116 W. Main StreetI told you there were going to be more St. Joseph County blog posts coming soon. My in-laws bought a lake house near Centreville and J and the kids have spent a lot of weekends out there while I work.
Last Saturday, I worked late Friday night so everyone else went to Nana and Grandpa’s. Saturday morning, I decided to drive that way and meet everyone for lunch at Nana and Grandpa’s new favorite restaurant.
The Local is something that is totally unexpected in a small town like Centreville. The restaurant is on Main Street across from the courthouse in the center of town. The space has a pretty long history of being a bar, it was Round Up Grill & Bar before, but it was never a bar like this.
There are a couple options for parking. I chose to park on the street along the front of the building because I didn’t know there was a parking lot behind the row of buildings off of Dean Street. My father-in-law went that way so I walked around to meet everyone. There is an entrance from the back as well so it really doesn’t matter which side you park on.
The Local has very quickly become my in-laws go-to place. They used to frequent a place called Deja Brew when they lived in Oak Lawn and this has become their new “Brew.”
The back entrance comes into the bar area. There a nice, big, antique bar filled with craft beer taps and a wall of different spirits. What makes The Local so unique for a small town is the absolutely massive list of craft beer taps, bottles, and cans. There are 21 taps and hundreds of packaged beer options.
This back area of the restaurant has the typical bar games as well. There are a couple of pool tables and a jukebox.
There’s also a Ghostbusters pinball machine which my son couldn’t wait to show me. I had been hearing about this “scary” game for a couple weeks since they had eaten at The Local with Nana and Grandpa at least once already. Each of the kids had a couple of dollars to play and I think we matched (won) three or four games so we played quite a while as we were waiting for our food.
The rest of the space is used for the restaurant side of the business. The building has clearly been in downtown Centreville for quite some time and they take advantage of the distressed hardwood floors and mismatched exposed brick on the walls to set the theme for the decor. The tables and chairs are typical, cheap pub furniture that looks like it was probably left over from the previous occupants of the building.
We took a large table near the bar area where I noticed something else pretty cool. I see all the time on their Facebook page they sell rare bottles of beer…heck, I even got another bottle of 2017 CBS recently, but in addition to that, they sell bottles in a little retail area as well. They have a number of ciders from Corey Lake Orchards just outside of Three Rivers and this is one of the few places you can get it.
The beer list can actually be pretty intimidating when you first sit down. It’s several pages and organized by style, not by brewery. I sort of skimmed through it but a poster on the wall caught my eye and I went that way instead.
I chose the Filthy Pumpkin from New Holland. This is a 50/50 split of their pumpkin beer Ichabod and Dragon’s Milk. I picked the pint but there are four different sizes to choose from. The pumpkin was still the real dominant flavor in the beer but the Dragon’s Milk made it much smoother. A delicious, sippable beer.
J chose a bottle from Corey Lake Orchards. There were a couple on the menu but the one she hadn’t had yet was the Blueberry Hard Cider. Corey Lake is pretty new to us but J has been slowly trying them out whenever she goes to The Local with her mom.
The food menu is just as good as their beer menu. This is not the typical Sysco pub food.
I chose the Eggscellent Burger. The sandwich is a seven ounce beef patty with a fried egg, bacon, and cheddar cheese on a toasted bun. The burger was as good as it sounds. The yolk on the egg was slightly runny and the patty was slightly pink in the middle. I upgraded my side to the “Mess Fries.” The sea salt brined, skin-on fries come covered in a creamy, delicious house made pub cheese sauce.
J ordered the Loaded Nachos. This large plate contains house fried tortilla chips, onions, peppers, cheddar cheese, pepperjack cheese, black beans, ground beef, ground chicken, jalapenos, lettuce, tomato and queso plus guacamole, sour cream, and salsa on the side. She got the regular order and it was still more than she could finish on her own. The inclusion of both ground beef and chicken made these nachos something unique and the inclusion of home made tortilla chips instead of mass produced ones make so much of a difference.
There is a pretty decent kid’s menu that includes a lot of things my kids will eat but L wanted something else.
She ordered a salad…and not a side salad or a kid’s size salad, she went for the full plate. Toppings aren’t really her thing yet so this simple salad was iceberg lettuce, cheese, and cucumbers with ranch dressing. We questioned her getting such a big salad but she ate the whole plate. It’s the one thing we can really get her to eat at restaurants anymore so we don’t argue when that’s all she wants to eat.
B still orders off the kid’s menu and he chose the Grilled Cheese and Fries. The simple, yet delicious plate is cheddar cheese between toasted white bread. Unfortunately, B was being B and he didn’t eat more than a couple of bites. I took a few bites and also stole some of his fries but once again, we wasted more than we ate with him.
The cost for lunch was a little over $80 for the six of us. The Local is an amazing restaurant. My in-laws have already made this their go-to for dinner or drinks and spend a couple nights a week there. I’ve been looking forward to trying out this place for a while. I know we’ll be spending more time in St. Joe County moving forward and I know this will become a staple when dinner time rolls around.