Ryan Michael Wisniewski
The French dip is one of the better options from the otherwise disappointing sandwich menu.
I made my first visit to LJ’s Sports Tavern and Grill on a recent weekday evening. The Brewers were playing the Cubs that night, and I was looking forward to watching the game. On each of the almost two dozen television screens, various sporting events were flashing away: playoff basketball, playoff hockey and two different baseball games. The Brewers weren’t playing in either.
LJ’s feels more like a hotel lobby bar than the typical sports bar, with modest comfort, a put-on sense of richness and, of course, multiple TVs. Much has been made of the high-end apartment buildings going up on East Washington Avenue and the young professionals moving into them. LJ’s is on the ground floor of one of those buildings, the Galaxie, which presumably gives the bar a built-in customer base. When I consider this, LJ’s starts to make a little more sense.
All these young professionals, the media tells me, are cutting their cable cords left and right. One television product that’s still pretty hard to stream on the cable replacements is live sports. LJ’s is a surrogate living room for the East Washington cord-cutter, many of whom have arrived recently from out of state to work at Epic. Maybe they’re just not Brewers fans.
No matter what’s on the screens, LJ’s should offer worthwhile sports bar fare, appetizers, burgers and fries. The Jenifer Street Market provides the beef for LJ’s burgers, a promising start, but I found the grind imprecise and a touch gristly. The JJ burger seems like a fun novelty, but mashed potatoes on a burger are a heavy blanket over every other flavor.
There are chicken wings on the menu at LJ’s, but also something called pork wings. They’re rough knobs of rib meat, deep-fried and clinging fast to about two inches of rib bone.They can come smothered in BBQ or sweet chili sauce, helpful when so much gnawing is required. Although there were no inedible bits, a little less time in the fryer would make it easier to enjoy them.
Crisp french fries were underseasoned, but the cottage fries — awkwardly described by a server as the same stuff as the French fries but in a different shape — were not only boring but soft and squishy, too.
Spinach artichoke dip was heavy on the spinach, but light on salt and cursed with a strange off-flavor my table thought might’ve been excessive nutmeg. Cheese curds were standard issue, as blond as the cottage fries but more serviceable. The most satisfying appetizer was the spicy cheese bread, which has nothing to do with the Farmers’ Market staple from Stella’s Bakery, but is instead a split French loaf, put under the broiler and topped with butter, cheese and pepper flakes. It’s a dish that could be made identically at home, but it was hot and gooey, which is really all I ask.
A lackluster wedge salad, served with steak and blue cheese, was a poor performer whether interpreted as a wedge, a Cobb, or a steak and gorgonzola salad.
Sandwiches should be a no-brainer, and I will say this about LJ’s: the kitchen handles bacon well. It was the saving grace of an otherwise bland club wrap, and made the BLT worth ordering. The chicken meatballs are house-made, but it seems possible that the marinara on the chicken meatball sub isn’t much more than tomato paste; it had an oddly harsh flavor. The French dip did perform admirably in this otherwise disappointing section of the menu.
The tap list was nondescript, and the food had very little to say. But there were respectable crowds in the main bar area every time I visited. If LJ’s is the Galaxie’s common living room, then maybe that’s the only standard it needs to live up to. It doesn’t matter if you could make some of the food at home if you’re already kind of at home anyway.
The Brewers won the game that first night, but I was long gone by then. I had to leave the sports bar to go home to watch.
LJ’s Sports Tavern and Grill
8 N. Paterson St., 608-286-1951, facebook.com/LJs-Sports-Tavern-Grill-1758815131054063
11 am-2 am daily, $4-$13
