Well well, somehow Shane found a place in Broadview Heights that I had never heard of. And here I thought I had this market cornered. 

They’ve also apparently been in business for over 20 years and somehow we just discovered them, so the jokes on all of us I guess.

Speaking of jokes, I double dog dare you to hear the name of this place and instantly not picture Ross on Friends carrying a couch upstairs yelling a certain word that rhymes with Divot.

Anyway.

Divots is on the site of a driving range, which could explain how it flew under our radar. We tend to not be a fan of places that try to combine food and drinks with other forms of family entertainment, but that’s just us. There’s also a putt putt course and ice cream shop at the front of the complex. So I guess this is like one stop shopping for people exactly the opposite of us.

Hey finally we make it to a place while it’s still happy hour!

Too bad even though we all ordered beers, none of us actually paid attention and ordered the one that was on the happy hour special. How are we so bad at this? Oh wait, probably because we never actually make it to places in time to do this.

Also remember our last outing when Shane said he was “done with beer”? That was cute.

In what had become our time honored tradition / annoying habit as newbies, we of course asked the server what was good on the menu. She recommended the wings and the wraps. And the pizza, but gave an additional tip to ask for it to be cooked well done.

Wait, what? I’ve quite literally never heard of asking for pizza to be cooked to order like steak. Like I kind of just thought trusting the kitchen to know when the dough was cooked enough to not kill you was sufficient, but I guess we’re in new territory here at Divots.

She also called out the Mafia burger – their take on a Romanburger type sandwich – which Ted had already been eyeing up, so that just pretty much solidified his decision. It’s like when you order and the server gives you their stamp of approval with the words “excellent choice” as you tell them your selection.

Oh but wait, there’s a burger version and also a sub. More decisions!

He eventually chose the sub – I think because it would provide more food overall, naturally – along with an order of the spicy garlic wings.

Hot tip – remember what those wings look like. It will be relevant later in this story. I promise.

Also I would’ve put money on him selecting the “really, really hot” sauce. Way to let me down, Ted.

Shane was especially hungry this week (shocking!) so that meant we started out with an app. We chose the pretzel sticks. Because this is apparently a magical hellscape of endless decision making, our dipping sauce options included nacho cheese, honey mustard, spicy mustard and ranch.

We just said yes to all of them. Choices be damned.

Shane was all over the board on his meal choice, likely due to that aforementioned hunger. Kind of like when you go grocery shopping while hungry and suddenly think everything sounds good. Pork rinds? Why not. Canned soup options with names like sirloin burger or mashed pea and carrot that I wouldn’t give the time of day to even on the coldest afternoon in February? Suddenly they sound like gourmet meals. A giant box of powdered donuts? Oh well that’s good anytime, let’s not get crazy here.

So yeah Shane cycled through all of the server’s top picks while making his decision. He thought about a pizza, and wings, and burgers. And if you think I mean each of those separately you would be wrong.

Eventually he cut the pizza out of the equation – probably due to the uncertainty of, well, general food poisoning of some kind – and ended up with the bacon deluxe burger and six of the garlic teriyaki wings.

I’ve said this before, but once again let’s pay attention to this basket of wings. It will all make sense soon. Trust me.

I got the “big and messy” burger which is a fun and only slightly intimidating way to say please put mushrooms and Swiss cheese on my burger.

We all got the chips as a side with our sandwiches because they come with dip and let’s face it we all have a weakness in that particular arena. And this one was particularly tasty in my opinion.

Ted said the burger itself was good. However, the dressing on it – which was sold on the menu as a “creamy Italian” – really just kind of tasted like salty mayo. And if that tastes even half as unappealing as that sounds, well, I think we can all understand his displeasure here.

I also liked my burger, although I think I was the total opposite of Ted and my rating was based more so on the toppings than the burger itself. The patty – while obviously fresh made so points there – didn’t have a ton of flavor without the accompanying heap of onions and mushrooms and cheese.

So the lesson here is that as long as you get the burger covered in something that isn’t creamy Italian dressing you should be fine.

Well unless you’re Shane, who liked absolutely nothing about his burger. Ouch.

But hey, at least he has his wings left to look forward to, right? Because if you know Shane you know that he’s very methodical about his meals and only eats one thing at a time. And usually saves the thing he’s most excited about eating for last. So for this meal he started with the burger, because the option of a garlic teriyaki wing flavor was intriguing and exciting to him and he was really putting his eggs in the basket of that being his new favorite.

But one bite in and Shane realized there had been a terrible mistake, and the wings that had been placed on front of him as “garlic teriyaki” were actually Ted’s spicy garlic.

Meanwhile across the table from him Ted had been enjoying the wings he assumed were his as essentially a side dish to his sub. Which meant, well, only two of the six remained.

To say Shane was having a bad night might be an understatement. If we want to channel the theme of Ross from Friends again, we might now pull up the voice of him yelling “MY SANDWICH?!?!” from the episode in which he realizes one of his coworkers has eaten his special Thanksgiving leftover meal.

Shane: I get that they both had garlic in them, but how did you possibly bite into a wing and confuse teriyaki for spiciness?

I’m not sure any answer Ted could’ve given would have been sufficient, so he wisely plead the fifth on that point.

To be fair, Ted did offer the final two wings to Shane, but we all know Shane doesn’t share food so that was a lost cause.

Because this is a group that clearly doesn’t hold food grudges (she says with the highest volume of sarcasm possible) the chances of us bringing up this incident again are – oh who are we kidding, this is the new Gus’ Chalet punchline as far as we’re concerned.

So yeah, not sure even the intrigue of garlic teriyaki and Ted’s promise to not touch a wing next time until after Shane has tried his could get him to return to this place of heartbreak. Sorry, Divots. We hardly knew you, but your impression was made.

Picked by: Shane