THE GUIDE
THE GUIDE
Restaurant Review
Hot, hearty homestyle
Cheers!
By SARA POKORNY spokorny@timesleader.com
PAGE 18
Some years just start off better than others. For childhood friends Johnny Waering, Matt Zuk, Jon Bronson and Dave Oakley of Carbondale, 2012 couldn’t have begun any better. “We opened on Jan. 1 of this year,” Oakley said of 3 Guys and a Beer’d Brewing Company. “We like to refer to ourselves as home brewers that got a little out of control.” The setup the company has certainly backs that up. “The system we’re on is not much larger than your average home-brewing system,” Oakley said. “It’s the same exact concept, just with bigger pots.” The guys brew twice a week to keep up with demand. One of the current available beers is Ladder Dive Rye IPA. “It’s unique in that it’s a very wellbalanced IPA,” Oakley said. “It’s a very heavily hopped beer, coming in about 70 IBUs (or International Bittering Units). That bitterness is balanced out by a hefty amount of rye malt. It’s a nice, full-bodied, amber-colored rye IPA.” Oakley said 3 Guys is looking forward to putting out Soul Patch, the company’s pumpkin ale. “We use a hefty amount of base malt, and then we put pumpkin in the mash. At the end of the boil we throw in spices, like cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice. When you smell this beer, you smell a pumpkin pie.” 3 Guys is just beginning its foray into bottling. “Once we get the labels for the bottles, which should be within the next week, we’ll be getting into cases and should be able to handle a much larger area,” Oakley said. The brewery’s beer is now in 24 bars from Honesdale to Scranton. One of the first places it’ll go once bottling gets under way is Wilkes-Barre. “We have had a lot of people asking us when we can supply them, and we’re really excited to be able to do that,” Oakley said. As for the “beer’d” portion of the company’s name? That belongs to Waering, who has a long, red patch of hair on his chin. “We were thinking of names and had about 100 on the table, but this one had to be it,” Oakley said. “It’s a beautiful beard.” ••• 3 GUYS AND A BEER’D 10 Enterprise Drive, Carbondale. 2802739. www.facebook.com/3GuysandaBeerd. Beers are available with draft prices ranging from $3 to $7.50, depending on seller, at: • Backyard Alehouse, 523 Linden St., Scranton • Andy Gavin’s, 1392 N. Washington Ave., Scranton • V Spot, 906 Providence Road, Scranton • Cooper’s Seafood House, 701 N. Washington Ave., Scranton • The Keys, 244 Penn Ave., Scranton
T
he advertisements hooked us. Ever eat at this Stan’s Café? one asked of another, pointing out that, if nothing else, the twopart print ads listing each week’s specials were particularly intriguing. I mean where else do you find piggies as a featured item besides maybe a bazaar or church dinner?
Pretty sure we’ve seen not only piggies but pasties, potpies and other hearty, homestyle fare advertised quite frequently, and all of it earned Stan’s a spot on our must-visit list. We happened to arrive on 15cent-clam night, and you can’t get much better than that really. I ordered a dozen and paid $1.80, and for that price also got three or four little cracker packets and a cup of butter, too. Most inexpensive dinner in the Wyoming Valley, I tell you, and the kind server on duty even offered a dozen more for free. That’s the kind of place this is: We have extra; anyone interested? No charge. You have to love that. But what about the clams themselves? Will we write home about them? Not necessarily, but these certainly were serviceable: meaty enough, clean enough, and I encountered not a single unopened shell. A nice start. What followed was a similar study in inexpensive, un-fancy fare that was hard to fault, really, especially at this price point. We shared two orders of most unusual wings for $5.90. (That’s 49 cents apiece, for the mathematically challenged.) Why unusual? Well, our sixpack of Old Bay Wings actually contained no evidence of sauce but still managed to taste quite delicious – delightfully crispy yet moist enough (and meaty) and especially well-seasoned with not only Old Bay, which would have been crazy-hot, but
IF YOU GO What: Stan’s Café Where: 107 Hillside St., WilkesBarre Call: (570) 829-9779 Credit cards? Yes Wheelchair accessible? Yes
PETE G. WILCOX/THE TIMES LEADER
Stan’s Café on Hillside Street in Wilkes-Barre is a no-frills neighborhood bar/restaurant dishing up inexpensive, homestyle fare.
a combination of other savory sprinklings. The selling point here is these were the most unmessy wings maybe ever. Another six-pack of mild wings also was odd – but in a good way. The sauce actually tasted like spaghetti sauce, but it worked. It wasn’t abundant, which was OK, and was on the thicker side with some texture, which at first troubled us. A couple of bites in, though, and a consensus built: Hey, you know, these aren’t bad at all. A pleasant surprise. Our other starter was an especially crispy-crunchy order of fried cauliflower ($3.95), served with ranch dipping sauce and done perfectly. Piping hot, too. Things were looking promising inside this small-but-tall, angular building that’s almost as hard to describe as the food. Atmosphere? Don’t expect much. The bar, with a separate entrance, at least on our visit, was more popular than the dining room, which lacks ambience but still manages to retain
a comfortable sort of throwback charm. Orange Formica tabletops with some booth seating and a few of those oldstyle, shorter-but-sturdy wooden chairs with C-shaped arms and backs had us feeling like we were dining in Nana’s 1970s kitchen. And that’s no complaint. The food might have been cooked by a 1970s Nana, too, for all we know. Again, homestyle is what it’s all about. No frills, no fuss – and no hefty bill either. The place might not have been updated in recent years, but everything was visibly clean, and we marveled that the vinyl on the booth seating didn’t seem to contain even a single tear. These types of observations only built our confidence in the kitchen, rightly or wrongly. The meals did hold up their end of the bargain. A ribeye steak sandwich, complete with mushrooms, cheese and onions, any of which you can skip, was only $4.25 and certainly tasty
enough. Maybe the steak wasn’t melt-in-your-mouth tender, but it sure did deliver bang for the buck. Same goes for a $3.95 BLT, which a collegian among us found quite enjoyable. Two adults ordered actual dinners, choosing from a menu that (surprisingly) included lobster tail and surf and turf. Highest price? About $25. We hit in the middle. A $9.95 plate of haddock with french fries (chosen over a baked potato) also came with coleslaw or applesauce and, again, hit the spot for the price. The haddock wasn’t gleaming white but did taste fresh and was a nice size and flaky enough. It even came with a butter cup, which wasn’t really needed because the fish itself was moist and juicy. An $8.95 stuffed chicken dish also made the grade, appearing hearty and tasting perfectly fine. This one was loaded with stuffing – probably the good old box kind, but that’s OK – and our server arrived with a teeming cup of extra gravy, noting that, to her eye, the initial offering looked a little scant. See what we mean about Nana’s house? Can’t you just imagine your own Nana doing this? Here, you need more gravy … Eat, eat! So eat we did – and took advantage of the extra gravy, which was not too thick, not too thin and – hey – not lumpy at all. At the end of it all, the question was posed: Would you come back? Would you? I mean, if you weren’t coming to critique, of course? A full round of yesses. What better testimony? Times Leader food critics remain anonymous.