Having a new bar open up in walking distance is always awesome. Even if it is terrible, it is comforting knowing you can get drunk locally and stumble home. And if it doesn’t suck, it can be a place to become a local. So when The Garage opened up in Palms, I was so damn excited that I went pretty much immediately, but being opening weekend I gave them some time to work out their kinks before a real judgment. This is the real judgment.
And I must say the judgment is good.
The Garage is kind of a chimera of bars. Once upon a time, it was an auto body shop and each little area has been converted to a sort of separate bar. In the front is a loungy area, in the back is a sports bar and outside is a patio bar/fratty beer pong setup. It really seems to have something for everyone. Unless you want to go to a club. But then go back to Hollywood.
The trouble is that the sports bar is where the cars actually used to be worked on. It is quite literally a refurbished garage, which is awesome, but not acoustically ideal. This is where I parked myself to grab a beer and a meal and I hope they can get a handle on the sound soon. I ended up ordering The Garage Burger, which is an 8 oz. patty topped with sour cherry lacquered (whatever that means) bacon, cheddar, arugula and peppercorn aioli with fries included. I ordered it medium-rare without the arugula.
What was delivered was far better than I could have expected from a former body shop. The burger was all at once sweet, sour, smoky, salty, peppery, and savory, with no one flavor overpowering any of the others. Perhaps it sounds like too much, but it really isn’t. Not to mention, it was lip-smackingly juicy.
The fries were a pretty good burger-buddy, although they could not compare to the burger itself.
I think it’s safe to say I now have a favorite burger in walking distance. And it doesn’t hurt that the beers are reasonably-priced and that they have a basic burger for happy hour (4-7 weekdays) for only 5 bucks.
