Bar Food

Bar food is different than restaurant cuisine. Bar food is straight-forward fare, more substance than flair. Think battered pickles and hot roast beef sandwiches. Cockey's Tavern, a bar with a handful of dining tables, a does a good job dishing out solid, satisfying bar food. The tavern, located in a space formerly occupied by the Vietnamese restaurant Pho and before that Mencken's Cultured Pearl, pays homage to its West Baltimore locale. Black and white photographs of the area's old industrial buildings hang on the walls.

With country music blaring, honky-tonk decor, and a menu stacked with smokehouse favorites, Cowboys & Rednecks (also known as CNR) is hardly shy about its theme. We half expected the hostess to greet us with a "Yeehaw!" CNR's owner, Federal Hill resident and big-time country music fan Guy Naylor, opened the bar in late 2011, imagining that it would be a fun addition to his neighborhood. Local bar-hoppers agreed; CNR is often packed to overflowing on weekend nights. CNR's success as a bar is uncontested, but its status as a go-to restaurant is less confirmed.

Charles Village Pub is all grown up — mostly. Before the January 2011 fire that destroyed its building, Charles Village Pub in Towson drew a local lunch crowd, but it was mostly known as a bar for college kids. It was a fun place for after-school beers. CVP is still a good place for drinks. But these days, thanks to a newly rebuilt interior and revamped menu that puts a local spin on traditional bar food, it's a nice place for a meal, too. After the fire, the building had to be completely reconstructed.

Big playoff games deserve big bar specials. A $3 domestics deal might have worked a couple of months ago, but the AFC championship game demands more. As players elevate their games, it's only fitting sports bars do, too. This concept is not lost on No Idea Tavern, the cozy Federal Hill bar a comfortable distance from the Cross Street Market madness. There are only four words you need to know about No Idea's Ravens special on Sunday: all you can drink. Although it's normally a New York Jets bar, No Idea will make an excellent spot for Ravens and Patriots fans, given its 17 TVs and larger-than-expected space.

Wiley Gunter's is an easy place to like. It has everything a great neighborhood bar needs: super-friendly bartenders, big TVs, walls covered with sports memorabilia and a menu stocked with well-executed takes on familiar bar food. With all that, it's no surprise that around 7 on a recent Thursday night, the place was packed. Groups of friends wearing matching Kickball League of Baltimore T-shirts filled both of Wiley Gunter's two floors, grabbing beers before heading to games near the bar's Federal Hill-meets-Locust Point location.

With country music blaring, honky-tonk decor, and a menu stacked with smokehouse favorites, Cowboys & Rednecks (also known as CNR) is hardly shy about its theme. We half expected the hostess to greet us with a "Yeehaw!" CNR's owner, Federal Hill resident and big-time country music fan Guy Naylor, opened the bar in late 2011, imagining that it would be a fun addition to his neighborhood. Local bar-hoppers agreed; CNR is often packed to overflowing on weekend nights. CNR's success as a bar is uncontested, but its status as a go-to restaurant is less confirmed.

The Jean-Louis Palladin of bar food in Baltimore used to be the anonymous cook who made the oversized cheeseburger at Alonso's. But if you think today's bar food is only wings, potato skins and the like, you've got a treat coming. When you're bored with hamburgers, try the grilled portobello mushroom sandwich at the Wild Mushroom or the crab omelet at Jeannier's.Jeannier's? you say. Isn't that a French restaurant? It is, but it has a bar with a separate menu, more casual and less expensive.

There is bar food, and then there is bar food. Jeannier's serves the second kind.The first kind is nachos and wings and burgers with fries. The other is onion soup gratinee made with a delicious homemade broth, crab omelets and a sirloin steak sandwich. With oeufs a la neige (floating island) for dessert.Jeannier's is predominantly a traditional French, special-night-out restaurant located in an apartment house, with all the interior-design excitement that an apartment house dining room usually generates.

When general manager Larry Shyman says that he's never seen a sports bar like the new Coliseum in the Cranbrook Shopping Center in Cockeysville, I believe him. It has 92 televisions (no, that's not a misprint), two separate bars, a dance floor and DJs Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. There's seating for 310. Customers have been going there to eat, not just drink, during the Coliseum's first couple of weeks of existence. There's a separate nonsmoking dining room where people can get steaks hand-cut in the restaurant's kitchen and dishes like "gator bites," made from fresh alligator flown in from Florida.

Although there's nothing you love as much as a fat, briny oyster on the half shell straight from the sea, you've gotten a little nervous about raw shellfish lately. Oysters Rockefeller are good, but sometimes the oysters get lost among the spinach and Pernod. What to do?Well, you might try the baked oysters casino at Michael's Cafe, Raw Bar and Grill. It's an unorthodox treatment, but the kitchen resists loading down these plump beauties with bread crumbs. Each has a bit of crisp bacon and seasoned butter and is baked just long enough.

While many Baltimoreans associate Shuckers of Fells Point with its outdoor patio and picturesque views of the harbor, it has long been a good, if underrated, place to watch a game. Like Looney's Pub in Canton, Shuckers separates itself from surrounding bars with its abundance of TVs. On Sunday, 40 flat-screen TVs will be on at a time, with most tuned (appropriately) to the Ravens' Battle of the Beltways against the Redskins. So even if you can't grab the comfortable leather couch in the back, there will still be plenty of seats and screens available.

Wiley Gunter's is an easy place to like. It has everything a great neighborhood bar needs: super-friendly bartenders, big TVs, walls covered with sports memorabilia and a menu stocked with well-executed takes on familiar bar food. With all that, it's no surprise that around 7 on a recent Thursday night, the place was packed. Groups of friends wearing matching Kickball League of Baltimore T-shirts filled both of Wiley Gunter's two floors, grabbing beers before heading to games near the bar's Federal Hill-meets-Locust Point location.

Charles Village Pub is all grown up — mostly. Before the January 2011 fire that destroyed its building, Charles Village Pub in Towson drew a local lunch crowd, but it was mostly known as a bar for college kids. It was a fun place for after-school beers. CVP is still a good place for drinks. But these days, thanks to a newly rebuilt interior and revamped menu that puts a local spin on traditional bar food, it's a nice place for a meal, too. After the fire, the building had to be completely reconstructed.

Plug Ugly's Publick House is a strange name for a tavern. But Baltimore history buffs know the Plug Uglies were a thuggish street gang/political club that ran riot on Baltimore's streets in the 1850s. Don't worry. The newest resident of O'Donnell Square isn't a gangland. Bartenders with untucked shirts are about as rough as it gets, and the staff here, you may be sorry to know, seems to have been chosen for their gentle dispositions. At first glance, Plug Ugly's could pass for any number of its neighbors, but look closer: The wood-filled bar area and dining rooms have been generously furnished with salvaged material like church pews and antique lighting fixtures.

Canton is getting a new "upscale tavern" in about two weeks. Called Lighthouse Tavern, it replaces the old Sports Cafe, which closed earlier this month. Co-owner Patrick McCarthy promises "an alternative to the Canton Square scene. " McCarthy knows that area. He worked as a bartender at Looney's for nearly 15 years and at Coburn's for about three before that bar closed in 2009.  He and his business partner, Christopher Petrie, bought Sports Cafe nearly two weeks ago to re-open as "a place where you don't have to have someone screaming next to you," as is the norm at the Square, he says.

He wants mozzarella sticks, a burger and fries with his draft. She prefers a meal with more sophistication and fewer calories. She wouldn't mind a wine-by-the-glass suggestion, either. That's the restaurant Clayton's Tavern, which opened recently in Federal Hill, wants to be; and for the most part, it succeeds. The drawing card is the fact that bar food is on the menu with new American dishes such as salmon au poivre with a splash of Grand Marnier, glazed hearts of palm and horseradish mashed potatoes.

Poor Richard'sWhere: 4 1/2 E. Pennsylvania Ave.Hours: Dining room, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 1 p.m.-9 p.m. SundayCredit cards accepted: AE, MC, VFeatures: Bar food, steamed crabsNon-smoking section? YesCall: (410) 337-7110Prices: Entrees, $8.95-$16.95** 1/2Poor Richard's menu is a wonder to behold. It lists 48 specialty sandwiches, plus the usual tuna fish and roast beef. It's impressive, but I'm not sure it's impressive enough to steal.