House divided:
City Squire Ale House Kitchen & Bar has the bar part down, but kitchen needs work.
City Squire Ale House Kitchen & Bar — or, as it shall now be known, Old Six Names — has been glamorously rebuilt on the razed site of the original City Squire, a staple on Schenectady’s upper Union Street for 40 years. The new building shines in glossy paint, and the powerful scent of freshly milled wood on interior walls and ceiling evokes my repressed memories of forced line dancing in a West Virginia bar with sawdust on the floor and hog squeals in the air. As a pub it’s fun; as an eatery its merits are not as strong.
For this project, corporate developers Lou and Christine Lecce teamed with John and Katrina Isopo, proprietors of Anna’s Woodfired Pizza in Latham’s Galleria 7 Market, Mario’s in Niskayuna and Prime Pizza in Schenectady. The plan: to return a much-missed local pub to the neighborhood.
Old Six Names aims high. The $1.5 million reincarnation is clean and bright, the large space boasts a capacity of up to 300 people across its two floors, the bar bristles with two dozen draft taps, and it has two lovely patios: a shady first-floor walkout beneath the plein-air balcony overlooking Keyes Avenue. Anyone in Schenectady should be pleased to settle back with drink in hand and gaze over rooftops and looping electrical lines, pretending they’re somewhere else.
There is no shame in not being the best. Restaurants can’t all be Eleven Madison Parks and Spotted Pigs, nor do they need be. There are lots of delightful pubs providing comfort and average sustenance to patrons who stop in for a swift pint and wings. I’ve worked in places where food is secondary to the rotating beers on tap, dart leagues or international sports on TV. My husband and I used to frequent an upstate pub whose policy of serving only freezer-to-fryer foods was as clear as the name above the door.
Which brings me to your new name, City Squire. Are you an ale house or a kitchen and bar? By grafting the popular “Kitchen & Bar” onto your pub name, do you know you have raised the stakes, entered the land of gastropubs and elevated expectations?
Let’s talk about your seasonal menu. You’ve already switched from spring to summer since your St. Patrick’s Day opening, but does it relate in any meaningful way to what’s growing? It’s summer, yet your tomatoes are the anemic orange of gas-ripened fruit, plucked and trucked thousands of miles.
Did you survey your patrons and find them in urgent need of a globe-trotting mash-up from Korean wings to Mexican street food? Is it why French onion soup eschews heady flavor of slowly sweated onions for boiled broth capped in a great wad of melted cheese? Is the mac and cheese nakedly dry because you used all the cheese on the soup? Do you know the orange seasoning — is it Old Bay? — scattered on every dish is brutally bitter when burnt?
Is there a reason cauliflower is forced under a sombrero of queso fresco, chipotle mayo and lime for your snazzy reinvention of Mexican street corn? The first bite is so unexpectedly spicy we choke into water glasses, but by meal’s end we’ve warmed to it as the best dish of the night.
Since your fish tacos are “seasonal,” could you explain why the tuna is unnervingly pink like a geisha’s rouged cheek, and so fishy and waterlogged it’s like chewing a deckhand’s sponge? How about the “naan flight” of — surprise! — pita wedges brought out in a metal fryer basket with strawberry slices, almonds and three dips? Should we sprinkle strawberries over the runny tzatziki, lacking garlic or lemon, the bland red pepper hummus or guacamole made extra hearthealthy with no added salt?
My guest’s $25 rib-eye is smothered in an oleaginous blue cheese sauce that tastes exactly like sneaker rubber and is nearly as hard to cut. A pretty good, crisp Asian chicken salad keeps us on our toes with cucumber wedges cut randomly from hefty to thin, the peanut dressing hidden under a leaf in one corner and a grilled chicken breast that sucks all moisture from tongue and cheek. Our wings, ordered extra crispy, are flaccid under the wet application of fiery Squire’s Revenge hot sauce.
City Squire, in name you are a man of honorable standing. Should we try to not notice that your Squire burger is as uniformly edged as the machine-cut burgers sold by the bag at Sam’s Club and topped in a square of processed cheese? What about your Impossible burger? Hand on heart, is this solidly brown meatless patty the hand-formed, heme-bleeding Impossible brand we’ve had before? (I checked the web directory of restaurants serving Impossible burgers. Wolff’s Biergarten in Schenectady is on the list; it appears you’re not.)
Before my head is raised on a stake, let’s agree on what you are. With sports on TV, a sing-along at the bar and a man who falls off his chair at the end of the night, you’re a pub. A popular, lively pub in the right location with rotating craft draft beers (Fiddlehead, Newburgh Brewing, Troegs), some pleasant, affordable wines (Meiomi, Kim Crawford, Josh Cellars) and nicely mixed classic cocktails that outperform the more outré “signature cocktail ideas.”
Moreover, you’re packed. An Applebee’s or TGIF would have succeeded here too. All that wood can be noisy; service is feast or famine. But staff possess that unshakeable millennial confidence. Questions like “Why is the Cobb salad called Bob’s 1920?” and “What’s the seasonal vegetable?” are met with a beaming “I have absolutely no idea!” Still, they can’t say the chicken corn chowder is really chowder — astute, since it’s cream of chicken soup.
Do nothing, and you’ll keep a loyal crowd. If I can offer any constructive criticism, it’s to halve the menu and treat customers to better-quality food. Hand-pat some burgers. Give them something to crow about from that lovely upper deck.
Wings, a burger with fries and a cocktail or beer costs around $33 before tip.
Susie Davidson Powell is a British freelance food writer in upstate New York. Follow her on Twitter, @Susiedp. To comment on this review, visit the Table Hopping blog, blog.timesunion.com/ tablehopping.