Well folks, you know you’re venturing out into in the country when you pass the gun club on your way to dinner. Yes you read that correctly.
Welcome to Canal Fulton! Don’t forget to pay your gun club dues.
Anyway.
The Cast Iron Bar and Grille is a tiny little place located in the middle of a very unassuming little strip plaza. Honestly you would drive right past it if you didn’t know it was there. Or have modern technology telling you where to turn. Or you might also drive around it, as we did when we realized we went the wrong way in the parking lot.
Look kids, Big Ben! Parliament!
Inside there were about 20 tables and a bar. And not much waiting room, which is unfortunate because given that last sentence they really need more space for people to hang out while waiting for a table. Nothing like basically hovering over people while they eat reminding them you’re next in line to take the seats they’re currently occupying.
Just another way to “welcome” people in this town, I guess?
Our wait was about 20 minutes, which I’m sure you won’t be shocked to hear we killed over by the bar. Fun fact, the Cast Iron doesn’t have a license for beer or wine, just hard alcohol. Because apparently that’s the easier of the two licenses to obtain?
Consider that your fun fact for the evening.
Speaking of fun facts (useless trivia?) we also killed time researching arrests of famous people, as the theme of the wall decor is celebrity mug shots. Should that Jeopardy category ever cross our lives, I’m confident we would do very well.
Hey, our table is ready!
Of course we got an appetizer, because if you calculate a 35 minute drive and a 20 minute wait for a table we can all pretty much assume how hungry Shane is by this point in the evening.
The have an “onion ring flight” on the menu – which I think is the first time we’ve seen that option anywhere, so obviously we were intrigued. You get a pile of onion rings – I asked approximately how many and was told 25-ish – and the choice of four dipping sauces.
We chose white queso, bourbon BBQ (at the suggestion of the server), California gold and garlic parm.
Not seeing anything else on the menu that didn’t contain cheese and thinking we didn’t need 50 onion rings at our table, Ted just shared our app instead of ordering his own. Upon overhearing this discussion the server asked if he was sure he didn’t want anything else, and specifically tried to sell him on mozzarella sticks.
Clearly she’s a big fan of this blog.
We had to admit that the onion rings were smaller than expected – I guess I had it my head they would be more of the larger beer battered variety and less of the poured straight from the bag of frozen premade type. I have no reason why I would think that other than those are the kind of onion rings I prefer, but still I was slightly disappointed when this plate arrived in front of us.
But having the array of sauces was definitely a unique touch. If nothing else it was a good way to get an idea of the sauces you might want for wings.
We all liked the bourbon BBQ. I liked the queso too – obviously no opinion from Ted on that one. And I thought the garlic parm was very garlicky, but the guys seemed to like it OK. The Cali Gold was kind of like a honey mustard.
Hey look, there are burgers and wings on the menu. Bet you can’t guess what we ordered!
Well, two of us anyway. Ted got the pulled pork burger.
Daring to be different. He did order wings, too, but we’ll get to that story later.
I got the mushroom Swiss burger.
Shane got the Smash burger.
And an order of the garlic parm wings. Because apparently the sauce from the onion rings wasn’t enough of a guarantee that we would be a vampire free household this evening. Never can be too safe when dealing with fictional characters, I guess.
Did you notice the burgers came with steak fries? I love steak fries. They are such an underrated side dish when prepared correctly. And even though these arrived directly from the surface of the sun, they were absolutely delicious. In fact I would vote them the best part of my meal. The burger definitely wasn’t, I can say that for certain. It didn’t have the best flavor.
We all voted the burgers as just OK or average. Definitely nothing to drive 35 minutes for. And even if I lived closer than that I’m still not sure it would be worth the trip.
Oh hey, Ted ordered wings! Clearly the kitchen forgot about them, although the server claimed they just got backed up with orders since Wednesday is wing night.
Which, OK, fair … but when we see at least three other tables get their wing orders that were placed well after Ted, I think it was more that the server forgot to put the order in. And also forgot to come over and check to see if we needed anything else after the food initially arrived. Oopsie.
We don’t have a picture of those wings because by the time they arrived we just wanted Ted to be able to enjoy them. Especially given out previously stated stance that the sandwiches weren’t the best part of the meal.
Plus he also felt a bit rushed to devour the wings quickly, given that Cast Iron closes at 8:00 on Wednesdays. Wait, what? That seems oddly early for a place with any sort of a liquor license and a crowd under the age of 70, no?
In any case, by like 7:45 they were really putting the press on everyone to start wrapping up and heading out so that they could do the same. Nothing like hurrying to finish eating while chairs are stacked on tables around you.
Remember what I said about feeling welcome? Yeah, not so much. Doubt we’ll see you again anytime soon, Canal Fulton. Good luck with the gun club enrollment.
Picked by: Shane
Where To Go Wednesdays 