#43 - Frankie's Sports Bar, Dallas, TX

Last week was OSU's spring break.  I was shocked my first year when I found out that OSU does not close campus at all during spring break...so basically unless you're a student or professor, you have to use vacation days...I call BS on that.  When I was at Maryland, we got 2 days off.  3 years ago the NCAA tournament started on St. Patty's Day, so I took the day off to watch games and drink green beer.  After that I just started taking Wednesday-Friday off, to give myself a long weekend.  This year I decided to go visit friends in Dallas rather than just sit on my couch. 

I drove down Thursday morning, and met my friend Jared for funtivities.  We met officially I think 3 years ago at our Association of Luxury Suite Directors (ALSD) conference.  We immediately hit it off, and have become great friends.  Even though we live just a couple hours apart, we don't see each other nearly as much as we should.  He did come to the OSU football game vs. Texas in 2011 and wrote a great article about our away game activities.  He had to work Thursday morning, but just for me, he got up and started working at 6am so he could play for the afternoon...and that's why I love him!

We met his friend Jack at Frankie's Sports Bar.  They've got 3 locations, and we went to the one downtown, on McKinney Ave.  It was packed when we arrived, with lots of guys in suits but just as many people just in casual wear.  Pretty sure the guys in suits were playing hooky for a while, watching opening day of the NCAA tourney.  Frankie's has tons of TV's, a great outdoor patio, and some lounge seating inside with big comfy couches. I can imagine that it's a great place to watch games all year long.  We actually looked at using Frankie's as our official party headquarters for the bowl game.  Jack had already ordered a bucket of beer, so although I'm not really a beer person, I decided to just go with it. 

I wanted to eat a healthy lunch...I really did.  However, Jared and Jack ordered 30 wings, and when they arrived, that completely ruined that plan.  I forgot to take a picture, but that's probably because my mouth was watering from the smell of the wings.  All the wings are named after football-related things.  They ordered the 49'ers (teriyaki), Lemon Julius Peppers (naked with mild & zesty lemon pepper spices), and I think Walter Payton's (spicy with a touch of "Sweetness").  The lemon pepper was my favorite after just one bite.  The spices were so delicious, and I didn't have wing sauce all over me. But don't get me wrong, the other wings were really good as well.  The wings are huge, very meaty, and according to the menu, never frozen.  Those are 3 huge plusses for me.  The only down side to the wings is when we got to the bottom, there was a puddle of grease down there.  I did, however, find a picture online

I'm a huge fan of fried pickles.  Probably my all-time favorite are the ones at Louie's, but I decided to give these a shot as well.  I did have to think about it for a little bit, because they are called "OU Fried Pickles".  They were good, but really salty...too salty in fact.  That did detract from the taste just a little, but not enough to make us stop eating them. 

The last thing we ordered were the Wisconsin Badger Balls, in honor of our ALSD friend Blair.  I did take a picture of these, because I wanted to send it to Blair.  But my phone wasn't cooperating (big surprise)

I like the fact that they were cheese curds, instead of cheese sticks.  I usually prefer breaded, but these were still really good.    And quite honestly they were the least greasy of all our items.

Would I go back?  Definitely!  I really want to try something a lot healthier on the menu, and I think it would be fun to  just go and spend a few happy hours there.

UPDATE:  The McKinney Ave location has closed, but the Fort Worth and Lewisville locations are still there.