by Anna Frost
“I just want a dim place that serves me greasy burgers while I drink a few beers,” has been the refrain from one of my housemates each time we eat out on the island.
The routine is the same: we decide to explore a restaurant, since it seems our unspoken collective goal is to eat our way through Martha’s Vineyard this season; we eat excellent food since, thankfully, we have yet to find a bad meal here; and then he waxes poetic about the joys and virtues of a dive bar as we pay our usually somewhat steep check. Of course the steep check is only half the fault of island prices – we have a proclivity for ordering more food than three people should eat and drinking like Ernest Hemingway, replacing absinthe with whiskey or local beer. But then, just before all hope was lost, we found it.
Or, more accurately, I was assigned it. I wandered down Circuit Avenue in Oak Bluffs looking for The Ritz to talk to the chef about their new menu. With my still green island knowledge, I was expecting a Ritz-Carlton hotel and stopped short at the hanging sign for The Ritz, just short of The Lampost, slightly puzzled. Suddenly, my boss’ recommendation to my dive-bar-yearning friend made perfect sense. I had wondered how a bar at a Ritz could possibly be a dive. Laughing at my misunderstanding, I entered the bar and surveyed the dim room. A handful of middle-aged men sat at the bar – it was about 3:45 in the afternoon at this point – and exchanged chatter with the bartender. It was a dive in the sense that there was no frills, but with entertainment planned for every night, a fully stocked bar and not a dirty table in sight, it is also so much more. I looked back through the window and saw the chef, who is known simply as George, cooking away, and I knew. The Ritz would be our second home this summer.
After interviewing the chef, I returned a couple hours later for dinner, excited yet skeptical housemate in tow. After hearing the chef talk about their pork tacos and the queso and chips, I couldn’t wait. The food at the Ritz lived up to and jumped beyond my expectations – the pork tacos were flavorful, and I could easily consume a pint of five-cheese and beer queso. We left satisfied and wanting more at the same time. There is just one more problem to solve: what to order next time.
