For many people, when they hear they’re going to a restaurant in a strip mall, it’s hard to associate those twisted smiles of endless Creative Curriculums, Verizon stores and Subways with anything other than diminished expectations and a prefab America at its most disposable. That being said, some of the best meals I’ve ever had were at nondescript-looking restaurants located in unassuming strip malls. So often — almost unilaterally — reputation and reality don’t align, which is a shame for anyone not willing to take the chance.
I learned that lesson 15 years ago when Spunkmeyer’s Pub first opened in Wadsworth’s Drug Mart Plaza. I resisted. I relented. It was awesome. And this stands as the single lesson I learned once and never needed to relearn. I make rash and snap judgments on everything. People. Religions. Innocuous social trends. But never strip-mall restaurants.
Alternating between Blue Moon and Land Shark, I sat and spoke with manager Diane Crowley, who possesses an air of steely calm that only comes from having seen it all. She’s been with Spunkmeyer’s from the beginning. If there are bodies, she knows where they’re buried.
How does a pub that looks like nothing from the outside and spends next to nothing on advertising thrive for a decade and a half? Word of mouth gets them through the front door, according to Crowley, and then staff and food keeps then coming back.
“Once they’re here, they seem to stay,” she said, speaking of both staff and patrons. “Customers like seeing familiar faces when they come through the door.” And vice versa.
Where many bar-and-grilles fall short is in trying to be all things to all people all of the time, claiming to be both a family-friendly restaurant and a sense-dulling respite from a rough day and ultimately failing at both. Spunkmeyer’s circumvents that trap by focusing on one thing only.
“[Spunkmeyer’s] is a pub. It’s a bar. After 10, it’s not a place for kids,” said Crowley. “Applebee’s is a place for that.”
That clear-cut certainty keeps the regulars coming at Spunkmeyer’s — that, and food so good calling that it bar food would be an insult.
“My kitchen is Spunkmeyer’s,” said Crowley. “They do it quickly and they’re good at it.”
They have to be good at it. For years, a small kitchen staff toiled in tight quarters, making orders in an establishment where quality and service remains one of the best PR tools in its arsenal. Then, within the past year, Spunkmeyer’s opened an outdoor patio — a shaded multi-tiered deck complete with second bar — effectively doubling capacity without increasing kitchen size or staff.
On the good nights, they call themselves kitchen ninjas. On bad nights, kitchen bitches. On either night, they clockwork out food Guy Fieri would be bragging about on the Food Network if Spunkmeyer’s was located anywhere but in Wadsworth’s strip-mall wasteland.
Two standout sandwiches are the Spunkmeyer and the Burger Blaster. The Spunkmeyer is a thick-cut, fried garlic bologna sandwich topped with melted cheddar, an onion slice and honey mustard. The Burger Blaster is a pile of meat, provolone, barbecue sauce, coleslaw and fries, all of it just barely contained within two slices of grilled Italian bread. They’re the kinds of sandwiches you can’t maintain your dignity while eating, and if that matters to you, you’re in the wrong place.
For Crowley, not a day goes by where she doesn’t see a regular who’s been coming in since day one, or talk to a newcomer who says they’ve passed the Spunkmeyer’s sign twice a day for years and had no idea what was there. Before long, these newcomers become regulars themselves, served by a staff that counts their tenure in years rather than weeks.
For many, it’s a second family. One that doesn’t cry, nag or condemn you for not making enough money. A second family that, in your heart of hearts, while both you and your heart of hearts nurse a beer and something covered in melted cheese, makes you wonder what you ever needed with that first family in the first place. (Though admittedly, without them, Spunkmeyer’s wouldn’t be the escape it is.)
