Underbones, I'm sorry. This Lush should have given you a chance a long time ago. Alas, I was too busy checking out trendier spots with pricier drinks and snootier crowds to see your potential. How was I to know about your plentiful beer selection and your focus on eco- and local-friendly cuisine?
First, let's get something straight - in the late evening hours, your location does look like just a shady back alley. I was a little put off, but now I'm over it.
Excuses aside, I have no reasons to avoid you any longer. Instead, I have a laundry list of what will keep me coming back. Let's start with the excellent prices. Almost all the beers are just five bucks, except for the Pabst Blue Ribbon (good ol' PBR), which is half of that. And while the cocktails aren't exactly cheap, they're big enough to feel like you're getting the most out of your money. Many of the specialty mixed drinks involve maple syrup, which makes for great opportunities to sing the Lumberjack Song. And, best of all, the cocktails never come in plastic cups, which is a crime for which another Davis Square bar shall never be forgiven (cough, Sagra, who puts a martini in a Solo cup? Cough).
There's also the table service, which I love. If you don't want to sit at the bar, you seat yourself, order, drink and pay - all from one spot. There's no jostling for the bartender's attention, nor is there any scrambling to hope that your seat is still empty when you return. I wonder why this system isn't more common, because Underbones makes it work really well. I guess the space is big enough to accommodate the bar and a large section of seating, and they just shift their staff from Redbones to meet the night crowds.
Speaking of Redbones, the late-night food menu available at Underbones is also heavenly. Fried pickles and jalapeños are a great choice to wash down with a Snake Bite - a combination of Bass beer and hard cider. The hush puppies - fried cornmeal - are oddly satisfying, and the onion strings are a good plate to share, though no one will blame you if you hoard it all for yourself.
And so far, the bartenders and waiters have been fun and relaxed. The crowd is casual and as laid back as the staff, but nobody looks at you twice if you show up in your fancy duds from starting out the night at some martini bar. Everyone seems to know you'd rather be here, covering that round of PBR for three friends and paying less than the drink you had at the last place.
The Lush's favorite part about a night at Underbones? Not having to take a cab back at the end of the night when the T stops running. The long, cold trek down College Ave. becomes a point of solidarity with all the other late-night nomads schlepping back toward campus and Powderhouse at 2 a.m. The same people who, while walking to Davis, think that tiny fast-food Chinese place near Deli-icious smells worse than the dumpsters behind Carmichael, now think it smells like heaven on the walk home - where heaven is a bucket full of crab rangoons. Of course, you can always figure out which people had their fill of fried goodness at the awesome bar in that shady spot on Chester St., and which people just went to Sagra.
Kate Peck is a senior majoring in English. She can be reached at Katherine.Peck@tufts.edu.
