Navigating rough waters at Maggie's on the River
The Watertown restaurant and bar that gained notoriety in the past as a brew pub is open once again.
Maggie's on the River opened earlier this month in the location formerly occupied by Black River Brewery and before that Red Lion Brewery. You may be more familiar with the restaurant because of the recent flap over its attached river-view deck owned by the city.
The building is an old warehouse, very obvious from the outside. Inside, the warehouse look continues with exposed ceiling beams and original brick walls — a kind of "urban hip" look and feel.
The first floor houses the main bar, a large room with the focus on beer — there are numerous brews on tap and lots of flat-screen TVs mounted on the walls. An equally large space is a game room with pool tables, electronic darts and other electronic games.
It was a 20-something crowd, military and young professionals having a good time, beer in one hand, cell phone in the other.
A hostess led us up to the second floor to a quieter dining area, where booths and tables afforded a great view of the churning Black River.
The menu generally mirrors the tastes of the crowd downstairs. Appetizers include the usual fries, wings, poppers and mozzarella sticks, as well as some that had to be produced in the kitchen like panko-crusted goat cheese, layered nachos and chicken satay.
The chicken satay ($5.99) consisted of four pieces of skewered chicken, lightly grilled and criss-crossed with lines of peanut sauce. The chicken was dry. Presentation was nil.
Asian-style spring rolls ($5.99) were a good commercial product, four of them diagonally cut and nicely presented over greens with a Thai sweet chili sauce.
Flatbreads are in vogue. They could be likened to a square pizza shell with light toppings. Maggie's flatbread varieties include buffalo chicken, steak, chicken pesto, pulled pork, margarita (tomato, basil and pesto) and our choice, prosciutto and arugula.
I hope the others are better than ours were. A nicely toasted commercial flatbread had a few pieces of prosciutto haphazardly thrown on top with a few shakes of Parmesan cheese. If there was any arugula on there, we missed it. And it was drier than dry. A drizzle of extra virgin olive oil would have been welcomed.
We tried a cup of New England clam chowder ($3.99), a brothy white stock with a synthetic seafood taste. It was a real challenge to find any clams and even any potatoes.
Our waitress was a lovely inexperienced young lady, overflowing with personality, with a thingamajiggy in her lip. Actually, we were so taken with her personality, the thingamajiggy seemed to disappear after a while. And after finding out her husband was a sniper with the U.S. Army, we were on our best behavior for the remainder of the night.
The waitstaff has these nifty hand-held computers that allow them to take your order and send it through cyberspace (or somehow) to the kitchen. Wouldn't you know, our waitress's computer crashed just as she was about to input our entrée order. She was semi-helpless without her little electronic friend, but did a pretty good job of faking her way through without it.
We asked if salads came with our dinners. "Sure ... well at least I think so." Salad dressings? "All the usual ones and some kind of brown stuff ... I think it's honey mustard."
As it turned out, the garden salads were one of the highlights of the evening — field greens along with crisp romaine, chopped fresh tomato and cucumber, sliced red and yellow peppers and rings (ringlets?) of red onion. Dressings were quite adequate, even the "brown stuff" that turned out to be something with a smoky barbecue taste.
The quality of the salad made us think about returning to try one of their specialty salads: spinach with dried fruit and almonds, iceberg wedge with homemade T.I. dressing, Caesar with shaved Parm and anchovy fillets, pear and pecan with blue cheese and balsamic vinaigrette.
Homemade meatloaf ($11.99) was loaded with herbs and spices and a balsamic glaze on top of the two generous pieces. It was barely lukewarm. We let our server know. She said she'd be sure to tell the kitchen so it wouldn't happen the next time.
A side of sautéed fresh veggies, mainly zucchini, was enjoyable. Garlic mashed potatoes were very standard.
Chicken Parmesan ($10.99) was good, a very large breaded breast placed over pasta and covered with a thick tomato sauce and melted mozzarella.
The same sauce was used with the "penne a la marinara." ($9.99). You can order it with chicken or vegetables or our choice, sausage. The sausage was excellent and I really liked the marinara.
Of course my Italian friend at the table had his own opinion: "My American friends make sauce like this — thick and pasty, like Ragu."
A reasonable portion (approximately 12 ounces) of blackened rib eye ($16.99) was grilled to our request of medium doneness. The blackening spices were a little hotter than we anticipated. We brought that to our waitress's attention, to which she astutely responded, "Well that's what Cajun is."
Right.
A side of cheese fries was simply deep-fried restaurant supply french fries served with a small stainless steel sauce cup of melted Cheez Whiz-like cheese.
There are some other interesting dinner choices, like chicken bacon Gorgonzola, pesto gnocchi, orange bourbon chicken, pulled pork and barbecued beef brisket. The only fish entrée we could find was beer-battered haddock.
Desserts ($5.99 each) come from a restaurant supplier. They were predictably perfect looking and overly sweet tasting. We ordered deep-dish apple pie, New York cheesecake and chocolate cheesecake (which arrived at the table as Reese's peanut butter pie). Darn computer ...
Dinner for four came to $111 before tip.
The bulk of the menu appears geared to the beer-drinking game-playing crowd on the main floor: appetizers/small plates, bone-in or boneless wings (with choice of 12 sauces), flatbread pizzas, soups and salads, burgers (15 varieties) and sandwiches. Affordable "meals" under $10.
Maggie's had been open only about 10 days when we visited. Understandably, they've still got a few kinks to work out. But it's great to have another restaurant choice in the city and in a classic old building that's part of Watertown's heritage.
You can contact restaurant reviewer Walter Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.
Maggie's on the River
500 Newell St.
Watertown, N.Y.
405-4239
HOURS: 11 a.m. to midnight Mondays through Wednesdays; 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays.
Dinner entrées include chicken, steak, barbecue and pasta dishes.
The bulk of the menu appears geared to the beer-drinking, game-playing crowd: appetizers/small plates, bone-in or boneless wings, flatbread pizzas, soups and salads, burgers and sandwiches.
RATING: 3 FORKS
