesadilla and a large order of mixed vegetables. Which may possibly be the strangest combination of food I’ve ever ordered at a restaurant, but whatevs. I wasn’t super hungry, and I needed my vegetables. Done.

And the server didn’t have anything to say about MY order, so it couldn’t have been so bad.

Ted said his burger was just OK. He said it really didn’t have much flavor. Now maybe that verdict was reached just because he was so hungry that he shoveled it into his mouth without even touching his taste buds … OR maybe, just maybe, that’s where the cheese comes in, Ted. But in any case, I noticed he pretty much kept one hand on the pepper shaker so he could season every bite, so I asked him about there not being any seasoning on the burger.

His response? “It’s not that, it’s just a lot of meat, so that’s all I taste.”

We’re on fire tonight, folks. I don’t even have to write the jokes. They just fall out of our mouths. Ba-dum-bum.

My veggies were good – although, I mean, how can you really screw up freezer vegetables that were dumped from a bag and heated up, the same way I do at home? Don’t answer that. I’m just glad they were all cooked, there were no still-frozen pieces, and they didn’t season them with anything so I didn’t have to worry about them being overly salted or soaked in butter.

WHO ORDERS HEALTHY FOOD ON WTGW? I’m not sure this is allowed.

The quesadilla was very good. It had parm cheese baked on the top, which was unexpected in a pleasant way. And it was huge – 8 pieces total – which I didn’t mean to eat all of necessarily, but since we were there for like five hours watching the game I kept nibbling as the night wore on. It came with sour cream and guacamole on the side, but no salsa. What now? Who serves Mexican food of any kind without salsa? For real, people. And the containers holding the sour cream and salsa were like Barbie-doll sized bowls to boot. Sure, here’s your tablespoon of sour cream, to go with your eight pieces of tortilla and cheese … yeah, that makes total sense. I mean, my waistline definitely thanks you for the rationing, but maybe next time we can spare a tiny bit more? 

Is there a guac shortage I’m unaware of?

Meanwhile, it’s a good thing we were there for the better portion of the evening, because it was approximately 30 minutes between the time Shane’s pizza hit the table and his first actual bite. Ted finished his burger, I made my way through my veggies and half of my quesadilla, and yet here’s Shane’s full large pizza, still taking up 3/4 of the table. He has a thing about protecting his mouth from heat. Or maybe he just prefers congealed, rock hard cheese to the gooeyness you see on all the Domino’s commercials. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

But once he did eat it, he said it was good. And while the large was definitely more food than what he needed – he was glad to be able to take some home for leftovers. He had contemplated getting the steak special – which he got the last time we were there and he enjoyed – but he was glad to have opted for the pizza when it was all said and done.

Overall, J. Dub’s is a good place to watch a game. The drink specials were good – well, if you like Coors or Labatt’s, I guess, otherwise you were kind of screwed … but hey, sometimes beer is beer, and something is better than nothing. There were more than enough TVs to watch, and the crowd was really into cheering on the hometown team (much to the dismay of Shane, who was decked out in gear supporting the opposing team … but he lived to tell about it at least) Although we all agreed that they could take the volume down a notch since the place is pretty cavernous and the echos just made it all just sound like gibberish anyway. The biggest negative was that our server seemed to forget about checking on us about halfway through the game – after we’d eaten, but were clearly still hanging out to see the rest of the game. That move didn’t much affect the guys and their buckets of beer, but this girl and her mixed drinks were stranded with a downed soldier on more than one occasion. Maybe she knew I was driving home and was just looking out for me? Yeah, let’s go with that.

**we aren’t really counting this as anyone’s pick since we just needed a good, close place to watch the game … but we’ll resume with Ted’s choice next week”