Focus – Quincy Center – Blue 22 Bar & Grille

Last time I was at Blue 22 Bar & Grille in Quincy Center I noticed that they had homemade Asian potsticker style dumplings. I did not get them that night but promised that I would be back. 

So, last Thursday, we made the return trip to the funky little sports bar to have a closer look. We were not just looking for the dumplings or for their collection of rubber duckies on the wall, but to discover what the place was all about.

 Blue 22 is relatively small for a restaurant, seating about 80 patrons at full capacity though it could probably hold twice that during a crowded bar night, as we were led to believe happens from time to time. They have a square bar that dominates their floor and nine large Vizio flat screen televisions that circle the restaurant along with banners of the four major Boston sports teams each listing the championship years of each squad.

The highlight of the bar are the rubber ducks.

The ducks are not something that was planned. They are brought in by regulars  and just showed up  day (according to various sources) during Christmas time one year and took up permanent residence. They are often stolen only to be replaced with more. Au said the ducks stem from the name of the restaurant, 22, which in poker parlance is the equivalent of a pair of twos or “ducks.”

“We definitely have a following,” Au said of the contributions, which includes a signed box of Flutie Flakes that sits next to the ducks, “people like to interact with the owners.”

 The crowd was a fair mix between younger students and older professionals, a variety that one of the owners, Peter Au, said is fairly common.

“We get a good range of people,” Au said. “It is mostly a young professional crowd in their 20s and 30s. It ranges depending on the day.”

The bar and the menu at Blue 22 do not try to dazzle, preferring to stay within in the realm of pub grub “with an Asian flair,” Au said. The six beers on tap are what you might find at any sports bar in the city: Guinness, Bud Light, Harpoon IPA, Blue Moon, Sam Adams Lager and Sam Summer. Serviceable but not exactly inspiring.

I felt the same way about the dumplings, pan fried with a ginger ponzu dipping sauce. The scallion garnish was a looked a little old and wilted, a sign that they have spent too much time in a ninth pan in the kitchen. They were fried just about right but the insides were not set up quite as tight as I like in my dumplings, more mushy than chewy.

Admittedly, I need to spend more time with their menu to give a full evaluation, but my inkling is that the dumplings do not fall far from the tree.

A spectacular beer list and stunning menu are not necessary for Blue 22. They are sports bar and they are having fun. Through the week they have theme nights, from Trivia Wednesday, Karaoke Thursday, bands and DJs during the weekend and a rumored poker night (though currently on hold, according to Au) on Sunday. They try to mix it up as “we don’t want to get locked into anything,” Au said. Board games such as Scattergories and Boggle line the walls in case any patrons want to unleash their competitive juices. 

“It’s a fun place to be,” Au said. “It’s a hang out spot for us and our friends.”

Mama Duck, with her cute little hat, is a testament to that. Next time I come back to Quincy Center I will make sure that I bring her a companion.

Check out Blue 22 online.

On the Line – Quincy Center

It has been a great week to travel around Boston. Spring has finally come in full force with pleasant days and (more importantly) warm evenings. We decided to get out of the city and go South to Quincy Center to see what we could find.

So, we got on the T during the evening rush (standing room only cars) and arrived in Quincy Center around 7:00 p.m. Much to our surprise, everybody else on the T was getting off at that stop as well, crowding the platform and the escalator on their way out to their cars in the adjacent parking lot and to the streets of one the hippest little district in the metro area.

A quick right out of the station brings you to Quincy Town Hall with a tree-lined park. There is a statue of one of my favorite founding fathers, John Adams, to welcome all to the town that bears his son’s name.

As a history nut, one of my favorite things to find are old Revolutionary Era cemeteries and was delighted to find, not two minutes from the station, Hancock Cemetery. The arch above the entrance gate proclaims “The Mortal Shall Put on Mortality.” The cemetery is the final resting place for the men of Quincy in the American Revolution as well as John Quincy Adams. A little morbid but otherwise fascinating.

After a quick stroll through the cemetery (my companion was a little creeped out) we wandered into the cluttered bar/restaurant district. The Granite Trust building dominates the square (“An Old Bank With A Young Spirit” printed on the ground at the entrance) and the road splits. We took a left, mostly because we saw a hopping little restaurant called The Fat Cat.

Apparently, this is the place to eat in Quincy. The place was bursting at the seams, we could not even make it in the door. A return visit will be in order to see what all the fuss is about.

So, we turned back down the street, passed Sully’s bar and turned the corner where we found a local, a middle-aged man named Fred. He gave us a quick rundown of the area.

“Bunch of great places around here. Good food at Fat Cat. Sully’s is for the old guys, Tully’s is a little shady,” Fred said. He was headed to the bar next to Tully’s called The Granite Rail. “Stay out of Tully’s or you will get kicked out of the Rail. They can tell if you’ve been there.”

Seemed like some good advice.

We continued our trek around the main drag and were astonished to find that there is a bar or restaurant every ten steps in Quincy Center. A fair amount of Irish Pubs (Finnian’s, Clash of the Ash) and ethic (Fuji 1546, Terra Brasili’s) eateries mixed with an inordinate amount of hair and nail salons and a couple boutiques.

The further went from the T station though, the more we noticed that the falling economy has hit Quincy just as hard as everybody else. It is a town that reached the saturation point of bars and fine restaurants which means that interspersed with the hopping establishments are the closed, empty shells of former brethren. Among the victims we found were Elegante Boutique, Trattoria Alba, Tusos Pizza Euro Cafe and The Holy Ground.

We looked for a place for a pint and an appetizer and eventually found our way to a funky little bar called Blue 22 Bar and Grille, which we will focus on in another post.