Finger Hole Wallet

Down-to-earth delicious dishes rise from the Phoenix

Background

Although it operates inside a former country club, The Pub at the Phoenix makes it clear: It's a down-to-earth place, not an ounce hoity-toity.

"We're not like country-club material," restaurant manager Bonny Scheitle says. "We like to emphasize family."

The no-frills restaurant is one of the newest spots for a bite to eat in the Alle-Kiski Valley.

The restaurant, inside the clubhouse at the newly re-opened Phoenix at Buffalo Valley Golf Course, opened on July 15 and daily serves an American menu.

Scheitle worked as restaurant and lounge manager in the restaurant at the former Buffalo Valley Country Club, which closed in 2007, and she says the menu has stayed similar.

When people used to hear the name "country club" in the restaurant title, Scheitle says, they thought the place would be uppity.

Now under a new name with new carpeting and a new interior design, she says former customers are coming back and say they like what they see.

Atmosphere

Eating dinner on the restaurant's newly built balcony is the perfect way to spend a warm summer night. Situated just above the golf course's ninth hole, deck diners sit in comfy woven chairs at new tables with porch umbrellas overhead. The veranda offers vistas of leafy green foliage-covered rolling hills that surely are more of a treat for the visual palate when autumn bakes leaves to shades of yellow, orange and red. A lower terrace pairs with the deck, and the two combined could easily fit 100 diners.

"The scenery is gorgeous," Scheitle says. "I don't know which season I like the best. They're all so pretty."

Four large windows offer those seated inside a view of the deck and the hills beyond. The inside dining room, which seats about 130, has a masculine "man cave" feel with its wood-paneled walls and ceiling. And though it's macho enough for lunch with the guys after a day on the links, white tablecloths and soft lighting emanating from a chandelier help the dining room double as a nice spot for casual dining with the family.

The Town of Apathy | Card Carrying Lesbian ... What's in your wallet?

The funk I had slipped into was lingering. It wasn’t one of those trips to suicidal tendencies. It was more like a never-ending layover in the land of apathy. No energy, no coherent thought process, no joy, no sex, no desire for anything.

If apathy were an actual place, it would look like an old deserted town on the side of a long, dusty desert road. Where the bus driver stopped for a pit stop, but for some reason you didn’t get back on the bus and you were left behind. You run after the  bus for a few steps, trying to yell but all you get is a lung full of dirt and exhaust as you watch the taillights of the bus disappear in a cloud of dust. Those few steps you took in haste have now depleted every last drop of energy you had and you feel as if every limb now weighs a thousand pounds. You look around, helpless and hopeless.

You sit on the old, weather beaten bench for a while. Trying to figure out what to do next. You don’t know how long you’ve been there, it feels like forever but it was probably only five minutes. The bench is hard and uncomfortable and the sun in scorching hot. You’re more miserable then you ever remember being but barely have the energy to move into the shade.

But finally, you gather your strength and force your brain to work, at least a little. Maybe pure force of will can make you think through the muddled mess that it’s your head. You stand up and turn around. There’s an old shack that was once a gas station, maybe a general store back in the day. But no one seems to be there.

You walk through the old, creaky glass door, hoping to find relief from the heat outside. Only to find that you are nearly suffocated by the stagnate, hot air inside. It looks like no one has been here in a hundred years. You wipe one finger across a counter top to judge how deep the dust layer is …… to see that it has been longer then you had previously guessed. Or maybe not? It is a desert, maybe it’s only been a few weeks? A glimmer of hope …. that quickly fades. You reprimand yourself for feeling optimistic in the middle of this shit hole, on the worst day of your life. Or is it? Aren’t all the days pretty much the same? Who cares if you’re lost here in this ghost town? You don’t.

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