Met a friend for dinner at
Cranker's Restaurant and Brewery on the south side of Grand Rapids recently. It's decent, but I've had better for a similar price.
The building for this Cranker's location looks more like a fast food joint than a sit-down pub, complete with drive-thru. (Probably it used to be exactly that.) An attempt has been made to upgrade the interior with wall decorations and a better class of booth-tables, but it still looks fairly low-class. The service was spotty, too. There weren't many customers, but our waitress was still slow to come by our table. Several of the things we asked about on the menu weren't available, and the food took quite a while to show up. Overall it just didn't seem very professional.
The good news is that both the beer and food were pretty good. I usually like dark beers, but on hot summer nights something a bit lighter is nice. So I had a Bulldog Red Irish Ale as a kind of compromise...not too dark and heavy, but still has some body to it. No complaints on the beer front, enjoyed my pint of the Bulldog.
My meal was a pulled pork bacon cheeseburger, which is just as huge as it sounds. In retrospect, probably three different meats on the same sandwich was overkill, but it certainly tasted good. It came with sweet potato fries, which were ok, although not on the same level as
the ones I had at Tip Top during my Origins trip. I wouldn't say the food is likely to win any awards, but it tasted fine and there certainly was enough of it.
I'm not sure I'd go back to this Cranker's location - it wasn't bad, exactly, just not as good as other places in the same price range. I might try one of the others if I'm in their area, though. Some of the other beers looked interesting and may be worth a try.
