Talk about a blast from the past, eh? It’s been a hot minute since we’ve ventured back over to Musketeers, and to be honest we kind of forgot about them as far as a takeout option. But not in a bad way. More like in a will-it-really-be-the-same-if-we-order-food-from-a-place-we-used-to-enjoy-hanging-out-at-the-bar-for-during-sports-games-and-binge-drinking-evenings? sort of way.

You get the idea. We’ve all been there.

Ok y’all, if you haven’t downloaded the Toast app for local carryout ordering, you’re apparently missing out. Or apparently I was anyway. I first used it for our takeout order from Butcher & Sprout a few months back – which proved to be an easy ordering process, a hands free payment online, and simple contactless pickup area at the location. So when I saw that Musketeers was also on Toast, I was excited to try it again.

The ordering process was fine, and we liked the option of choosing to pick up the order ASAP (which it warned was about 25 minutes), or to pick your own specific time for your meal to be ready. Which makes me wonder if maybe one of these days we might actually get organized enough in this whole carryout process to be able to place our orders hours before we want to eat instead of waiting until about 5pm to be like “hey, where are we thinking for take out this week?” and hoping we might be able to get an order placed and picked up without sitting down to eat at 8:00.

Yeah, probably not. So I guess for now we’ll just keep taking our chances with this ASAP thing.

There was an option of curbside pickup, but I thought I would be OK to go ahead inside and pick up the order instead of making someone run out to my car with the food. Mental note: might want to rethink that for next time. Because it’s not very obvious when you walk into Musketeers exactly where you need to go to pick up online orders – unlike Butcher & Sprout, who had a specific shelving area with labeled spaces for pickups – so I kind of just meandered over toward the area closest to both the bar and the hostess stand.

Which kind of brings me to rule #1 of takeout food during a pandemic: people who are utilizing these various options available are probably trying to still support small businesses and local restaurants as much as possible while also not really spending very much time at all personally inside of the actual establishments. Having them wander around without a clear path toward pickup kind of takes some of the wind out of those sails. Especially in a place that hasn’t seemed to have taken any sort of steps to change the interior at all to make it safer for patrons or workers during these times – like placing plastic or plexiglass partitions at the bar between seats, or spacing out seating, or making a designated area for food pickup closer to the door, etc.

Just a tip.

Finally one of the – what I would only assume to be “regular” bar patrons, just judging from how he and his group of friends all not only knew the names of all of the bartenders, but looked pretty comfortable on their particular stools – noticed my confusion and asked if I was there for takeout, then pointed me to the bar for my pickup. And then the bartender wasn’t sure where to find my order, so there was the waiting while she searched around the bar area … and then when she did finally locate it, luckily she read the order back to me as she checked the bag, because the side salad that I ordered wasn’t there with everything else … so then there was more waiting while she checked in the kitchen and retrieved it.

So, yeah, not the most ideal pickup scenerio. Which only makes us miss being able to dine out in places even more, because I don’t think we ever had a bad experience in our in-person evenings there. *sigh*

But at least the food didn’t disappoint. Still the same good quality and amazing taste as we’re used to from our previous visits. Horray!

Shane got 12 of the garlic parm wings. Here’s your visual reminder that at Musketeers, parm doesn’t mean shake cheese or sauce – it means actual shredded parmesan cheese. And that’s not a bad thing.

I got an Italian sub with chips and dip.

And because I was feeling slightly guilty and a little bit deficient in leafy greens, a side salad.

And we also split an appetizer/side order of onion rings.

Yeah, that certainly didn’t suck. Tell me again why we haven’t ordered take out from here in all this time we’ve been shuttered at home? Because we’re morons? Fair enough.

We definitely weren’t disappointed. I can’t remember if that sub is something I’ve ever ordered on any of our visits to Musketeers in person, but I’m definitely going to make a mental note that I need to order it again at some point. And because I basically had two sides ad half of an appetizers to eat also, that means I only was able to eat half of the sandwich tonight … so yippee for yummy leftovers still waiting for me in the fridge for another meal.

The onion rings were our favorite kind: handmade, and well breaded but not overdone, so you don’t feel like you’re eating just bread crumbs held together with a slight taste of onion flavoring. Likewise they were nothing like the even less flattering alternative, the poured-out-of-the-bag flash frozen tiny rings with coloring and texture that might almost be able to be confused with large calamari.

You’re mentally comparing the two right now, aren’t you? It’s OK. I’ll wait.

The wings were large, and because of the aforementioned shredded cheese they were also flavorful and different than most places where that same sauce is offered.

The only disappointment was the chip dip, which wasn’t as I remember it … or maybe more so just wasn’t what I hoped it would be because I assumed it would be like most restaurant’s French onion dip. It wasn’t bad, necessarily, just more like something I don’t particularly need to have again. The chips were good, though. And next time I should probably only get the “side” salad (which pretty much could’ve been a small meal just on its own) or the chips, and not both – because this was definitely too much food for one meal.

I know, like that’s ever stopped us before, right? Point taken.