O’Michael’s Pub & Grill on Bogus Basin Road has been open for 45 years, and while well-known by its loyal following, it is underrated outside the neighborhood. Especially in recent years, it has been serving bar food that is consistently good, and sometimes great.
Even during the day, the restaurant is dark and confidential, with brick arches over the windows and a black-hooded fireplace in the middle, flanked by taxidermy. An older, just-out-of-focus big screen TV sits at the back of the room, near a mural of characters from the restaurant’s past, and new flat screens fill the corners. (The actual dining room, to the left of the main entrance, is more brightly lit and not at all busy; everyone dines in the bar, which always feels lively.)
Although you never feel unwelcome, you are aware of the regulars and how they know the room and the bartender; how glasses of scotch on the rocks arrive without an exchange of words. Although kids are allowed throughout, this is a mostly older crowd. There is one table in the center of the room whose reservation is implied for its happy-hour visitors, and I have never even tried to sit there.
The appetizer menu does not brag about its finger steaks ($11.99 for a large order or $7.99 for a small; also available as an entree with fries), but it should. They are the best in Boise. My wife and I so often set out to order anything else, and somehow the finger steaks arrive. They’re a huge and uncomplicated pile of tender, rich pieces of seasoned top round in weightless, golden, crisped batter, served with house-made barbecue and cocktail sauces. The difference, I suspect, is that the meat is actually cooked twice, first slow-roasted, flayed into strips, and then fried. They are too hot to eat at first, but that’s never stopped us.
We aren’t quite as enamored with the other starters, but even saying something like that seems unfair. The wings are just fine ($7.99 for a pound, $5.99 for a half), and the full-size portion of nachos is as big as we were warned ($9.99, $7.99 for a half). The steamed clams in garlic, butter and white wine are good, too ($13.99 for a pound, $8.99 for half). But they aren’t the finger steaks.
Irish mostly in name, the menu covers the expected pub fare: sandwiches, a few salads, fish and chips, all respectable.
Right in this restaurant’s wheelhouse are the delicious slaw burger ($8.99), actually a soft hoagie with sweet barbecue pulled pork and just-shy-of-spicy “Creole” cole slaw; the well-executed Swiss dip ($8.79); and the corned beef and Swiss sandwich ($8.59). The almost-bracing, pickly, house-made corned beef is available as a special on Thursdays, and is in the enormous plate of corned beef and hash ($8.49), among the full slate of offerings for Sunday breakfast. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, O’Michael’s serves prime rib — and hosts live music that plays loud enough to run my wife and me out of the room.
I feel slightly guilty even writing about the Monday-night feature, although it is too valuable a secret to keep: the “build-a-burger” special is a surprisingly juicy, grilled third-pound patty on an unusually apt ciabatta roll with lettuce, tomato, red onion and pickles, customizable with up to three additional toppings like bacon, sauteed mushrooms or onions, jalapenos, or your choice of cheese. This comes with beautifully browned, hand-cut shoestring fries for only $5. There is no better burger deal than this in town, but it should also be said that this is, price withheld, a commendable burger.
A legitimate dilemma is that often meals become meat-heavy, and especially with beef. Many of the house-made soups are beef-based, too. Uncannily, the soup of the day on Monday is beef-and-something, and with very rare exception, well-made.
Service has had some glitches, with a great deal of waitstaff turnover at night, but we have had our best experiences with service by far in the last few months.
I know some people don’t understand why anyone would batter and deep fry chunks of beef, and I know there are people who won’t get what is special about an old bar that serves this kind of food. But finger steaks are a Boise thing, and O’Michael’s is, too. I wish more places had as strong a sense of identity, or who did the things they tried to do so well.
Email Alex Kiesig: scene@idahostatesman.com
