Dinner

Stacy and I and two friends had dinner at The Orchard Tavern in Albany, tonight. It's down a side road across the street from a bread and cake factory (Freihoffer's) in an otherwise working class residential neighborhood. It's all by itself and has been here for a hundred years. It has a fabulous 3 story tall 1940's vertical neon sign up the front of the building.

We sometimes go to The Orchard for a vodka grapefruit (aka Greyhound), or maybe a shot of tequila, and occasionally for an inexpensive dinner. We like the old booths in the bar rather than the dining room or the patio (a cement slab out the back with some tiki torches). It has a regular pub menu with dinner specials (corned beef and cabbage on Thursday nights, fish and chips on Friday.

It's specialty is its Pizza. Made in a rectangular pan and just the right volume for one and a half people. $4.75 before toppings. The Orchard's most disappointing food is the nachos. Some inedible Cheese-Whiz like substance poured over the top.

On a visit last year, we asked the bartender/owner, a jovial but no nonsense type with a belly, what a couple should do if they were going through a rough patch in their relationship. He leaned over the bar on his forearm, looked us both square in the eye and said, "Try harder."