What I Ate This Week

So I normally don’t put up two full reviews in a week (and I won’t exactly do it this time since this is a mini-review) but I thought I’d write a little bit about one of my “old haunts” that may again become a “new haunt”—Oakley Bar and Grill.

The Oakley Bar and Grill is a cute little place right off of the square next to the 20th Century Theater.  It’s been there I want to say 4 or 5 years.  It is pretty much the PERFECT neighborhood bar.

It’s got about a dozen tables, about a half dozen TV’s, a 4-page menu, and an affable (if very busy) skeleton crew of bartender, server, and cook.  And yes, for some reason they have a disco ball.  Beers are reasonably cheap and unfailingly cold.  You can enjoy nice bar food appetizers (we had nachos), you can take your time, and you can have quite a burger.

I got the Zola burger (presumably no relation to the Bar and Grill we went to a few weeks ago as detailed herewith), which had capicola ham, bacon, and cheese.  The burger is meaty—a full-on half pound.  It was indeed cooked medium rare and it was maybe the juiciest burger I’ve ever had—one of those four-napkin kinds of burgers.  It was really good.  What keeps it from being among the truly elite Cincinnati burgers, though, is that the meat is overly pressed while being made or being cooked and it goes down—and settles in the stomach—hard.  It’s one of those “regret” burgers that are both awesome and terrible.  I can’t guarantee I won’t get it again after a few beers, but I should mention that their wide range of other foods (the pizzas are great and I enjoy the breaded fish sandwich) are both equally pleasing AND more than you’d expect from a neighborhood bar.  In fact “more than you’d expect” might as well be their slogan!  (I should also recommend their excellent onion rings to their bland frozen fries.)

Anyway, if you like a good neighborhood bar, go!  Just leave me a table, because it fills up, OK?