Hellllooooo Canton! It’s been a hot minute since we’ve traveled south of the Stark County line, hasn’t it? Thanks for welcoming us back.

This week’s pick come courtesy of my uncle Dan, who lives out in Arizona and messaged me a while back about this restaurant that was part of a small-ish national chain and had opened a location near him and also here in Canton. He knows we try to hit up all the new places so he thought this would be right up our alley.

While Bubba’s is a chain, it seems the locations are pretty spread out. And the majority of their food is made from scratch daily, so it’s not like they’re just throwing things from freezer to fryer.

The menu is pretty extensive. It’s typical bar food – burgers, wings, cheese sticks, pizza – but also things you don’t see often like garlic knots, rib dinners, steaks and a selection of specialty salads.

I mean, there was no Wednesday steak special, so they lose some points to there. But not every place can compete with the Dougout, so why even try, right?

Of course we sat in the bar area, which is fairly large with a mix of high top tables and booths, with a large bar in the center. Lots of TVs around which means I’m sure during sporting events the place gets busy.

They do have a patio too which we probably could’ve sat on but it was just a smidge too warm and there was no shield of any kind from the late day sun. We were sorry to miss the amazing scenery that is the parking lot of the strip plaza behind the restaurant and the busy street out front, but we’ll do our best to live with our choices.

Shane and I were in a situation where all the things in the app menu looked delicious – I mean, making us choose between cheese sticks, fried pickles and garlic knits is like a certain level of hell truthfully – but we eventually decided on the garlic knots since that’s not something we see often on app menus.

They were good. Shane called them “fluffy,” so I guess in his mind they were like little pillows of happiness. They were just doughy enough to be light without making you think they were undercooked, with a bit of cheese on top that even cheese-hater Ted could easily pick off and enjoy. They came with two dipping sauces – marinara and cheese – of which I enjoyed the marinade better, much to my own surprise.

For dinner I was debating a burger with spicy chorizo on top but was admittedly turned off with their statement on the menu that the burger patties are cooked to a “juicy medium well.” That just seems like a contradicting statement, as I don’t think I’ve ever met a burger cooked above medium that didn’t look like it was a few steps away from becoming a charcoal briquette.

And that’s how I ended up with the chicken bacon avacado sandwich with a side salad.

Yes those are fried onion straws on that salad and no I was not aware they would be included. Clearly we’re following the Midwestern version of a “salad” here in which the lines of healthiness are rather blurry.

So, my chicken wasn’t the best. It was blackened on the outside but the inside tasted like an unseasoned frozen chicken breast that was thrown on the grill for a just long enough to not kill anyone. And as is apparently the new standard for any chicken sandwich these days, it was impossible to eat on its own. Seriously, can someone please just figure out how to get a decently cooked piece of chicken with a few toppings between two slices of any kind of bread that’s not a Kaiser bun in such a way that picking it up and taking one bite doesn’t cause the pieces to all suddenly repel against one another like opposing magnets?

I mean, sure, I liked all the pieces enough on their own to eat them separate, but that’s kind of not the point of a sandwich. Call me crazy, I know.

Anyone shocked that for his dinner Shane was debating wings, burgers or pizza? No?

You know us so well.

He ended up choosing the Dicky V’s pizza. Which, because the name doesn’t at all imply anything about the dish, I can tell you includes Italian sausage and cherry peppers. Interesting combo.

Shane said the pizza was OK. Like it was fine but he definitely wouldn’t order it again. Shane is a member of the sweet sauces on pizza fan club, but while this sauce was sweet in theory he said it almost tasted more like a tomato paste with some sugar added, and not a typical sauce. He was not a fan.

But at least the giant pizza did make a nice little umbrella for Ted’s meal, so should we have encountered a sudden indoor rain shower at least one plate would’ve been salvaged. Small victories.

That well protected meal of Ted’s included six of the hot wings and the sunshine burger.

Ted said the burger – which included bacon and a fried egg as toppings – was really good. The wings, on the other hand, were about as rubbery as those ducks that Jeep owners like to collect and make walls of on their dashboards.

Ted actually offered his last two wings to Shane, and when he declined Ted told him “good call.” Ouch. They obviously stayed behind with the empty plates and dirty dishes on the table when we left.

Overall food-wise Bubba’s was a bit of a disappointing experience. I mean, we definitely had a lot of it at our table – as evidenced by the photo below which would appear to be for a party of at least six and not three – but we really weren’t happy with our orders.

Now the good news is that with the large menu we would probably be able to come back and try something else and hopefully find a winner. And the atmosphere was fun in the bar, we enjoyed watching whatever music video channel they had on the TVs and trying to guess the years that the songs were from. So might we eventually give it another chance? Sure. Might it be really soon? Hard to say. We aren’t crossing it off the list, but let’s just say that no Top (insert Shane’s random number of the week here) lists were discussed at this meal, so that probably means it won’t jump to the top of the revisit list right away.

Picked by: Steph