The Peanut: 418 W. Ninth St.

Some people are crazy about the wings here, personally I find them disturbing. For the uninitiated, they are whole wings, and quite large ones at that. They arrive at the table looking like a kind of satanic crown roast. The thought of drunken frat boys hunched over a table drunkenly eating these things is enough to make me puke. Regardless, it's not the kind of food I eat for lunch anyway, because I wind up looking like a mess. I also don't tend to eat BLTs for some reason, though a friend did describe the Peanut as serving "perhaps the best one I've ever had." They serve single and triple BLTs--don't even ask about a double. I overheard the waitress tell one lady, "there's no such thing as a double, you either got one layer or it's a triple decker, it's impossible!"

Despite this curious inability to grasp the obvious, the food is pretty good here, service is typically friendly and super efficient. The Peanut ain't cheap though: A burger, fries and drink will easily set you back $12 with tip. Fairly steep for a bar food lunch. When I was there, the asylum was being run by the inmates. No one over thirty in sight, which means that the boss probably wasn;t around. There was a lot of howling and laughing coming from the kitchen as I waited for my food. At one point some dude yelled, "it makes me fart!" in reference to some comment that must have been truly hilarious. Normally I like a laid back atmosphere, and I certainly don't have any illusions about where my food comes from--but the thought of some guy farting on my plate had me a tad queasy.

The burger was undeniably good, and huge. It was nice to be able to listen to the rolling stones instead of the droning of ESPN or 94.9. And you can smoke if that tickles your fancy. I like smoking establishments because they tend to keep the annoying customers (children & their parents) away.

Of course an otherwise good experience was tainted. I had to wait forever for my check because all the employees went behind the bar to watch somebody's home video on the TV. Now, I'm totally in favor of the 20-something employees kicking back and having some fun when the cat's away, but you gotta take care of business. Every customer in the place was shaking their head in disbelief. The dude who had been my waiter was apparently now off work, smoking a cigarette at the bar. In total the meal took 41 minutes start to finish, which really is entirely too long.

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