The mushroom and Swiss burger at Sidelines Sports Bar is an honest, open-faced sandwich. (photo by Brian Clarey)
Who drives all the way out to the edge of high Point — practically Archdale, for cryin’ out loud — for a cheeseburger?
I do, my friends. I do. Especially after hearing the talk around the office about one burger in particular — a mushroom-Swiss burger served in, of all places, a bowling alley.
Yep, Sidelines Sports Grill lives inside the High Point Bowling Center — a brilliant idea, actually. If you can have a caf inside a movie theater, why not a sports bar inside a bowling alley?
The food at the bowling alley sucked when I was a kid, mostly fried stuff and whatever you could get from the vending machines, though that didn’t stop me from spending a careful fraction of my cash on it, devoting the rest to Space Invaders, Joust, Donkey Kong, Centipede and that tabletop football video game with a track-ball and the Xs and Os.
The bowling alley has changed over the years, apparently: automated scoring, better balls and, according to a YES! Weekly staffer, better food.
I hit Sidelines in the early afternoon, towards the tail end of the lunch rush. Aside from a small party out on the patio and a guy at a table near the video machines, the barmaid and I had the place to ourselves. Through tinted glass I could make out the figures of some bowlers out in the lanes, but the barroom seemed insulated from the usual crash of tenpins.
On the televisions flashed hockey highlights, a Boston Red Sox game, a rebroadcast of an old match-up between Southeast Missouri State University and the University of Texas at El Paso and Fox News. On the menu was the usual sports-bar fare: burgers and sandwiches, including a decent-looking Philly cheesesteak; chili, soups and salads; wings and nachos; pizza and quesadillas and a hybrid of both called a “pizzadilla.” The beer of the day was a light domestic.
On the advice of my associate, I ordered the mushroom-Swiss burger, paired it with chips and added a side of onion rings. I watched the commercial for the Shake Weight with a more or less straight face while my food was prepared.
At first blush, my burger plate did not seem all that impressive. But consider this: a hand-formed patty, fresh and crisp lettuce and tomato, ample mushrooms and cheese, a soft and fresh bun. There was maybe nothing fancy about this burger — at least, not until I stacked a couple of hand-cut onion rings on top — but in a world where mediocrity has become the norm, this was a very good burger. And the chips, sliced to uniform width and with nary a soggy one in the order, were done just right as well.
My take: Sure, Sidelines is a sports bar inside a bowling alley. And the menu has no surprises save for the pizzadilla. But unlike so many places of its ilk, Sidelines doesn’t take shortcuts like using reformed (and sometimes pre-cooked) patties for burgers, using frozen product for side items (frozen onion rings = mush) or cutting corners on cook times.
The result is a damn good burger. I bet the chili is pretty good, too.
