Sam's Uptown Cafe

It's gotten better with new management, I would like to tip my hat to the quality of the bar food, it's stepped way up!

With the exception of weekday lunch service, Sam's is a bar first and restaurant second. However, it's a pretty good bar (and the food's okay, too).

The bar has the standard mix of medium and top-shelf liquors and a half-dozen taps, along with Jaeger and Fireball dispensers. The draft selection varies but there's usually a couple of craft or craft-ish beers to choose from and a decent, but not overwhelming, bottle/can array. Prices are standard issue for the area: $3 for a Pabst tall boy to $6 for a glass of craft. Service is pretty efficient, mostly attentive, and friendly.

The menu is mostly sandwiches and deep-fried bar food. The signature item is the Samburger, a half-sausage half-beef hamburger that's solid. The wings are also worth checking out. Most of the sides come out of a bag (does any place really make its own jalapeno popper?) but for a bar, it's not bad. Also, and this is pretty important, the kitchen stays open LATE. If Sam's is serving alcohol, it's also serving food. The pre-cut fries taste a lot better at 1:00 a.m.

There's also live music on the second floor most weekends and some week nights, with a decent sound system and reasonable cover charges. And it's also a regular meeting place for several social groups, like book clubs and beer appreciation groups. All-in-all, Sam's is a place worth going.

I used to go here ALL the time a handful of years ago but stopped after some of the staff moved over to the Tavern. I recently went back for wings (which were always my favorite), and they were dynamite. The Tavern gets their food from Sam's now, so I order wings every time I go there, too. Sam's is usually pretty empty these days, so sitting at the bar can feel kind of awkward. Still, the wings... Ah, the wings.