You know those streets in cities that seem to go on forever? Culver Road is that street in Rochester. It starts at Lake Ontario after Lake Road ends and runs all the way to Monroe Avenue. It seems that just about anyone that lives in this part of the city is central to Culver Road, that's what last nights theme was--Culver Road centric decisions.

Everyone that joined our group last night lives off of Culver Road and all of the establishments that were on our "maybe" list were off of Culver Road, first stop L&M Lanes. L&M Lanes is great, it's like that awesome bar/bowling alley you always imagined in your grandparents house when you were little. There are 5 lanes to bowl on and the games are super cheap. The beer selection and the wings are fantastic and reasonably priced. I enjoyed an Anchor Steam on draft, the rest of our group had the following (on draft):

Phin & Matt's
HopDevil
McSorleys

We only stayed for one drink at L&M Lanes because our purpose was a bit of food... since there are so many places to move on to from here we started tossing out our options before we even finished our first pint. Our choices were Johnny's Irish Pub, Merchants Grill, Winfield Grill, Wintonaire, and Jeremiah's. Jeremiah's was quickly out of the running because (although it's off of Culver Road) it's not walking distance and the parking is always tough. Since we were already parked we chose Johnny's Irish Pub.

We walked from L&M Lanes across the parking lot to Johnny's Irish Pub. Before the no smoking laws came into effect, Johnny's Irish Pub was called Johnny's Smoke Free Pub. Yes, there was a pub that was smoke free!! I can't even imagine smoking in pubs anymore, but every time I go to Johnny's it reminds me... I digress...

We walked into an empty bar (5 deep) and chose our spots directly at the corner of the bar, in front of the stage (where a musical duo group was setting up), and helped ourselves to some fresh bar popcorn. Next up, ordering a drink. The selection isn't bad, but it's certainly not as extensive as L&M Lanes or so many other places in the city... I ordered a Brooklyn IPA and the rest of the group ordered the following:

Rohrbach's Vanilla Porter
Smithwicks
McSorleys

We decided this would be our final destination (close to home, decent menu, and lots of room to spread out), so we settled in and decided to order some food.

From our group we started with an order of wings and an order of pepperoni bread. We weren't quite sure you could do wings poorly in Rochester, but evidently you can and they did. I will say nothing more about them other than don't order wings there. The pepperoni bread was deliciously doughy with a lot of pepperoni baked in. After the wing disappointment we decided a second order of peperoni bread would be best. AND of course another bowl of pub popcorn and another pint.

I stuck with the Brooklyn all night and everyone else was pretty standard too.. there wasn't too many choices to go crazy with so it wasn't a whole group of us saying "can I taste your beer" or tweeting/recording our choices. Sometimes that's a nice thing. Not that I don't love keeping track and tasting/trying, but it can sometimes distract from the experience that is an evening at the local pub with some friends.

I guess If I could bring this entire rambling blog post to a close it would be this, I love the closeness that IS Rochester, NY and I especially like all of the friends (new and old) that I have in my life to share all of these mundane/interesting/exciting/boring days with.