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entertaining u newspaper: your monthly guide to entertainment
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David Olney
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by jon and cassie
“There’s something about football on the television that makes me crave buffalo wings,” Cassie said when we were trying to figure out what local establishment we wanted to eat in for our Ghetto Gourmet article this week. Keeping a meal under $20 for two people can often be a challenge. In fact in our last attempt to write this article we went to one of those Hibachi Japanese restaurants where they cook in front of you, figuring that if we split it we could stay below the $20 ceiling. As it turns out these places have a minimum of $15 per person to sit at the table. So it isn’t always possible to keep a bill under twenty, but we set out this past Sunday to find one.
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Cassie and I aren’t hardcore sports fans. In fact it has only been in the last couple of years that she has gotten into watching football, but a big part of that is not the stats of the Jags or even Jacksonville becoming a super city, it’s because it is fun to get together with a group of friends and eat finger foods while sucking down a pitcher of beer.
There are a number of great places in town where you can cost-effectively eat some wings and drink some beer, but we happened to end up at Lillian’s on Roosevelt Boulevard. This seemingly innocuous storefront tucked into a strip mall near Timucuana Blvd is actually a really great sports bar. When you walk in the front, it may appear as though what you suspected from the outside is accurate, there is a bar, some booths and a few tables. But as you get deeper in, there is a mini arcade loaded with video games, quarter machines and an air hockey table. Beyond that game room there is a larger room with another bar, pool tables and even, on occasion, poker tables.
We got there right as the game (Jax vs San Diego) was starting. It was exciting to see Jacksonville Municipal Stadium loaded with fans on national television. It was even more exciting to see that Lillian’s has the perfect special for hungry “sports fans.” Their wing special was ten wings and a pitcher of beer for $10.95. We put on our game faces and then immediately covered them with hot sauce, and their wings weren’t bad either.
Had we not been predisposed to wings and beer, they also had other great price-savers on the menu, including a half slab of ribs or a giant Philly for $8.95. The best part was that the place wasn’t loaded with people. In fact, I think there were more televisions than people in the place. Perhaps it was the labyrinthine layout of the place or maybe it was the innocuous appearance from out front, but the crowd felt fairly intimate and the prices were outstanding.
Lillian’s isn’t the only place in town like this either. In the Riverside area alone, there is also Ham’s, for a more corporate angle, and Harpoon Louie’s with their School Loan Special. And Harpoon Louie’s has a real chef presiding over their menu. I can’t say that the quality of Lillian’s food is necessarily better than any other sports bar and grill, but if you got tired of the beer and felt like taking your night to the next step, they also have very reasonable cocktails in their full liquor bar.
But for the sake of the Ghetto Gourmet article, we made our wings and pitcher last until half time, then we invited more friends to join us. Since they bought the next pitcher, we made out like bandits without even getting close to our $20 ceiling. Of course, by the time the game was over, we tipped our server everything we had, because by the end of the second pitcher, we were probably a terrible nuisance to her, although she graciously never let her smile fade.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
