You've Never Been To Ray's Steel City Saloon?

For that matter, I've never written about it?!

Ray's Steel City Saloon is probably one of the best, underrated restaurants in town. It's located on John Knox Rd. across from the Tallahassee Mall, where the Godfather's Pizza and later Los Compadres used to be, if you've been in town long enough to remember. Ray is a Tallahassee native who moved to Pittsburg, PA for a while where he opened "Ray's Marlin Beach Bar & Grill", which was a successful business until he sold it to get out of snowsville. So he left the crappy cold for crappy humidity (we love Tally!) and came back here to open up Ray's Steel City Saloon, now inverting his original idea of bringing a taste of Florida to the north, he's instead bringing Pittsburg to Florida.

What's that mean? Well... it's American food, and a mish-mash of lots of other stuff. You can get good ol' greasy comfort foods like fish and chips, burgers, and the trademark "Trucker's Jumbo", a sandwich that has the meat, cole slaw, and fries ALL in the sandwich, which is a lot more delicious than it sounds. There's home cooked meals like the stuffed meatloaf, which has mashed potatoes inside the meatloaf with even more mashed potatoes on the side. There's some health conscious options too, plenty of wraps, and a surprising number of vegetarian options including a bean burger. It goes on and on, pretty big menu. Plus, Ray makes all his own salad dressings, french fries, horseradish, and onion rings from scratch, in-house. As in, he starts with raw potatoes to make the fries. And you can taste it, even the fried stuff tastes cleaner, lighter, and more naturally flavorful.

It doesn't stop there, Ray's has a full liquor bar, several domstic beers, and a ridiculous selection of imported beers, a total of over 110 beers. Most of them are in bottles, though his is the only place I've ever seen Frambois Lambic on tap, which I don't think even Leon Pub carries on tap, and that place is the King of Tallahassee Beer Taps. The restaurant has a small bar area, and is open until 10 or 11 every night, and later on weekends, they just wait 'til business slows down. But if you want to stay late, they've recently opened a lounge in the basement that's open considerably later, probably until 2am, where you still have access to the entire liquor and beer selection from upstairs. Some of the stuff that's rarely ordered for beer isn't brought down to the basement, but if you let them know before they close the restaurant portion that you intend to drink something special, they'll run up and stash a few for you downstairs. More over, there's free darts, free pool, and free foozball down there, with lots of seating, and it's broken into two major areas. Not many people go there, figuring it's a restaurant, so it's a nice, quiet, private area to take a few friends for drinks and darts, there's no competition for boards or tables. Best of all, around 11:30 every night, they bring a catering plate down there with free chicken fingers, chips and salsa, and some other finger foods, but you better be there right when it's delivered... you'd be amazed how fast 9 people can eat a catering pan full of free fried chicken.

Recently Ray's has been running a special for "Theme Cuisine Nights" for the last several months, where each week he cooks up stuff from a different country. There were schedules posted, but as of this post, there's only 2 weeks left in the special, but I've heard a rumor that he's considering a "best of" week once a month in the future where he'll serve cuisine from the best themes they had. I certainly hope so because I'll tell ya, he had Indian food, German food, Thai food, Yiddish food, Carribean, French, good ol' Southern cookin', and plenty of others, and wow... I was amazed almost every week. I was stunned that he could almost do no wrong, I figured he'd be way out of his realm of expertise each week, but no. He gave pretty much every specialty restaurant in town a run for their money, and covered several countries that aren't well represented here, like German and Yiddish. I mean, where am I gonna find a good matzah ball in this town? And yet he made an amazing soup! It got to a point where I was wishing he'd just open 12 new restaurants and have each one cook the same things he made each different week that this special ran.

But when you're not going there for an exotic special food, here's a list of their regular appetizers and entrees that you should DEFINITELY try out and why:

-"Konk" Chowder: Just get the "cup", it'll be huge. It's spectacular and spicy like gumbo.
-Artichoke/Spinach Dip: Get it just for the homemade fried pita chips. The dip is good to boot.
-Pierogies: When you can't eat a lot, this is a great meal to itself.
-Coconut Grove Shrimp: Same deal, also amazing.

-Trucker's Jumbo: Again, sounds intimidating, but seriously you should try it.
-"Jacked Up" Stuffed Meatloaf: Unique and delicious.
-Yenta Yacht Club: Typical club if you're not adventurous, still wonderful.
-Chicken Pot Pie: Fire your mother. Hire Ray.
-The Cod-Father: Fried fish filet sandwich that is to DIE for, same beer-batter as the onion rings, incredible.

Ray's prices are ok, dinners run about $13-23, lunches are a bit pricey for lunch at about $10-12 with a soda (still fair, just compare that to say, a McDonald's run at $6). Lately with the economy down, he's been offering some nice specials including smaller portions for smaller prices which are great deals considering the very high quality of the food, and they're only $7 including the drink!

The Bottom Line: Ray's Steel City Saloon is a good, well-rounded, family restaurant that also has a small bar, without that "sports bar" feel to it. The food is very high quality, the prices are good for what you're getting, and there's something for everyone there. Support your local non-chain restaurants and Tallahassee Natives by eating at Ray's! (Also a good hole-in-the-wall to hang out for a late night drink!)

To learn more, visit Ray's at http://www.rayssteelcity.com/ but really, just go there in person, I promise you'll love it.