
Tuesday night bingo brings in EMU students, a convention of kids with artificially elongated earlobes and tattooed figures crawling up their necks and down their arms onto fingers that play with smartphones, and Wednesday is a crowded Trivia Night after 8. After high winds left the area without electricity for two days, the bar served a limited menu to an eclectic Saturday night crowd of all ages and affiliations. For much of a leisurely Sunday lunch, my family sat alone until we were eventually joined by two or three quiet couples. At one late-winter Friday lunch the bartender and I were the only females in the place, the tables populated by burly guys with beards and bellies, fleece and flannel. The scene changes, depending on the time of day and the day of the week. in Ypsilanti, is a surprisingly good neighborhood restaurant inside a campy campus sports bar. In fact, the Wurst Bar, located on Cross St. It’s not the worst spot it’s not even a bad one. In Cincinnati.Don’t let the sound of the place’s name–Wurst Bar–fool you.

Perhaps it's Wurst Bar's tongue-in-cheek approach to its menu that I find the most appealing: it's the kind of place that serves good food, but doesn't take itself all that seriously. It has some hip touches: a refurbished Bevador beer cooler that looks like it'd been swiped from Terry's Turf Club Wurst Bar logo-embossed bar stools reclaimed wood walls and a dining room that, despite being no larger than Senate, somehow manages to not make me feel like I could fall into my neighbor's lap at any moment. It wasn't -and still isn't- a place I find relaxing. What had particularly turned me off about Senate was not their food, but their ambiance: uncomfortably upscale, cramped, loud and a bit pretentious. I later upgraded that to 3 stars solely for the lingering memory of their tasty poutine (no matter how you pronounce it). In 2010, $10 hot dogs seemed outlandish, and I'd initially handed them a 2-1/2 star rating. I wasn't very easy on Senate when they debuted a few years ago. And I've got to come to terms with why that's the case. Yet our experience at Wurst Bar was far more positive than our time at Senate. At first glance, Wurst Bar's business model looks much like Senate's: they both serve an array of interesting sausages, hearty fresh-cut French fries super-addictive house made pickles tasty burgers interesting takes on the gravylicious poutine and a wide and varied beer, wine and cocktail selection.īut if you take a closer look you'll find that.well, who am I kidding: they're both still very similar. With tail between legs, The Good Dog has since shuttered its doors, while the remaining three continue to peddle their unique tubes of meat.Ī little late to the party, Wurst Bar in the Square opened last month in Mount Lookout, hoping to wring a little more life out of the upscale dog trend. One of the first of these haute dog institutions was the Gateway Quarter's Senate, followed closely by Downtown's The Good Dog and Tot Dogs, as well as Wunderbar, located in Covington.

Highfalutin hot dogs have spread through the Cincinnati area these last few years, testing foodies' willingness to spend upwards of $10 on a gourmet sausage over their usual $3 Skyline coney.

Note: the following review is for a restaurant that has since closed.
