FOX Sports Grill
1522 Sixth Ave, 340-1369
Restaurant open Mon-Sun 11 am-11 pm; bar open Mon-Thurs 11 am-1 am, Fri-Sat 11 am-2 am, Sun 11 am-midnight.
For a certain casual sports fan (who will go, if good seats are to be gotten for free, to a baseball or basketball game but never to football, and who, if professional bull riding happens to come on after Meet the Press, will pause in hunting for the remote), the thought of eating at a sports bar makes her long for her mother–who would surely have a purse full of grease-banishing moist towelettes at the ready.
Until I walked into the FOX Sports Grill on a recent Sunday night during post-season football. My companion and I did our best to remain composed as we swooned past a long, comfortable couch inhabited by guys in jeans, hoodies, and merino wool crewnecks (a J. Crew catalog come to life), all with eyes glued to an enormous flat-screen TV. Downstairs looked like a high-class casino, with its bustling circular bar, tables, and booths all designed to afford visual access to any or all of the 50 or so monitors projecting any sport being broadcast live at the moment.
As far as the food goes, appetizers include filet-mignon chili (highfalutin!) for $5.75, homemade potato chips topped with seasoned sour cream, Danish blue cheese, and crumbled bacon ($7.75), seared ahi with a too-heavy wasabi dipping sauce, as well as spruced-up chicken wings and nachos. The pear, blue cheese, and pecan salad on baby greens ($9.95) was enormous, a graceful mix of aromatic nectar and peppery greens, and my honkin’ 10-ounce tenderloin filet arrived perfectly maroon inside despite its deceptively crusty exterior ($25.95), accompanied by cheesy pecorino potatoes au gratin. My companion’s bourbon-and molasses-glazed pork chop ($18.95) was too dry to swallow–not that he was crestfallen or anything. He was far more concerned with the hundreds of men milling and hollering than with what lay on the plate before him, while I contemplated going back upstairs and plopping down in the middle of that delectable couch.