As a person who takes pride in finding hidden-gem restaurants that serve regional fare or unique specialties, I should be embarrassed to admit a fondness for sports-pub cuisine. (Editor’s note: TFS’ stance is there’s no shame in food preferences.)
It has virtually no regional identity or meaningful cultural roots (British Isles pubs are a different story altogether); and—let’s be honest—the more you drink and the more you cheer for your favorite team, the less food matters. The game on TV is what’s important.
And yet, who can deny the occasional craving for wings with 25 optional sauces, smothered nachos, clods of beer-battered fish, or a big burger dressed to the nines with a choice of six kinds of fried potato on the side? Where else will you find carefree service in a place where the extent of décor is beer signs and team memorabilia?
Welcome to Grumpy’s Sports Pub. Surrounded by 17 overhead TVs, customers eat sports-pub food par excellence, sometimes with a nod to whatever happy holiday is at hand: corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day, muffalettas and jambalaya during Mardi Gras, and free bacon on Father’s Day.
In this culinary world, nothing is skimpy. Grumpy’s all-the-way Tableshare Nachos come loaded with a choice of chili, chicken, beans, or pulled pork, plus queso blanco, pepperjack cheese, jalapeno peppers, banana peppers, cherry peppers, salsa, sour cream, lettuce, and tomato.
The menu’s description of a hot dog instructs, “Please use two hands.” There is no other way to hoist the foot-long quarter-pounder in its appropriately sized bun. I am a hot dog lover, and can assure you that this beef frank, char-grilled so its natural casing snaps when bitten, is among the most succulent.
The Mardi Gras muffaletta, served warm, contains a pound of salami, ham, and mortadella plus layers of melted Swiss and provolone cheeses and—atop the cold cuts as well as underneath them—zesty, olive-forward giardiniera spiked with jalapeno peppers. Aside from kaleidoscopic flavors, one pleasure of each jaw-stretching bite is the slight tooth resistance provided by the salad’s olives, peppers, and carrots—notable contrast to gooey melted cheeses and floppy meats. Sorry to say, the bread, although New Orleans-sourced and shaped right, lacks a bakery-fresh loaf’s resilience.
Right: Muffaletta
Steadfast vegetarians might cry uncle when they face a sandwich Grumpy’s calls “Mutha of All Grilled Cheeses”—a mesa of cheddar, American, Swiss, gouda, provolone, and beer cheese. However, in keeping with sports-pub principles, most sandwiches are designed for meat eaters: a heavy Reuben spiked with Guinness, twin slabs of thick-cut fried baloney on toast, a BBBBLT that packs six slices of bacon, and a salute to Buffalo, New York, in the form of beef on weck: roast beef on a Kaiser roll encrusted with caraway seeds and sea salt.
Half-pound hamburgers are savory enough to dominate the crowd of lettuce, onions, tomatoes, and pickles that share the bun. The bun itself turns out to be an unexpected perk: a bulbous grilled softy that eagerly sops up hamburger juice and becomes a delicious accomplice.
Pub chips and tater tots
All sandwiches come with a side dish. It can be coleslaw, baked potato salad, onion rings, pub chips, or one of several shapes of French fry. Tater tots are not on the menu, but the kitchen often has them, and when they are available, they are the spud-lover’s choice. Surely, they are not hand-fashioned, so I must assume they begin as standard-issue bite-size kegs from a restaurant-supply vendor. Grumpy’s delivers them in abundance, their outsides brittle and their interior creamy with a few delicate potato lumps. They’re brilliantly seasoned and too hot to recklessly bite.
The tater tots’ fresh heat is confirmation that Grumpy’s kitchen makes food when it is ordered. A sign at the front door advises “We are NOT a fast food restaurant…. Be patient! We are a small mom & pop shop & we’re working hard.” Getting a meal does take time; however, beer is poured right away.
Indeed, how dare I get this far in a review of a sports pub without talking about lagers, stouts, and ales? Grumpy’s is proud of its inventory of 36 beers on tap plus 37 brands in bottles, 22 in cans, and such guest brews as Kentucky Tangerine Cream Ale, Snafu Watermelon Cotton Candy, and Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing.
About half the always-available beers come from breweries in the Carolinas and Georgia. Among these is a silky North Charleston draught called Holy City Pluff Mud Porter. It’s as opaque as Guinness stout, chocolatey but light-bodied—a surprise refresher when the temperature rises and the preferred place to drink is inside a cool pub where important sports events, whatever they may be, are on televisions everywhere you look.
Grumpy’s Sports Pub: 216 E. Gate Dr., Aiken, South Carolina, 803-226-9868. grumpyssportspub.com
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