Lucky Bucks Bar and Grill

Rating: 7/10
Date visited: July 24, 2009
Party of three
Dinner

We went to Lucky Bucks to celebrate TGIF! Our friend had a tough week and she deserved some good drinking. I did not have a drink for a week, so it was time for me to have some too. My husband was our chaperon.

Lucky Bucks has a really great Happy Hour - 2 for 1 drinks, 5pm - 7pm. Margaritas should be your choice. They fix it strong, and they are large, 18 oz - and for $8 for two drinks, it's a great bargain. I actually saw him making the drinks, there is a very generous amount of tequila.

Service was good, attentive with a little laid-back attitude. We wanted the hassle free atmosphere, to just hang out in a relaxed atmosphere - the place served the purpose. Please note that this is not a high-end place, so expectations were not high either. This is a bar, a cheap one at that, serving bar-style food in small plastic baskets with wax paper, with plastic cutlery. There are a few booths inside the joint that could seat six at a time, the rest of the area inside is filled with high tables and tall bar. There is also some patio seating, mostly for smokers. By 8 PM, it was full. We sat inside at one of the booths. You have to seat yourself - no need to wait for the host / hostess.

For appetizers, we got the chicken quesadilla. For dinner, I got Buffalo wings with blue cheese, our friend got Buffalo tenders with ranch dressing, and my husband got a burger.

Chicken Quesadilla was the standard lot. I thought it had a bit too much cheese in it - but the chicken was juicy and had a nice flavor. We had already downed the first strong margarita on an empty stomach, so it didn't matter much. I had noticed that the sour cream was very thick and the salsa sub-par. I prefer thepico de gallo with my quesadilla - but that's just me, I suppose. The guacamole seemed out-of-a-can, but then one should not expect gourmet fresh food here!

The Buffalo Wings were quite nice. I would give it 8/10 for crispiness and taste. Now, it can never be as good as the Original Buffalo Wings at Frank and Teresa's Anchor Bar in Buffalo. I lived in Buffalo and have visited that bar many times, I know my Buffalo wings. On the absolute scale, these wings were probably 6.5/10, but my ranking is a bit higher because of nostalgia and the fact that I have not had good wings for the last four years! Since we left western New York in 2005, we have not had good buffalo style chicken wings - believe me, we have tried many places. Most joints outside western NY get it all wrong - if they get the sauce right, the chicken is too moist and soft, or, if they get the chicken crispy to the right degree, the sauce is all messed up! And in Australia, no one has heard of Buffalo Wings! (What a shame!)

The 'true' buffalo style wing should be crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. There should not be too much skin, just a thin crispy wafer around the meaty bone. Too much skin makes the meat too moist and soaked in fat, it does not taste good. Ideally, you cook the wings in the oven, then toss it in the deep fryer to crisp the outside. Now the sauce has to be the original buffalo wing sauce. Order it from Anchor Bar, if you need to, but please, do not use a knock off. It does not work! Now, you can add your ownembellishments to the wings, if you want. For example, a bar in Rochester ( Distillery, our regular joint during my husband's graduate school days) would add some garlic to the sauce before adding it to the wings, the taste and smell of warm garlic over the wings went well with the cool crisp beer. You can also sprinkle a generous amount of Cajun seasoning on the wings, it makes those pieces even more tasty. When I make the wings at home, I usually enhance the sauce a bit - I melt butter, add the original sauce, a bit pepper, simmer it for five minutes. If the vinegar appears to have evaporated, I add some lime juice, not lemon juice. You can try this with your chicken tenders too.

Buffalo chicken strips - they were a bit dry I think. The flavor on the outside was all right, but it seemed to me more like a compressed chickenpatte, similar to a Wendy's or Mac's tenders, only larger in size. I wonder if this was frozen-out-of-a box item, just heated up and tossed in the sauce.

Burger: Lucky Bucks is famous for their burgers. My husband asked for medium-well of their 'hot' burger. The basket came with an open topped burger with jalapeno peppers,pepper jack cheese melt. It came a bit rarer than medium, but it was very juicy. He enjoyed it.

We will probably go there again, may be when we crave another cheap drink session with non-healthy food. Come on, we all have such cravings sometimes!

Address: 1459 University Avenue, San Diego CA 92103
Website: Cannot find
Ph: (619) 297-0660
Timing: Daily 11am-10pm
Liquor served