Dining Out: Lake Wylie Junction
I visited the new Lake Wylie Junction Grill & Pub on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 with my family. This was our first visit to the restaurant since it reopened under its new name/ownership. The restaurant is located at the former location of The Grid Iron (13105 S. Tryon Street in the Steele Creek area) which operated at that location for several years.
We had been wanting to try the restaurant since it opened several weeks back, but had not had the opportunity. We choose to go on Tuesday because they had a 35 cent wing special and I was once again in the mood for wings (I get in that mood a lot.)
Inside, the Junction looked pretty much the same as The Grid Iron did - although I did not go into the bar area, so that may have been different. It offers a bit of upscale ambiance but still maintains the feel of a nice sports bar. They have a number of televisions throughout and a wall in the main dining area that is all televisions. The Grid Iron had these televisions too, but for whatever reason never seemed to become known as THE place to go watch the game. I think the seating and sound arrangement makes it difficult for a group to go watch a game and enjoy it together. Then again, that may not be what they are shooting for - which brings up the question as to why all the TV’s in the first place.
Anyway, back to the food. The Junction is another one of these restaurants that breads their chicken wings. Most restaurants do not do this. I feel it takes a lot away from the wing and lowers the overall quality of the food. Their normal process is to fry the wings, bread them, and then fry them again. Upon my request, they were able to make the wings “naked” which is the customary way to get wings without the breading when restaurants insist on making them this way. I ordered 10 hot wings and 5 wings with barbeque sauce. Much to my delight the wings that came out were very large. If you are a wing conisseur, you know that the size can vary greatly from restaurant to restaruant. The hot sauce was hardly hot at all. In fact, I am surprised that anyone would consider it hot - or even mild for that matter. I almost seems to cool my mouth off instead of heat it up. Perhaps it was a bad batch or something, I guess I will see next time. The barbeque sauce was good.
My wife ordered the Homestyle Chicken & Dumplings. It was odd because the menu stated that they were Southern Style, but when the dish came out - it was orangish in color. I have been eating chicken & dumplings my whole life and have had them at dozens of restaurants and I have never seen them this color. They contained a good bit of vegetables - which wasn’t a plus for my wife who was looking for traditional southern style chicken & dumplings. This was more of a chicken soup or stew. Overall, she felt the taste to be acceptable - just not what one would expect upon ordering Chicken & Dumplings.
The service was about average for this type of restaurant. The waiter had just started there and was average. There were not any major issues like an inability to get refills in a timely manner or messed up orders. He bought the bill promptly and everything went smoothly.
As far as prices go, many of the dishes were average priced for this type of restuarant. Sandwiches were between $6 to $8 with fries. Most of the main courses were between $13 and $15. The chicken & dumplings seems a bit overpriced at $12.95, but I guess this should have been the first clue that they were not traditional.
I will definately go back to Lake Wylie Junction in the future. I have heard a lot of good things about other items on the menu and would like to try more of the entrees. Feel free to leave me comments with your experiences at Lake Wylie Junction. I look forward to hearing them.
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Tags: American, Lake Wylie, Southwest