The Barn Where Everybody Knows Your Name
Nick Macksood
One major grift about Martha’s Vineyard is that whether you are an islander or not, there is almost no escape from the summer crush. Prices go up, traffic slows down. And unless you want to be a shut-in until Labor Day–and nobody wants that–you’ve got to brave the crowds somehow. One place, however, stands alone beyond the well-worn pavement on the ends of Circuit Ave: the Barn, Oak Bluffs’ recent addition that has all the atmosphere of a friendly neighborhood bar and grill, but with the familial touch that really only a bowling alley can provide.
The Barn Bowl & Bistro, opened May 2015, was one of the only island establishments imagined with year-round residents in mind. The menu’s prices and daily specials reflect that focus. Numerous lunch specials, all $9.99, are available every day, but the daily specials are where the Barn really hits hard. Monday’s bring $5.99 burger nights; Tuesday’s offer rotating specials from the grill, while Sunday’s feature Chef JJ Johnson’s Fried Chicken bucket–$14.99 for eight pieces of explicitly fried goodness along with “a laundry list of sides that can go with it,” Chef JJ adds. And oh, does it go. And quickly at that–too quickly for Chef to hope to take any leftover batches home for the night.
But more importantly than the prices, the Barn’s providers make their menu even more island-centric. “I go to the Net Result–just myself–maybe three, four times a week,” Chef JJ tells me, “and we’re also a part of the extensive list of restaurants that go up to Menemsha Fish House. They’re really, really great to us. Right now we’ve got local clams from them, local bluefish. When the time comes, black sea bass. ‘Tis the season, you know?”
And with a made from scratch menu that ranges from specialty pizzas and gourmet burgers to juicy, thick cut NY strips, and everything in between it’s easy to come back to the Barn and never eat the same thing twice.
But as a 24 year old in young manhood, it’s easy for me to wax poetic about the craft beer on tap at the beautiful horseshoe bar, the inspired menu, and the numerous TV’s plastered around the walls so as to keep my attention during the winter doldrums. The reality is, the Barn was created with a far more round audience in mind.
Families, for instance. Kids bowl for free every day from 11am-3pm until Labor Day, so whether you’re looking to escape the rain or the muggy month of August, the Barn is always a good hang for the family. And the spacious, well-lit dining room and seating upstairs offers a choice for the diners who want to keep their attention on their food and family in front of them instead of a dreaded gutter-ball.
Trivia nights on Thursday’s with Handsome Dan have become a regular hit, as has, of course, the bowling leagues themselves. Wednesday nights during the summer give those here for the long term an opportunity to get together and bowl, but the fall is when the larger–and longer–leagues start to kick it up a notch.
It can be difficult to nail down the spirit of a broad barn, such as this one. But ask anyone, your server, your bartender, or the Chef himself and they’ll all tell you the same thing: that the Barn was made by islanders, for islanders–anything else is a bonus. That’s a unique quality for an island restaurant and one that could easily be lost in translation. But the more time you spend here, the more you start to realize how serious the Barn is about its mission. You can hear it in the conversations with your bartender; you can taste it in Chef JJ’s concoctions; and you can see it in the faces of the regulars who show up day in and day out, and in those newcomers who look around and realize that the Barn is their new spot.
