The Pub Beavercreek
As one of the flagship businesses of The Greene shopping center in east Dayton, The Pub is an attractive take on the English pub concept. The upscale restaurant sports a massive bar stocked to the gills with a varieties of beers, malt liquors, cocktails, and an abundance of English foods and dishes cooked and meant to be eaten with a good drink. There are a lot of great businesses in this area, and to be sure there is still competition in the bar scene, but The Pub may well be my favorite. It’s the kind of place where time and again, it will never fail to impress you.
Silvertown Cafe
IIt’s a community bar serving the Silverton area of eastern Cincinnati, and it’s the kind of place you’re probably more familiar with as a nightspot than as a place to grab food. The Silverton Cafe is huge on the inside, with dart boards, a stage for music, and a bar that’s about a mile long. The place isn’t fancy, it’s more of a local dive. And it specializes in simple dive bar food. Whether it’s playing keno, trivia night, catching the local sports game or just enjoying some free wifi, Silverton residents frequent this place, but I’m not sure it’s worth a special trip.
Dyers Family Dining
Opened on the site of a former banquet house and social hall, Dyers Family Dining is sort of an old-fashioned restaurant serving up the comfort foods that make you miss mom’s home cooking. It’s got a well-rounded country kitchen menu of steaks, seafood and sandwiches. Popular with families and large groups, it’s the ideal place to spend a pleasant evening with a group of close family and friends; feasting on huge burgers, steaks, and mountains of crispy seafood. Small down Bowling Green benefits greatly from banquet hall dining like this.
Habits Cafe
There are plenty of bars along the Madison Road stretch of Oakley in Cincinnati’s eastern suburbs, but Habits Café is one of the more distinctive of them, characterized by its oversized front porch area and almost antique-feeling interior inlaid with heavy polished wood throughout. Habits serves heavy pub grub along with its myriad of drinks and beers on tap; definitely the kind of place you’ll want to bring a crowd for a drink. With so many places to drink in such a small area, it’s hard for the newcomer to pick out the right place to go first. You’ll quickly find this bar to be worth a sampling.
Reverend’s Bar & Grill
One of the many dive bars along Bowling Green’s main stretch, Reverend’s Bar and grill is a special kind of unique; its festive interior sports a great variety of microbrews and cozy tables line the walls with groups of couples and families alike. This isn’t your average dive, though, and it sports cuisine that is also anything but. While I admit it’s got a very specific tone that might at first seem off-putting, once you stick around you’ll find a place that just about anyone can agree is awesome. Reverend’s is a definite must-go if you’re in this town for a night.
The Dixie Dairy Dreem
Dozens of restaurants have come and gone from south Dayton, but few have endured as long as this humble food stand near downtown Moraine. The Dixie Dairy Dreem is an old-fashioned hamburger and ice cream stand, which this year celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in business. Many cars pass through this area on the way downtown and still many more local residents walk here from surrounding neighborhoods. This is the kind of place that friends and family gather on hot summer nights for an ice cream cone, and where generations of families have made memories.
Ye Olde Trail Tavern
A mainstay of downtown Yellow Springs since 1847, Ye Olde Train Tavern is an old log cabin converted into a local dive bar. With a small menu of tasty food and a giant outdoor space for relaxing with friends. Now, all of Yellow Springs is pretty laid back, the whole town could be considered a dive, really. So, in that regard, this place really fits in to the rest of the town. Overall this is a nice place to pay a visit, but I’m not sure exactly about the food.
CBCB Bar & Grill
Just south of the Mall at Fairfield Commons in west Dayton, CBCB Bar & Grill is a newcomer to the area which is overfilled with generic chain sports bars. The place has the advantage of a sports bar atmosphere and menu, as well as the convenience of being so close to all the excitement near the mall, but at the same time is tucked in a back road affording it a little more of a low-key environment. All told, the food is generally good and the experience is one you’ll enjoy if you’re attracted to the sports atmosphere but don’t like the crowds bigger places tend to attract.
Harry Caray’s Tavern
Honoring the memory of the celebrated Chicago sportscaster, Harray Caray’s Tavern on the Navy Pier has all the air and class of its iconic namesake. The interior is decorated with crystal, baseballs and bats, monuments to a life dedicated to Chicago sports. The exterior is a fun with a large area for outdoor dining and a bar with plenty of TVs. This is the type of place I really loved to visit to watch the White Sox play.
Mr. Ed’s Bar & Grille
The tiny resort town of Put In Bay on South Bass Island in Lake Erie is seemingly comprised entirely of bars and nightspots. Among them is Mr. Ed’s Bar & Grille, a two-location chain with a corresponding location at Port Clinton on the mainland. Mr. Ed’s is primarily a spot for music and night life; the tagline “Nobody’s Ugly after 2″ is a reflection of the sort of unrepentant lightheartedness of a bar for people out for a wild weekend. Well, in all of this party sense, and the food is good, the overall experience is only average.
