A buddy recently moved to Reno and for the past few weeks, the Tuesday Lunch has been spent getting him acquainted with Reno eats. Some of the stops have been my normal haunts but we have also tried some places new to both of us. (I'll try to catch up on previous stops, but let's stay current for now)
This week's Tuesday Lunch was the Imperial Bar & Lounge, off downtown on Arlington by the river.
My only previous trips to Imperial had been purely nighttime social stops. It has built a nice rep for being a hot spot on the downtown bar scene and usually draws a pretty interesting range of people. So I was pretty surprised when I found out that they there was a lunch menu or even a kitchen. Perhaps that says something about the time of day that I am at Imperial.
The menu was not long but had some diverse options outside of the pizza section. My buddy Ryan went with the pizza (pepperoni, sausage, onions and black olives) and was impressed. I had a grilled chicken panini sandwich with goat cheese, bacon, pesto, tomato and a basil salsa. Great stuff. Service was fine and the atmosphere was cool. There was some good music going and the Imperial is always a good place to people-watch with the huge windows on the front.
The only drawback was that, even on a Tuesday afternoon, the place still smelled like a bar. And not the smokey smell, but more like somebody forgot to wipe down the tables and chairs and then mop the floor kind of smell. Not very appealing when you are sitting down for a meal and you have the feeling that someone might have recently puked within about 15 feet of where you are sitting.
Overall, however, I'll go back. Meal was reasonably priced and the menu, while not large, certainly had some other items (meatball sliders, fish tacos, baked mac and cheese, etc) that I want to try. And Johnny Blue is committed to supporting deserving downtown businesses first.
No comments:
Post a Comment