The Best Place to be, Bar None

I almost never go to bars anymore. When a pint at the local bar costs the same as a six pack at the store, the economics don’t make sense. Plus, I’ve almost never been to a bar that fit the bill of what I was looking for: a convivial neighborhood pub where you knew the bartender and were likely to spontaneously run into your friends.

That is, until the kitchen bar. The Kitchen Bar is the 20-foot countertop in our house between the dining room and the kitchen. And hanging out there is just like going to a bar. On a cold and rainy day recently, I pulled up a bar stool and said, “let’s have happy hour.” I turned on some music, passed around some root beer/sodas for the boys, and poured myself a glass of porter.

I surveyed the area and had to admit the kitchen bar was doing a good job approximating a real pub. The boy to girl ratio was about 5:1 so that checked out. Plus, there were peanut shells on the county and the bathroom was a wreck.

I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. He was a young kid, and chock full of ideas about inventions and physics and perpetual motion machines. By young, I mean he was 10, but he could have been any of the 20-something-year-old upstarts you’re bound to run in to at a bar in a college town.

Before you knew it the conversation had gotten louder. Beer (of the root variety) apparently has an amplifying effect on the voices of some of the boys the way beer does on some adults. It also has an inhibition lowering effect apparently. One of them got up and started to dance to the music. The dancing was not good. But it was definitely something that (unfortunately) would happen in a bar.

At the other end of the bar counter, this short guy kept staring at me. I tried to do the polite nod hello and disengage my eyes thing, but he just kept looking at me. I finally said, “hey pal, what are you looking at?” He beamed a great big smile but didn’t say anything. This is why 5-year-olds aren’t allowed in real bars.

A lot of local breweries go out of their way to have family friendly hours but the kitchen bar is always family friendly. Really, it’s family oriented. The chef came into the kitchen to start cooking and introduced me to the cutest girl in the bar. Before you knew it she was in my arms and cooing. The 7-month-old is always welcome at the kitchen bar.

Because the kitchen bar isn’t a place of escape. I understand the appeal of a place that’s a dividing line between work and home but a bar that’s a home away from home isn’t a cheerful prospect. Even if “everyone knows your name.”

So the Kitchen Bar may not be exactly like a real bar. But it makes up for any shortcomings by being so much more: home.