 Schuba's Harmony Grill
Like most of the bands who fill out Schuba's concert roster, the adjacent restaurant is bland and almost defiantly second-rate. Now, don't get me wrong, I've seen some great shows at Schuba's, but mostly what you'll find there is a lot of balding guys waving the "three chords and the truth" flag with their substandard alt-country bands. The Harmony Grill, one door south from the bar entrance, is a fine enough place to grab a burger if you're in the neighborhood. The menu offers standard Americana fare in an anti-hip setting seemingly derived from the House of Blues's scrapheap. Quasi-spiritual paintings of Otis Redding, etc, adorn the sponge-painted walls, inviting an atmosphere of "down-home Route 66 food shack" that never quite shows up. I dropped in on a Sunday mainly to duck in out of the rain, being right at that corner and being too lazy to walk somewhere else. My companion and I were the only patrons, yet the service was glacially slow and not particularly engaging. We had mac & cheese for an appetizer and split a burger and fries for the meal. The mac & cheese was good, but arrived too late and too hot; the burger was as unremarkable as a typical John Wesley Harding album. We also had a pitcher of sangria, which was a fucking joke. I've had better sangria at high school proms. Perhaps exacerbating the irritation factor was the jukebox, which seemed like someone grabbed six discs at random from their sell-back pile and put them on shuffle. An album track from the Highwaymen? A lesser cut from Costello & Nieve? Man, nothing gets the party started like that shit. I can't say I'll never go back to Harmony Grill, but if I do it will definitely be out of convenience over desire. If I want "the truth," I'll watch A Few Good Men. Zzzzzing!
Review by Posey Parker, September 2003 |