B-Spot (east) is becoming one of our favorite places. Great bar food, beer selection and awesome milkshakes, very reasonable prices, hip casual bar vibe. Wish it was a bit larger to accomadate the clientele, but no complaints otherwise.
This was our second trip. We had a great lunch there a month or so ago. With an hour wait quoted (ca. 7p on a fall Friday), we sat right at the bar instead and ordered quickly. I'm sure the wait wouldn't have been as long.
The bar seating was a bit tight but worth the trade off. (If you don't get a seat inside, there's some fun picnic table patio seating in season, or you're forced to sit just outside the restaurant in the Eaton shopping center indoors, sort of like an indoor patio...not ideal but quieter than the restaurant.)
My wife was in the mood for a brat, so she got the night's special ($6) - a large, juicy brat served open-faced on a bakery sausage roll with a warm topping mixture of cabbage & noodles, apples and bacon, drizzled with house-made horseradish. She added a side of his famous Lola fries ($4), a cup of shoestring fries seasoned with rosemary and sea salt.
I got a cheeseburger ($7) with provalone, lettuce, tomato and red onion (they had a wide variety of cheeses to choose from). There were plenty of great-sounding gourmet burger options, but the pickle bar and the variety of 6 house-made condiments were more than enough to satisfy my taste buds. The burger was top-quality, reasonable size (large but not insane), cooked exactly to spec, and served on a bakery kaiser roll.
I ordered a side of the onion rings ($5), a large basket which was more than enough to share - thick cut, batter-dipped, golden brown. The waitress confessed this was one of the few items not made in-house (I'm guessing Gus'?).
I had a draft beer (Great Lakes Nosferatu, $5 pint) from there extensive beer list - tons of drafts and cans/bottles, mostly crafts and imports. They seemed to have a large wine and liquor selection as well.
For dessert, we ordered his famous milk shakes (to go). My wife got a root beer float ($5), which included generous scoop of Mitchell's ice cream.
I got his signature Vanilla Bean Apple Pie Bacon shake ($5), awesome on so many levels! I couldn't finish mine, even a few hours after my meal...but tried anyway. Great vanilla bean icecream with generous amounts of what seemed like apple pie put through a fod processor with bits of fresh cooked bacon too. Salty/sweet, gotta try it. (Last time we shared a chocolate banana marshmallow shake which was great too!) The to-go size was large but managable, while the eat-in shakes are large enough to share.
All in all, for $40 plus tip, we had way too much food just the way we liked it and we were in and out in about 40 minutes on a friday night. Had we scaled back on the food a bit we could have easily been stuffed for $25-30, a real feat in that area.
We can't wait to go back. Nothing about B-Spot or Michael Symon is overrated in our opinion, at least not at the time of this writing. I hope his new Strongsville location lives up his eastside status.