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| - I was visiting Tempe for the first time on business, and jumped at the chance of my work colleague, Vince, going out to lunch (just so that I could try the local hangouts); we kind of looked at him funny when he non-chalantly said something 'bout "boulders" ...
...and it's no wonder that not all of us knew what he was talkin' bout, cuz it's pretty discreet-looking, and located in a building that came right out of the 80's. You wouldn't know right off-the-bat if this was a restaurant/bar, and with the interesting name and all, that makes it all the more intriguing.
Being a cyclist myself, I knew it was a good sign when I noticed the interior bike parking! It looks like a pretty cool, laid-back, and non-pretentious atmosphere with younger-gen worker bees and clientele mixed with wood-trim decor, a bar, and TVs in the background.
It wasn't at all deserted, and though not necessarily packed, was fairly full with people, and looked to be a well-known neighborhood hangout, and I thought that this was a good sign.
The menu was fairly descriptive, and made me want to order everything on the menu. It consists of your typical bar-food, but all changed-up with their own special twist.
They had something called the "Big Freakin' Nacho" (lightly fried chips topped with mozarella, sausage, olives, and peppers) and upon advice from my colleague, went with the half order (at $7.49) since I heard that they mean business when they say, "big." I ordered this with EXTRA cheese.
I also went with the Costa Rican Cesar. My colleagues ordered other items such as the wings, pizza nuggets, the burger, etc.
The service -
Our waitress was pleasant, took our drink and food order, and all-in-all, the service was relatively quick considering the decent size of our party of 8. She was pretty attentive the whole entire time!
On to the food -
The salad was fairly good, and was a good portion. People can screw up salad, yet what I got was what I'd expect from a place of this genre.
I ordered my nachos with extra cheese, yet they were pretty far from cheesy. In fact, I kind of think that it's the cheese that is the GLUE that holds it together in nachos, so with every bite, I either had nothing but "chip", or I had stuff rolling off of it.
Note that I didn NOT complain or send it back because even for a "half" portion, it still came out on a pizza tray full of chips, and I pretty much felt like (if I complained), all they were gonna do was just add the cheese and heat up the platter of chips again, which would've made them stale...
Other than this one thing though, the taste formula is pretty right-on, the chips tasted like they were fried in-house, and as the menu described, they tasted light. They could've been so much better though with that extra cheese it needed.
I tried the Pizza Nuggets, and they were good - tasted like pizza sauce and cheese slathered on soft bread. The wings were just so-so (good, but not quite good enough to give me that wow factor).
If I could I'd give this place 3.5 stars; they'd be a 4-star if they somehow stepped up the quality just a tad-bit -
...they seem to have the right formula going, and their food is unique enough; good enough taste-wise, and large enough portion-wise, yet, in my humble opinion, they need to step it up to make that difference between the thought of "food just being thrown together" vs. really going for that wow factor.
...I'd most-definitely come here agian, though.
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