The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
The value isn’t a surprise, but the creative food is
Given it’s called Two Bucks, you may not expect these items at sports bar to impress the way they do
You might think that a place in Ohio named Two Bucks could be a nod to Ohio State or, perhaps, a reference to deer. It’s not.
Back when the first Two Bucks opened, in Avon in 2010, the menu consisted of $2 drinks and food, hence the title. The menu has since evolved to include some higher price points, but the economic theme remains.
The Eastlake establishment, the lone franchisee owned among six locations, pays homage to the monetary origins of the business with wall-to-wall graphic applications of two-dollar bills. The color scheme is orange and green, and the space has a contemporary sports-bar atmosphere. The floors are stained concrete, and the vaulted ceiling is exposed ducts and beams. A square bar anchors it all, and all of it says, “modern minimalist.”
The footprint is largely the same as when the building housed the former Beef O’Brady’s, but the décor is certainly spruced up. There’s a smallish dining area separate from the bar space, but the TVs — not as ubiquitous as in many sports bars — are mostly in the bar area, where it seems the most lively. There’s a small outdoor seating area which, under the right circumstances, appears promising. (That’s assuming summer ever comes.)
It’s not difficult to believe that Two Bucks, which for four years now has called the corner of Vine Street and SOM Center Road home, does a brisk business around Lake County Captains games. It’s a stone’s throw from the Captains’ home, Classic Park, and it’s a good fit for families and sports fans.
Most bottled domestic beers are still two bucks at Two Bucks. For $3.50, you can splurge and get a tall domestic draft. There are also reasonably priced craft beers, and even the signature cocktails are walletfriendly. There’s also a food section of the menu, maybe eight items strong, that is strictly $2.
Most of those selections are sliders, and my wife and I decided to try three: The BLT, the Cuban and the Buffalo. Though the “slider” designation implies as much, these were not burgers, but small versions of the sandwiches their descriptions imply.
All were good. The Buffalo slider had a small piece of perfectly sauced chicken with celery and ranch. The BLT was just as it sounds, but with a dab of a tomato aioli substituted for actual tomato. The Cuban — ham, pickle, Swiss cheese and Dijon mustard — was our favorite. My wife liked it better than the BLT, and she’s a BLT devotee.
Though $6 combined, the sliders didn’t arrive at the table in a basket or anything. Instead, they were carefully plated on a rectangular platter you might expect to see at more-expensive place. The brioche-type buns were toasted, and the tops offset to expose the internal ingredients. The creativity and craft in these sandwiches belied both the sports-bar stereotype and the perception one might have of things that cost $2. It might take all three to make a normal-sized meal for one, but the signs that we were in a sports bar for foodies was encouraging.
That perception continued with the Hangry fries ($9), a plate for at least two of hand-cut, thin fries drizzled with a beer cheese sauce and topped with pork and a fried egg. The menu described the meat as “pulled bacon,” a new term for me, and it amounted to what I’d call fatty pulled pork — a cross between bacon and traditional pulled pork. The dish was near sensational, easily among the top of my personal list of trendy, topped-fries appetizers everybody seems to be doing these days.
The rest of the menu is what you might expect from any sports bar: sandwiches, salads and wraps, burgers and wings. The exception is the mac-and-cheese menu, a selection of eight varieties, all listed under a menu header that describes them as “award-winning.”
I’m not sure which award Two Bucks’ mac-and-cheese has won, but the boast is 100-percent believable. I went with the Wake & Bake ($9), which sounded the most interesting to me. It’s smoked gouda sauce, more of that pulled bacon, an over-easy egg, plus smashed jalapeno tater tots. With the egg and pork, there was some redundancy with our Hangry fries, but on its own, it might have been the best dialed-up mac-and-cheese I’ve ever had. Even the presentation was superb — ziti stacked vertically in a tight circle with all the accoutrements piled on top, served in a square ramekin.
Again, Two Bucks comes across as a sports bar for foodies.
My wife’s chicken bacon ranch wrap ($8) was somewhat less-noteworthy, although the spicy ranch on it was interesting. It wasn’t bad by any means, but, unlike some of the other things, it was something you could get other places.
It’s worth noting I’m not a fan of bartender-as-your-server bars. It doesn’t work far more times than it does, but there was nothing to complain about, servicewise, on our visit. Granted, we went on an off-peak evening, but we were well attended to by knowledgeable, gracious staff. It was another unexpected surprise, just because it’s a sports bar whose name connotes extreme affordability. It’s not a true complaint, but the hope would be that, when it’s busier, there would be more servers.
I walked out with one thought running through my mind: “I can’t believe I haven’t been here before.” It’s not an unprecedented thought but still on the rare side. But I’m pretty sure I won’t go to another Captains game without working Two Bucks into the agenda.