General Bracket #2: (1) Lucky Wishbone vs. (8) Humpy's

This pits two of the biggest staples of Anchorage dining against each other, as one of the oldest restaurants in Lucky Wishbone goes up against one of the most popular bar/restaurants in town in Humpy's. It's two pretty classic menus showing down to see who does the basics better. Who will it be?

Find out after this.

Lucky Wishbone: When Rachael Ray came up to Anchorage, this is one of the places she went. Why would you she go to a drive thru, down home, old school Anchorage restaurant? Because it's delicious!

This restaurant keeps their menu to the basics: burgers, fried chicken, fries, and milk shakes. While there are other foods, those are the basics and what they do best. I go there for the burgers, and I love this place so much that I actually went there for my post high school graduation dinner. I always get their jumbo cheeseburger with a side of fries, my mom normally gets the MOM (an assortment with fried chicken with fries), and my dad normally gets the POP (a bigger assortment with more fries) and a mileshake.
I mean, this is without fail. This is a place that is all about comfort food, and it's all about familiarity

Lately, I've been going after my pallete has expanded a bit and it isn't quite as good as I always wanted it to be. However, it's hard for it to escape the love I once had, so I continue returning and enjoying the experience.

Humpy's: This restaurant was featured on Travel Channel's Man vs. Food, and it had Adam "I don't wash my hands" Richman taking down some makeshift contest that never existed before then. It's one of the best places to get beer in town, as it has an eclectic and robust beer list to go with a pretty large menu. Want fish and chips? Got that. Want burgers? Got that. Want a nice salad? They've got that. They have a little bit of everything, and most all of it is pretty darn good. Better yet, the service is almost always remarkably solid for how busy they are.

Their big negative is the prices. While a lot of their food is good, it's awfully ridiculous to spend $16 on Halibut Tacos (that aren't as good as Bear Tooth's - suck it Eric!). Often their food is a tier or two below other similar options, so unless I'm going to drink it's a rare occasion that I'll stop by there and eat.

The Showdown: Two classics, two Anchorage constants...but who comes out on top? They both have big positives and big negatives, but when you get down to it the years of consistency from Lucky Wishbone make it come out on top. Maybe if Humpy's regulate on their prices some day they'll take the lead, but not yet!

Akon and the Wailers

Once upon a time, as many of you long time readers know, I went to trivia night every week. Whether it was at Hooters (our favorite until it closed down, sadly), Eddie's Sports Bar, or Humpy's, we loved it. Colver was my partner on a weekly basis, but we also had a rotating cast of characters joining us. Sadly, at some point within the past year we just stopped going altogether. Not sure what it was, but I do know I had a trivia sized hole in my heart (or perhaps that was all of the beer I wasn't drinking and all of the various bar foods I wasn't eating).

Last night marked the return of trivia though, as Colver, Lorna, Eric, Joanne, Kyle and I went to Humpy's for their Tuesday night Pub Quiz. Given that we've had so much turnover on our team, we went with a new team name - Akon and the Wailers (an inside joke about Akon and his reggae sound) - to replace our old team name "Drunken Cowboys." That was our team name for quite some time, so it was sad to see it go. No less, we had our best round ever at the Pub Quiz, which is notorious for being hard as hell to win at. We managed to win one round outright (it was a matching page where you had to match the title of the movie to the sport it was about) and to consistently get 5+ answers right in the ten question rounds.

Besides the fact that we did reasonably well, it just felt good to be at trivia once again. Sitting with friends, drinking some beer, and dropping some (useless) knowledge. If I'm looking to survive another Alaskan winter, I'm going to need a hobby or two. Let's hope trivia becomes one of those hobbies.

The Weeks End

Mattimeo, Scotty G, and Myself at Humpy's

I love weekends. Everyone does of course, but I really, really love weekends. Nothing makes me happier than the feeling of getting off work on a Friday and knowing it's going to be a good weekend. Yesterday was no exception. I got off work, went and picked up my comics (sweet, sweet comics), and rolled back to my place to meet up with Matt. Matt came over and tempted me with Taco King, the delicious "great food made fast" Mexican restaurant that is far and away Anchorage's second best of its variety. That's right, it is the second best, behind Benny's Taco Wagon. Mmmmm Benny's. No less, great start to the evening, having a stellar meal. We followed that up with going to see Knocked Up, Judd Apatow's new comedy starring the genius that is Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl. It was extremely funny and often touching, an overall very good movie, but it wasn't the "best comedy in 20 years" like some critics are saying. So far, so good on the evening. Three great things already, and the night has barely even begun!

Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. (Judging...always judging) and myself

After the movie, I received a call from a friend who was wondering if we were going to go out for the evening, which of course we were, so I informed her that we were going to be headed out after a little while to come downtown. I got off the phone and quickly lit up the Bat-signal, as my posse and myself quickly assembled at my place for the kick off to the evening. Two delicious and large Vodka Crans later, I was ready to roll, as were everyone else. We decided to lead off the evening at Humpy's, as that was the place our friend already was at.

Lorna and Sam enjoying a brew

Now Humpy's is a beguiling place. Whenever you think of Humpy's, you always think, "that's a very nice bar," but when you really sit down and think of it, you can never really come up with a really awesome time you had there. My second fantastic time ever at Humpy's was last night. This leads into a theory I came up with about the bar, and I am convinced it is a very sound one. Anyone that has ever been to Humpy's knows the layout, but for those who haven't been, it has a huge bar, a mini-stage with a dancefloor in front of it, and then a ton of tables and booths for sitting. That's pretty much it. If you aren't sitting and you aren't dancing, you generally are standing around like an idiot. But last night, we got a table and had an amazing time. So here is the theory - if you have a table, Humpy's is amazing. If you don't, it is pretty lame. It is nearly impossible to get a table there too, so this tends to be a problem. Which is why I've had a lot of fun there twice ever.

Everyone was in a very festive mood, I bought some drinks, Matt bought some drinks, Colver did, Sam did, Joe did, everyone was buying drinks! Plus, it was our friend Amy's (Pictured to the left with Scott Gomez) birthday, and we adopted her into our ragtag group after her friends bailed on her. On top of that, NHL star Scott Gomez was at the bar, and we had a grand time pestering him to take pictures with us, as you can see.

We stayed there at Humpy's for a good while, staying in our area drinking and reminiscing and chatting and having a generally very good time. That's the funny thing about going out to the bars. When you tell the story about the night, there is no way you can really convey how much fun you had. Everyone that was there knows because they were there, but to explain to anyone else it is pretty much a lost cause. Which is why I am dedicating this post to it. Back to the regularly scheduled post. A little after 1, we decided to move on to the next bar, and we headed over to Bernie's Bungalow. Bernie's is an awesome bar. A very strange one, but an awesome one no less. It is commonly known as a gay bar, but for a gay bar it quite often has a lot of hot girls in it. It has a very nice inside bar area, but what makes it really shine is the outside area that is only open during the summer. It's just a giant outside area with tons of sitting room and is simply the one place in a downtown bar you can go to really stretch out and relax. It is absolutely incomparable, there is no remotely similar bar in the whole of Anchorage. Colver and Sam are the two in the photo above.

Matt and myself again

The evening continued on with pool and more drinks, until I was distracted by some older women I met when I went to the bathroom. I don't want to go into detail about what I announced, as to save some face, but let's just say the words "cougar" and "hunting" were used in some fashion by yours truly. Oh dear, the things alcohol makes you do. Anyways, so the thing that I ended up finding the most interesting about the women was that one claimed to be Bev Doolittle, which was really amusing and interesting to me for two reasons; she's my Mom's favorite artist, and I could not stop thinking "Why in god's name is Bev Doolittle talking to me?" Turns out Bev Doolittle is 60 and looks nothing like this woman, as you can see in my photographic proof, but at the time her deception was absolutely riveting to me and I drank in her words with much attention paid. I had to think later though, I wonder how many people "Bev" tried her charade on before she found someone that was actually impressed with it. After discussing with my friends about Doolittle and realizing I was the only person who knew who she was, I decided officially that this number had to be at least a thousand. Give or take nothing.

The real deal, Bev Doolittle

Myself, "Bev", and sketchball guy in the pic who may or may not be her husband...

Sadly, "Bev" and her "publicist" ended up departing, leaving my friends and myself to our devices to head home and end the night. Sam, Amy, Matt, and I went back to my place, made some popcorn, had some chips and salsa, and passed out into the terrible slumber only recently intoxicated people can really sleep. The day was June 1st, and it was a truly great kickoff to what I hope will be an awesome summer. I'll drink to that.