EVANS MILLS — You can't miss it. It's right there on the corner of the "four corners" in downtown Evans Mills.
Last Call Bar & Grill opened a few years ago in the space old-timers will remember as Bill's Restaurant. What was the dining room is now the barroom.
The barroom is now the small dining room.
Fort Drum is just a few miles down the road, so it's natural that the Last Call will attract soldiers after a day of training. So if you want to participate in some partying, grab a booth or a table in the bar area. If you want a quiet dinner, seek refuge in the dining room.
The menu is quite extensive, especially the casual food — plenty of fried appetizers, nachos and quesadillas, salads, sandwiches and wraps, and burgers done a slew of different ways. Prices are reasonable, most $6.99 or $7.99.
More extensive meals include barbecue chicken, ribs, steaks, scallops and favorites like fettuccine Alfredo, prime rib, shrimp scampi and chicken Parmesan. Entrées are mostly in the $11.99 to $13.99 price range, slightly more for combinations like steak and shrimp and ribs and chicken.
It would take at least two people, maybe more, to polish off the mounded plateful of tumbleweed onions ($3.99), onions sliced super-thin, battered and deep-fried. These were greasy-good, requiring additional paper napkins. And Lipitor, but we didn't think they'd have any.
A large bowl of clam chowder ($3.99) was thick, more starchy than creamy, containing a good number of clams, but the starch tended to overpower the taste of the clams.
Conversely, French onion soup ($3.99) was thin and watery, the broth lacking any oomph, the onions mushily overcooked. There was a good amount of yummy cheese on top, holding it all together.
Pasta entrées come with a salad; all others come with cole slaw and choice of potato. A salad is available for $1.25.
The salads were good and nicely presented, certainly worth all of $1.25. Crisp, chopped iceberg lettuce had a small pile of chopped black olives on one side and sliced fresh mushrooms on the other. A carrot stick and celery stick graced the top, along with a shake of Parmesan cheese. Blue cheese was available at no extra charge. Dressings were adequate.
Chicken Parmesan ($12.99) was exactly as described: "A freshly breaded chicken breast topped with melted mozzarella cheese and marinara, served over linguini." The marinara was homemade and was a little on the blah side. Other than that, it was an enjoyable dish.
Scallops are available hand-breaded and fried, or broiled in white wine, butter and garlic. Both are priced at $12.99. We chose the latter, close to a dozen plump scallops cooked perfectly and served in a crock (the same crock the French onion soup comes in) with lots of the yummy poaching liquid. The crock also seems to keep the scallops warm for quite a while.
Steak and shrimp combo ($15.99) featured a beautiful, nicely seasoned 12-ounce New York strip and six good-sized hand-breaded shrimp — not those squashed-down frozen shrimp you usually get when you see "fried shrimp" on a menu. And the char-grilled steak was cooked perfectly to our request of medium-rare.
We ordered the rib and chicken combo ($13.99) so we'd be able to report on the barbecued baby back ribs and the barbecued chicken.
Well, unhinge your jaws and super-size your stomach, because this is a huge amount of food on one plate. In fact, we had to ask for an additional plate because the ribs (a half rack) were piled right on top of the chicken (a half chicken).
The ribs were excellent, the meat falling off the bones. The chicken was equally good, white meat and dark meat both very moist and tasty. And you could tell the barbecue sauce was cooked along with the meat, not glopped on at the end, resulting in a nice caramelized, cooked-down crust.
Cole slaw that came with the entrées was fresh and crunchy and thick-shredded, but lacked in flavor — very bland. Steak fries appeared to be hand-cut in the kitchen. Curly fries, a commercial product, were actually a little tastier.
Desserts ($3.99 each), while touted as being homemade (along with everything else on the menu), left a little to be desired. The plus was the huge portion sizes, eliciting "oohs" and "aahs" as the sweets were delivered.
Red velvet pie was most impressive, its mysterious reddish-brown layers topped with creamy white frosting. Recipes say the red color comes either from beets or red food coloring.
Three-layer chocolate cake was another huge hunk, served on a chilled glass plate like the other desserts. Either the cake was cooked too long, or it was left uncovered in the fridge too long, but it was unappetizingly dried out.
Even worse was the carrot cake, so dried out that it bore little resemblance to the moist cake we're accustomed to. We called it to our waitress's attention. She would have gladly brought out another piece, had it not been the last.
Although it was smaller than the others, the best dessert may have been a commercial product, vanilla cheesecake topped with cherries.
Our waitress was friendly, pleasant and enthusiastic about the food. The piercings and midriff tattoos were a little distracting to us, but other patrons may not feel the same way.
Once again, we encountered the "who got what?" approach to the delivery of the food from the kitchen. Our waitress had a helper, and neither was able to pair the food with the person who ordered it. Next time, I'm going to have everyone at the table be absolutely quiet and see what happens ...
More pluses — bottomless sodas, low-level lighting in the dining room, local delivery available — and the entire menu at Last Call is served until last call, or about 2 a.m. every day of the week.
Dinner for four came to $101 before tip.
TIDBITS
■ On a recent visit to Lake Placid, we dined at one of its hidden treasures, Paradox Lodge, www.paradoxlodge.com.
Nan and Moses "Red" LaFountaine are gracious hosts. Red does the cooking in full view of the 20-seat dining room with offerings like smoked trout, wild boar sausage, seared Maine diver scallops and veal with morels, cognac and cream.
His legacy is the celebrated Steak & Stinger restaurant that he founded and operated in the '70s. Steak & Stinger is open once again, now the main dining room in the elegant Whiteface Lodge, www.thewhitefacelodge.com. Red is consulting chef at the restaurant.
■ Also in Lake Placid, Charlie's Restaurant will be offering a series of pairing dinners throughout the summer season.
On Wednesday, May 21, there will be a beer pairing dinner featuring limited release beers from Boston Brewing Co., makers of Sam Adams. Some menu items include tempura-style black tiger prawns, grilled wild game sausage and blue corn blini with jumbo lump crabmeat.
For more information, contact Charlie Levitz: www.chair6.com
You can contact Walter E. Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.
Last Call Bar & Grill
8700 Noble St.
Evans Mills, N.Y.
629-4335
Good casual dining. Well-prepared entrées with generous portions
HOURS: 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. seven days a week
Try the tumbleweed onions for a new twist on onion rings.
Steaks are nicely prepared, as are scallops broiled in butter, wine and garlic.
Big appetites will enjoy the barbecue rib and chicken combo: half-rack of meaty ribs and moist half-chicken
Rating: 3 forks
