I had to work in downtown Akron tonight, and since it also just happened to be my pick this week it worked out well for me to just pick a place nearby and meet the guys there after I was finished at work.

Problem – there aren’t many places we haven’t been to yet in downtown Akron. And since Shane is all proud of himself for having all the new picks this year I felt like I had to step up and not do a revisit. 

So it was this or a Mexican place. And since Ted’s up next week I didn’t want to risk honing in on his category and eating that two weeks in a row.

So here we are.

The Green Dragon is known as a place to meet up and play board games in addition to having food and drinks. Which admittedly is the first place of this kind we’ve been to, so take that Shane.

But they are definitely seriously about their board games here. So much so that the place has a list of 784 board games that you can check out to play while you’re visiting. And I know that amount because the guys scrolled through the whole list online before I arrived and were quick to enlighten me.

The beer menu isn’t quite as large as the board game list, but still decent enough. Albino stouts for me and Shane, Conways (the Irish red from Great Lakes) for Ted.

The food menu is even smaller, consisting of a handful of specialty sandwiches, a few flatbreads and some apps. 

Shane of course asked the server what food item would be the most filling. She seemed a little perplexed by the question – biggest indicator that she doesn’t read this blog – but eventually suggested the Cuban.

I got the hot honey ham and cheese sandwich, because hot honey will sell me almost every time. If it can’t be a Philly then give me something with hot honey, I guess?

We also got pretzels as an app.

Ted got the emberwing sandwich – which because it probably isn’t obvious from the name is a spicy chicken sandwich with kimchi. 

Shane wasn’t super crazy about his sandwich. While it was in fact filling – so our server wasn’t lying – he said that there were a lot of herbs on it so the taste was a little weird.

I mean, he did finish the whole thing. But to be fair he said that was really only because he was super hungry. 

My sandwich was fine. We all know I love bread, so hearing that it was on Texas toast definitely affected my choice to order it. Unfortunately eating Texas toast on the side with pasta and eating it as a book end to a sandwich are two very different things. In this instance it really just translates to tearing up the roof of your mouth as you try to bite into a thick sandwich.

Also if you look back at that photo of my sandwich I hope you’re as confused as I was about why the cheese is melted on the outside? I mean, call me crazy here, but I kind of expected the cheese to be inside the sandwich? Like that’s kind of what holds the ham in there, no? Yeah not in this case. It was more like two slices of thick cheesy bread with some ham in between. 

Overall we all agreed the vibe of the place and the concept with the board games was cool, and it seems like a fun place to come if you have a few friends and want to have some drinks and be entertained with an activity. Kind of like going to a winery, but with beer. But maybe we might stick to drinks the next time and skip the food. 

Picked by: Steph