Give my wife the credit for an amazing dinner Friday night.
Well, my wife and Jake’s Roadhouse in South Glens Falls, NY.
“So, honey,” I said when I picked her up from work. “I know I promised you home-made cheeseburgers tonight, and I have all the fixings, including the cole slaw, but I have a proposal for you,” I said, knowing that we had not been out to dinner in several weeks. “I can make you cheeseburgers, or we can get them at Jake Road House, and you can have Key Lime Pie for dessert . . . “
Can you say, “the magic words?”
As it turned out, we had one of the best restaurant meals we have had in several years, and in anticipation of the question, yes, the woman who first ate Key Lime Pie in the Florida Keys has found happiness at a restaurant in upstate New York.
Jake’s came under new management this year, the folks who run The Cantina in Saratoga Springs, and I’d had a good meal there once already. The menu is “Down Home Cooking,” and they’ve also got a small, but deep tap line. There are enough appetizers to just eat off that menu, but we had only the “pigs in a blanket” with venison sausage and passed on chili made with boar meat, the deep-fried goat cheese, the crab cakes, and the homemade potato chips.
We wound up opting for sandwiches to split. I got the burger with goat cheese, which was dead-solid perfect, and my wife went for the grilled chicken Panini. Her voice just kept rising as she read the ingredient list – “Grilled chicken breast with melted sharp cheddar, arugula, Granny Smith apple slices & Dijon mayo on a crisp sourdough Panini.” I am telling you, she was in a whole, new octave by the time she was done.
My burger, by the way, was excellent, cooked at a real medium, with some pink. The meat is 50 percent sirloin, 25 percent chuck and 25 percent brisket. The Kaiser roll was fresh and very good, as were the fries.
The beer of choice for this meal was a Blue Point Toasted Lager, a tough call over the local Bare Naked Ale from Adirondack Brewing in Lake George. My wife had a raspberry margarita that needed the addition of a little seltzer after a few sips.
The selling point of this trip was dessert, and again we’re talking about a woman who first ate Key Lime Pie with her grandparents on sailing trips among the Keys. This could have been a setup, but instead, the thick graham-cracker crust was just what she was looking for, and the color – which she points out should never be lime-green – was the pale green that she expected. The taste, she said, was as good as she’d ever had.
Perhaps apple pie is not as esoteric as chef-made Key Lime Pie, but the use of pastry dough and fresh apples meant my dessert was every bit as good as hers, and the coffee was fresh and strong.
The bill, for an appetizer, two sandwiches with fries, two desserts, two drinks and two coffees – plus a solid tip for an excellent waitress, was $60. Clearly, a couple of full meals would have been more, but that’s going to happen anyway, Choosing to eat sandwiches meant passing on entrees such as chicken fried steak, post roast, an amazing buttermilk-marinated fried chicken, meatloaf, a T-Bone steak or macaroni and cheese. Side dishes include garlic mashed potatoes, French friend, wild rice pilaf, roasted root vegetables, biscuits ‘n gravy, succotash or brown sugar baked beans. Yep, you could make a meal out of the side dishes.
By the way, the T-Bone is $21.95, and the full rack of baby back ribs is $17.95, but nothing else is more than $15.95. The food, prices and service are excellent.
The management is new, but folks who have gone to Jake’s in the past will be pleased to know that the ambience, including the stuffed-animal heads, has not changed.
Jakes’s Roadhouse is at 23 Main St., South Glens Falls, NY, The phone number is 518 636-5090. The website is www.jakesroad.com.
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stuffed animals are very cute and lovely, i bet that most kids and even women loves them ;.-