Taking the kids to the bar

Think that a sports bar is reserved for drinks after work or watching the big game with the guys in a loud, smoky, testosterone-charged den with cheap beer on tap and greasy food slung out of the kitchen? Well, longtime restaurateur Debbie Taylor would have something to say about that. She’d tell you her new restaurant Dookz on 96th Street is not only appropriate for the kids — it’s a place where they’ll have just as much fun as the adults.

This black and bleu burger ($6.95) was a meaty mound of that local beef, dry-aged angus in fact, with plenty of tangy bleu cheese on the same artful bun.

What makes Dookz so different, besides the cutesy name? A mother herself, Taylor has taken her nearly 20 years of experience in restaurants and turned that into a bright, spacious strip-mall bar and grill with plenty of games, memorabilia and a dizzying number of TV screens to keep the little tykes entertained while the adults can enjoy a decent meal for once. They claim to have the largest single-panel TV in any area restaurant. Whether that’s true or not, the screen on the east wall is, indeed, big. Come here when you can’t get tickets to the game, and you’ll almost feel like you’re there with the crowd.

As with any sports bar, Dookz is an homage to Taylor’s love of all things sports. She was an athlete herself, running track at Butler and Franklin College. College banners hang from the rafters, and cardboard cutouts of such local sports idols as Peyton Manning make this a sports lover’s paradise. Signs up around the place announce video bowling tournaments and special times to watch Sunday football. With a life-like boxing ring set up in the corner, you might think “Dookz” refers to the old phrase “put up your dukes.” But it’s actually an alternative spelling of the Taylor family dog, Duke. It’s a name that, once heard, is hard to forget.

Unlike most sports bars, however, Dookz is hardly a shadowy, cramped shrine to deep frying. Taylor made her place smoke-free ahead of the local ban in places serving guests under 18, and it makes a big difference in the quality of dining experience. Taylor also peppered her menu with some surprising twists on pub food, an impressive kids’ menu and burgers made from hormone- and antibiotic-free beef produced by Jasper, Ind.’s Fisher Farms. Do most pub kitchens have any idea where their meat comes from?

The staff is also more fresh-faced and cheery than you might expect at a sports bar. At lunch on a Friday, service was swift and friendly, though without any desire to rush us. While sports and news played on every screen, the noise level was such that we could actually carry on a conversation without raising our voices.

From the lengthy menu, we chose the Thai chicken on a stick ($5.75) for an appetizer. A modest portion of two skewers, each with three small nuggets of chicken, came on a bed of tepid onion rings. The chicken was coated in a wonderfully aromatic glaze, and a peanut sauce was rich with a nice undertone of ginger. The onion rings needed perhaps a different sauce, and they could have been crisper. As a garnish, however, they were a nice surprise. A Dookz house salad ($3.50) was mostly iceberg, but tomatoes were deep red, cucumbers crunchy and a house-made soy vinaigrette light and flavorful.

Sandwiches dominate the menu, and we ordered accordingly. The salmon sandwich ($7.95) came with a fairly meager square of salmon, but the salmon was perfectly grilled, and an upscale bun with lettuce and tomato made this a healthy and tasty, if quite straightforward, lunch. A side of garlic mashed potatoes ($2) were rustic and hearty with lots of nice lumps of real potatoes and bits of peel.

At the other end of the spectrum, the black and bleu burger ($6.95) was a meaty mound of that local beef, dry-aged angus in fact, with plenty of tangy bleu cheese on the same artful bun. Fries on the side were quite golden with a sort of creamy texture inside. Only an added accompaniment of macaroni and cheese ($3.25), also on the kids’ menu, disappointed. While there was evidence of real cheese, it was a bit sparse, and bare noodles up top showed no evidence of having been baked. Perhaps this one had too much of a kid’s taste in mind.

Though we were stuffed to the gills, our waitress said a new batch of chocolate chip cookies had just come out of the oven, so she brought us two to try. These were so gooey they were almost underdone, but they had plenty of warm chocolate chips to keep us from caring. The kid-friendly atmosphere and the strip-mall locale made us wonder if we’d come back for drinks at night, but for lunch, this was a refreshing alternative to all the chains and dimly lit pubs we could spy on our way home.