The Sports Page Key West

610 Greene St – 305-296-3230 - www.myspace.com/thesportspagekw

College Football Season Begins!

And when that happens, it’s time to search out a favorite sports bar to catch the Gator games. Now I have to come clean here, I’m not a huge sports fan, but Christina is a dyed in the wool Gator, so I find myself a fan by association. We had a favorite haunt in Orlando to go watch the games, but that’s a long way to drive for a football game, so we vetted our first sports bar here in Key West last Saturday; The Sports Page on Greene street.

We walked into the Sports Page about 6:30 Saturday and bellied up to the bar. The first thing I noticed was that it felt like any good sports bar should, crowded, lots of big screen TVs, a few projection screen TV’s, a pool table, lots of pennants, neon beer signs, and cheerleader photos.. So far so good!

It was an interesting transition from the atmosphere of Key West to inside of the Sports Page, I wasn’t expecting it to be such a typical sports bar, but it almost felt like we were sitting in Orlando or anywhere else enjoying the game. I appreciated the familiarity of it, it made me feel comfortable right away.

Time for some beer!

There were two bartenders working the bar that night, Robert and um… someone else. (God I’m bad with names) They were both very good, and handled the entire place very efficiently. It’s a pretty big place so that’s no small feat.

We ordered a couple of Blue Moons. Supposedly they have 2 for 1 happy hour between 4 and 8, but we didn’t get any of that.. oh oh.. strike one. We ordered up some cheese sticks to get us rolling, and settled in. I switched to Key West ale for my second beer.. love that Key West Ale! The draft was cold and fresh.. bad draft is one of my big peaves, so I’ll give points for that!

The beers were pretty expensive, 4.50 I think for the KW Ale, and the Blue Moons were about 4.75 – about average I guess for Duval area beers. (I could be off on this – man, I make a horrible restaurant critic, I can’t even remember exact prices!) Their myspace web page states that they have incredible prices.. um yeah.. incredibly high! Maybe they’re trying to make enough money to get a real website.

They don’t have pitchers, but they do offer buckets, and I’ve recently learned that they offer 2 dollar Bud Light drafts, so if you can stomach that crap, you’re in luck. Maybe that’s the incredible pricing they speak of. But hey, not hatin’, I understand it’s expensive to run a business downtown Key West. If the prices were out of line, it sure didn’t show in attendance, the place was packed.

Bring me a bucket..

I’d done a little bit of research online before heading in, and read good reviews about the food so I had pretty high expectations.

The cheese sticks arrived in a basket with a cool newspaper-looking liner, and they were very good as far as cheese sticks go.. and before you say it’s hard to fuck up cheese sticks, let me tell you that I’ve had many a basket of total shit cheese sticks, overcooked, greasy, undercooked, you name it. I’ve even had an entire basket of them that somehow, magically, all the cheese was gone out of them, like they sprung a leak in the fryer and the cheese escaped.

I’d read in one review online that the ‘cleveland paninis’ were to die for, so I looked for those on the menu. I noticed they had a cheesesteak version.. oh yeah, I want to go to there! Christina ordered a basket of chicken wings medium. Alright! Food is ordered, time for a couple more beers while we wait.

We were sitting right by the service bar so I had a front row seat to all the food coming out of the kitchen, and I saw some very delectable delights pass me by.. one in particular had to be a calzone of some sort, I almost snagged that sucker as it sat there waiting for Robert to take it to it’s rightful owner. Next time I’m getting that!

After a little while the food arrived in some more baskets with the cool newsprint. The wings were big and juicy looking, and my panini looked really good! I immediately stole one of Christina’s wings.. hey, it’s the price she has to pay. It was cooked perfectly, but it definitely wasn’t what I’d consider medium.. the sauce for sure could have used used some help from Emeril. All in all a good wing, but quite bland. If this was medium, I wonder what the mild tastes like.

My Panini was piled high with sliced, tender roast beef, coleslaw, tomatoes, melted swiss, and french fries! On the sandwich! How odd. It looked fabulous.

If only it had tasted as good as it looked. Where the wings were under-flavored, the panini cheese steak was over-flavored. You know that salty red shit they pour on ‘spicy’ french fries? I don’t know exactly what it is, it’s like Mrs. Dash or something.. well it was on the fries, and all over the roast beef too. I did some surgery and removed the fries from the sandwich, but the flavor was overpowering. I mean, you have all these yummy flavorful things already on there.. why smother it with all that salty crap. Now, I realize this is just me, I don’t like spicy fries to begin with – other people may love it, but it’s definitely not my bag. I could tell that the sandwich surely was cooked well, the meat was tender, the focaccia bread was crunchy, it had so much potential! ARGH! I won’t let this stop me from going back though, the other things I saw flying past me on the bar looked really really good. And there’s always room for more food in my life.

Maybe I’m an audio snob, but come on..

Being someone who’s built a good deal of loudspeakers, and set up some pretty complex audio systems, I’m probably a bit of a gear-snob. That being said, I don’t think I’m too far off base by saying their sound system in this place sucks. There are a few small loudspeakers hung around the room, and they are driven far past their acceptable capacity. Actually the larger problem is the input gain to the amps from the television is waaaaay to high, in effect creating a situation where the amplifiers are outputting a distorted signal into the poor speakers, which themselves are too small for the room they are in.  That signal had no chance man, it was hamstrung out of the gate. Probably something that a bit of tweaking by someone who knew what they were doing would fix. This could be something that just was happening that night, I won’t know until a couple more visits.

All in all, I really can’t complain too much, the place is warm and inviting, the service is good, the bartenders are friendly and efficient, the crowd was fun, the beer was cold, and the food didn’t kill us. What else could you want from a sports bar. I’m holding off on final judgement on the food until I have some more of it. I’ve read nothing but good reviews from other people, so there has to be something to that.

I’ll have to hit the other sports bar down on this end of town, Jack Flats and see what the comparison is..

OK.. 4:30.. happy hour time here.. Cheers!