Sometimes, a ‘quick stop’ for dinner turns into an accidental bar crawl. And sometimes, that bar crawl happens in Greenfield. (Or maybe it’s just us.)
Saturday night, once I got home from work, it was late, and we were starving. Since we’re currently eating low carb (UGH), we have been eating a TON of wings, and drinking only vodka and club soda. With this in mind, we decided to run out for some late-night wings before coming home to watch Saturday Night Live.
And since we wanted to cross off an Achievement, we opted for a dive bar down in an area of Greenfield known as ‘The Run.’
If you weren’t looking for the Run, you probably wouldn’t find it. It’s this weird limbo of almost-Oakland and almost-Greenfield, somewhere underneath the Parkway East and slightly above Second Avenue. There’s a gorgeous church, some homes, a few dead ends, a baseball field, and two awesome dive bars.
We started out at Chasers, which is a bar that looks like it’s actually someone’s house. It’s cash only (as expected), but they’ve got a juke box, pool tables, and TVs to show the game. And on Monday nights, they’ve got wings (the kitchen closes early on Saturdays, we found out, so this will definitely be a return trip).
Oh, and the *best* thing about Chasers? These vodka drinks were only $2.25 each! It was like the old, pre-Onorato-tax days of drinking in the ‘Burgh!
Friendly bartender, cheap booze, plenty of space to sit at the bar… what more could you ask for?
Oh, that’s right, a big ass bottle of Nikolai. It’s not Vladimir, but it’s the next best thing.
Since the kitchen at Chaser’s was closed, we decided to hop across the street to Big Jim’s (literally across the street – you can stand on a corner and see both Chaser’s and Big Jim’s in the Run).
Big Jim’s is a couple of notches up on the belt of Greenfield-classy, in that they have a true dining room, waitstaff, and these fancy salt & pepper shakers. They were also featured on a show called Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives on the Food Network. (Side note: I don’t know who this Guy Fieri dude is, but if all he does is travel the country checking out cool places to eat and drink, I sure do want his job!)
But ultimately, we decided that Big Jim’s still classifies as a straight-up, good-old, classic Pittsburgh dive, because in their cooler are 40-ounce bottles of Miller High Life.
We started with a shrimp basket, because low-carb or not, we can’t say no to the words ‘shrimp basket.’ I wish I could eat this shrimp basket every day. The breading was crispy, not overly greasy, and the shrimps were light and delicious. (And the bartender could just tell I’m a tartar girl – no messing around with that cocktail stuff sauce for me!)
We checked out their wings for our main course. These are not the typical wings you get at a bar, these are the meaty, delicious (and difficult-to-eat) wings. Michael got the hot wings…
And I got the garlic butter wings. They don’t have a lot of options in terms of sauces/rubs at Big Jim’s, but after eating the garlic butter wings, I can’t imagine why you’d ever choose anything else. These were way too buttery and juicy for your ordinary wing-accompaniment-wet-nap, and best of all, they heated up almost identically the next day for lunch!
After leaving Big Jim’s we took a small detour through the rest of the Run to see if there was anything else important we were missing, but all we saw was the impressive St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church, lit up with the creepy moon above (just like I prefer my churches to be after dark – keep the magic in church! lol).
We were planning on heading home, but between the Run and our house, we pass a few more bars, two of which are straight-up dives, and… well… we couldn’t resist a quick stop. Turns out that our final stop of the evening, Yesterday’s, has karaoke some Saturday nights. And… we can’t really resist that either.
I don’t always accidentally get drunk in the Run, but when I do, I randomly wind up at strange karaoke nights in Greenfield.
We got two songs and a round of drinks in within about 20 minutes, and then it was home in plenty of time to catch SNL.
We love our bars downtown, in Oakland, and even in Lawrenceville, but some nights, you just want to be in Greenfield.