Lynnwood Grill has 26 beers on tap and the same number of flat-screen, high definition televisions throughout its interior and on its rooftop bar. It’s definitely a sports bar, but it’s a sports bar with more class than most.
Black-and-white photographs hang on the wall and at the front of the restaurant. Also, one of the only surviving pieces of the Raleigh Primitive Baptist church, an old, arched wooden window, separates the dining tables from the waiting area.
Raleigh Primitive Baptist church predates the 1850s, and was, as it says on a sign in the restaurant, “considered Raleigh’s first African American congregation.”
The grill seems to embrace the Raleigh of the past and present, adding a few old-timey decorations around the flashing screens.
The Raleigh economy and brewing scene is also incorporated into the decorations – a sign made of light bulbs spells out “Beer” over one of the walls, which is made of glass. Behind the window is the restaurant’s microbrewery, in full view for patrons, which provides a list of mainstay brews and seasonal picks for clients.
After all this effort, the atmosphere is lively but relaxed: It’s a great place to get dinner with friends, especially if half of them are interested in the game and half of them really just want to go somewhere for a good meal and conversation with friends.
The food also embraces the restaurant’s duality. Not only is the traditional sports bar cuisine readily available, but there have also been some creative license taken with the menu.
For example, the sports-bar style food is abundant. Not only are good-quality classic hamburgers and pizza offered, but an array of special varieties of each is also on the menu. When I went, one of my friends ordered a combination of the two — the pizza burger — which he enthusiastically described as the two foods’ love-child.
The freshness of the ingredients also stood out. For instance, the grill serves their burgers on fresh Kaiser Rolls, and their Western style burger was served with crisp onion straws and a tasty chipotle barbeque sauce.
Or, if you’d just like some drinks and appetizers while you watch a football game, they’ve got you covered there too, with traditional southern snacks like pickle chips, or their own take on game-day food, the dirty chips, which are greasy, home-made chips covered in garlic butter and parmesan.
I was looking for something less greasy and found that it wasn’t hard to find wraps, salads, or sandwiches, though this wasn’t the restaurant’s forte. Still, there were a good number of healthier options to choose from.
The staff, in particular, was amazing. They were willing to recommend favorites and were friendly and personable. I particularly liked that there were signs offering to call you a taxi on the bathroom doors, in case a few of the clients finished their meals too full to drive.
Even though I’m not a sports fan, I appreciated the Lynnwood Grill as a restaurant and as a bar.
Lynnwood Grill, located in Raleigh, recently opened its own brewery that can be seen from inside the restaurant. It also features craft beers from throughout North Carolina.
