Fat Squirrel Pub and Grille

One of my friends wanted us to make the drive to Rio Rancho to try the grub at a bar close to his place on a Sunday night to catch the game. I was reluctant to head out there, but I decided why not. The Fat Squirrel is located off of Southern Blvd in the location that the Turtle Mountain Brewery used to occupy. The building under went a hefty remodel prior to opening as Fat Squirrel. They have a nice patio area to accommodate smokers. The floor is a finished concrete and the bar is a dark polished rock of some sort. They installed some see through garage doors. I think this is for when the weather is warm they will have in/out door dining. The bath room is nice, but I hated that it did not have divider walls for the urinals. I thought the facet in the bath rooms were very classy: they were a dark copper, fountain style that was offset to the side. They have a lot of very nice TVs around with a multitude of channels. Overall the appearance of the bar is great.

We arrived a few minutes after our friends do and it is not too busy. There are about thirty customers in the entire restaurant and at least six servers, not including the bar tender. My friend and I wait at least ten minutes before our server comes over and acknowledge our existence. At this point the server is not too friendly. It appears that we are burdening him to eat and drink where he works. I order a round for the table and this turns out to be as complicated as quantum physics for our server. I ask him for four beers, Boddingtons, on my tab to celebrate an announcement a friend of mine made. I explained to the server that I was buying a round to celebrate and he did not get this concept. After a long wait at a slow bar, he returns with two beers. I then ask him where the other two were. After a long explanation/discussion and an additional wait we finally get all the drinks. I then ask what I owe for the round and he said sixteen dollars. I give him a twenty dollar bill and then he puts me on the spot and says do you want change. I say no and end up tipping 25% to a waiter that deserved no tip for that round. After a few sips I notice that my glass has a long crack in the glass. Our lackluster server did fix the problem, but only after a fair wait. I did get up at one point to take care of my table needs due to the bad service. The staff did not question what I was doing working, but they were rude that I was in their station. I should have gotten a tip for working, but oh well. All this occurred while the owner is sitting there paying her bills.

The menu here is one of an Irish pub with the bangers and mash, fish and chips, and Sheppard's pie. Our server's knowledge of the menu was bad. He could not answer too many questions about how the food was prepared or what it was. I ordered a banger a la carte and a hamburger with a side salad. The banger was OK, but our server had no clue about the sausage. The burger was great. It was properly cooked and the whole was greater than the sum of the great ingredients. The server had no clue about the lettuce when I asked about the salad and the owner noticed to correct him. I tried the fries from the fish and chips that my friend ordered and his fries were great, crispy while thick. The nachos were good, but nachos are hard to mess up. The beer selection here is good. They do have a glut of marginal beers that I am surprised to see in a bar like the Shocktop, Red Hook Long Hammer, and Land Shark. They do have some good and rare beers though. One rare beer they had was a Scottish lager that I have never had or seen, Tennents lager. They do carry some of the Turtle Mountain beer which good to see, it's great to see a local business support another, in addition to just being a great local brewery. We're pretty hungry that night so we order an additional plate of fries. The second batch is not even close to the quality of the first batch that came with the fish and chips. We send them back and the second attempt is better, but not as good as the first batch.

So the bright side of Fat Squirrel, is that it is a nice bar in Rio Rancho that carries a good selection of beer that serves food that is pretty good, but inconsistent. The menu makes an attempt at being like Two Fools Tavern's menu. The attempt is a fairly good attempt. The service is bad. Not the worse that I have ever had, but it's bad. Don't bother the waiter to eat and drink there, heaven forbid he do his job. I would give Fat Squirrel a rating of one and a half stars out of five.


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