What ever happened to bars?

There used to be bar bars - a place with no ferns, TVs or suits. Food was a giant jar of hazy liquid containing a python-like pickled sausage, some rancid cashews under a heat lamp, a jar of pickled eggs, and maybe toaster oven pizza. There were a hand full of taps and you could get a beer and a shot. Everybody wore denim and the air hung heavy with cigarette smoke. There are remnants floating around but they are falling like flies. I need a beer.

 

Always been a rule in Virginia. We have plenty of bars in Pennsylvania. I believe they used to have to serve free food in Virginia during happy hour, not sure if that's true or still the case.

 

I love bar food. It works for me. i can have Kane and cheesesteak nachos? Awesome. If i went to a bar with no food i wouldn't know what to think. It goes hand and hand

 

I always assumed it was some sort of legislation now in Illinois that you had to have something, counter top pizza oven, rack of pretzels or chips. In the old days there were plenty of "bars" which were drink or get out.

Isn't this why we go to a bar, to drink?

 

We have that dumbass law here in S.C.-serve alcohol and you have to serve food to go along with it.

 

I usually want a heaping plate of nachos when I drink and watch football, so, I'm cool with drinking at a restaurant at the bar inside the restaurant.

 

Where I live, there is a craft beer bar across town that fits the bill. No real food to speak of, but they serve popcorn. I can turn that into a meal if need be.

 

I love James E. McNellie's.

Anyway, back to the OP, why is it a bad thing to have food at a bar? Don't see a problem at all with going to a bar that happens to serve food and only ordering alcohol. Maybe it is just cause I live in Houston, and there are literally thousands of bars many have food and many don't, restaurants, pubs, duel concepts and combinations of each in any cuisine you can think of. Anything from dive bars for a Gin & Tonic that don't have food, to happy hour at the hip new cocktail bar or steak night at the local Ice House that has 50+ taps and a cask, or a few whiskey bars downtown for a dram.

 

I'll try a different angle here. Maybe the OP misses the feel of a place that's primarily a bar. Places that have a strong food presence, often have a more restaurant type vibe, than a place that put's it's priority on the alcohols.

 

Yes. Indiana law requires all establishments that serve alcohol for on-premises consumption to provide food. Now, that could be as simple as microwaved hot-dogs, bags of chips, and popcorn, but food had to be available. They relaxed the law this year to permit bars and breweries to operate if they have food trucks on site or the option of ordering food in, but the requirement of food availability is still there. I don't think Indiana is alone on this.

 

I don't believe we can have bars that don't serve food, which I believe is what the OP is questioning. I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time.

 

where I used to live in RI there were plenty.
they all had to "serve food" though.
One dive used to have a random self-serve crockpot of mystery meatballs bubbling on the counter for a couple hours each evening. My former watering hole used to just have pretzels and Goldfish behind the counter that you had to ask for.
Only the regulars knew about it. I miss that.

 

I like the fact that many bars serve food, because most of the time I like to eat something while I'm drinking a beer. We have plenty that do and don't, and most of them, like someone else said, are "bar first, restaurant second."

 

I pretty much only consume beer from a public establishment if I'm dining out, or seeking a special beer to try that I can't buy from the bottle shop to drink at home. I don't go out, just to "hang out" anymore like when I was really young, but that is just me. Don't like crowds, screaming to converse with people and marked up beer prices. I enjoy random conversation but that is 2nd fiddle to sampling the beer.

 

The bars (as opposed to tap rooms) I've seen in MN that only serve alcohol tend to have only BMC and either Grain Belt or Hamm's, either on tap or in containers with an occasional Summit EPA available.

 

Most of the "bar only" places out here tend to be dives, and not the hipster kind. But there are still good, beer-focused bars in the LA area. They just always seem to be 30 minutes away from wherever I find myself.

Most brewery tasting rooms in my neck of the woods are beer-only.

 

I ran a dive that is still the coolest bar that I've ever known. This was the mid-70s. It was The Pickwick on Walker Avenue in Greensboro, just near UNC-G and neighborhoods full of students, professors, misfits, characters, people forced out of the 60s by the 70s, young, old, and a vibrant alive place that is still legendary. It sold beer, soda, chips, and not much more. Beck's Dark sold very well, also Gablinger's in the orange can. Earlier in it's incarnation, Marvin Craig- owner and founder- had been an MP in France at the end of WW2. He used to make the best cheeseburgers on earth on a flat top grill behind the bar. We went in high school, at 16 and up to watch the beautiful women, eat the burgers, and participate in a piece of Americana that I can now describe. He served Blatz draft in tall soda type glasses for $.35. It was heaven. One Sunday night (I believe 1968)), my best friend and I went to The Pickwick, had a few, with burgers, and saw a sign at The End Zone next door... The Allman Brothers tonight at 7; it was 6:30, we had another beer, proceeded to have our minds as 17 year olds completely blown, hence an abiding lifetime love of music and small venues. Duane Allman was a wizard for sure. The bar is still there with a different name. I'm working on a story about The Pickwick, garnering photos and testimonials, and I want it to be documented well and forever.

 

There are still some old-fashioned (beverage alcohol and packets of crisps, only) bars* out there, but modern urban licensing usually requires food sales to be a greater percentage of the overall gross monthly monetary income.

It would be interesting to see a "heat map" (are those still even a thing?) displaying the distribution of bars versus restaurants-with-beverage alcohol.

*Including a few great "dives" which are often overlooked, but which are always a lot of fun to find in the wild.

 

Nice turn of phrase. It made me laugh.

 

They all came to Athens, Georgia. Seriously. All of them.