‘Tis the season for food-centered holiday rituals, most of which involve gorging on gravy-flooded, carb-infested, stick-to-your ribs, I-don’t-have-to-worry about-showing-off-my-thighs-for-another-eight-months kind of food. ‘Tis truly a wonderful, guilt-free cultural phenomenon that not even an episode of "The Biggest Loser" could impede. And for many, all of this gluttonous seasonal eating goes oh so well with another favorite seasonal pastime: football viewing. But forget about sitting on your own couch and scarfing down leftovers or store-bought tortilla chips with Cheez Whiz while you scream at the TV in solitude—there are plenty of places where you can tune in and get overfed and over-hydrated along with a room full of fellow fans. So, in honor of the season of pigskin and pigging out, here’s just a sampling of places to take in a game, whether you’re looking for cheap brews and fried fare or more gourmet goodies and imports. O.K., now before all of you hyper-competitive sports types who are just as passionate about your favorite beer lists as you are about your favorite teams get all up in our grill and start trash talking us about this, please note that this is not an exhaustive list of sports-viewing venues. And it’s not a list of the "best" places to eat and see a game per se. It’s just a sampler, people, a sampler. So just back off, or Restaurantarama will have to, er, give you a smackdown or, uh, open a can of whupass on your ass. Yeah.
 At Wild Wing Café, with its 32 TVs, plus a 20′ big screen, watching sports is a sport unto itself. Oh, and they have good food, too. |
Sports bars, duh
First off, we have the honest-to-goodness places that don’t try and be about anything other than trans fats, TVs and touchdowns. Wild Wing Café boasts 32 TVs, a 20′ big screen and a Bucket O’Beer on the drink menu—not as classy as, say, those beer helmets with the straws, but close. Rivals Sports Bar & Grill, which at our last count had 16 plasmas, is decked out in so much UVA and Virginia Tech paraphernalia that you’ll feel like you’re actually at the game. More importantly, they have fried crab balls.
Punts and pints
For the spectator with more, um, exotic tastes, there is the Irish pub, McGrady’s. Get yourself some fish and chips and a pint of Guinness and you just might get the luck o’ the Irish on your side’s side. Oh, and they have seriously cheap domestic pitchers if you’re not into the whole "ethnic" thing.
Snaps and ‘shrooms
For the folks who like options, there is Mellow Mushroom, which has 39 beers—from Bud Light to Brooklyn Black Chocolate stout—on tap, plus a gazillion different pizza toppings and a whole gigantic menu page of different hoagies. It will, like, blow your mind, dude.
Hikes and hipsters
For those of you who like a bit more "scene" with your sports and have more refined tastes, there is three, a kitchen and lounge. They serve their hot dogs with a knife and fork and their nachos with chipotle crèma. And, in addition to beer, they have lots of funky martinis and house-concocted cocktails for when you’re just too bloated for another brewski halfway through the third quarter.
Got some restaurant scoop? Send tips to restaurantarama@c-ville.com or call 817-2749, Ext. 48.