To eat again at The Barracks Inn is to take a page from my
childhood and add notes to the bottom. Slung low along the Sackets Harbor
shoreline, this legendary eatery has been given new life this season by a
former employee of the Coleman restaurant empire. It’s clean, freshened up, and
ready to serve as the backdrop of an idyllic evening of your summer.
We brought two of our favorite young people with us to
dinner, Joelle and Troy, in order to pass the rite of The Barracks on to the next generation.
Now they, too, understand the casual splendor of dinnertime passed looking out
that wall of windows at glittering, sunset-hued Lake Ontario.
Maria, our young waitress, could not have known the expectations
we carried with us to our table in the medium-toned wood and navy, nautical
themed dining room. This place has been a family favorite for going on 40
years, and after a hiatus filled with longing, we were pumped to have The
Barracks back. To Maria, we probably just seemed hungry.
Shrimp cocktail ($10) amounted to four jumbo crustaceans
cooked perfectly. They were tender, cool, and just cooked through, plump and
sweet. The cocktail sauce with which they were served was pretty basic, so the
shrimp were the star here.
Everything dip ($11) was creamy and mild; my first bite more
cheesy than anything else. Upon a more vigorous ingredient hunt with my second
tortilla chip, I tasted the metallic brightness of fresh spinach, the soft
richness of crab, and the faint lemony flavor of minced artichoke hearts. In my
opinion, this hearty dish could have used about two good shakes of hot sauce
just to break up all the creamy dairy, but three of our five diners adored it
as is, and couldn’t shovel up scoops of the gooey dip fast enough.
Our salad course brought bowls chock full of crunchy, fresh
spring mix, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, carrot shreds, black olives, and
croutons that actually didn’t shatter when you tried to spear them with a fork.
Best of all, The Barracks has the same house Italian dressing they serve at
Fairgrounds Inn, in Watertown – the recipe possibly a parting gift for the
owner? If you haven’t had it, the dressing is one part vinaigrette, one part
mayonnaise, one part sugar, and completely delicious – tart and sweet.
Chicken penne pasta ($16) was well-seasoned, with tender
chunks of white meat chicken and al dente pasta swimming in a creamy, but not
heavy sauce. It was garlicky, and the fresh spinach and roasted red peppers
added to the sharp, popping flavors. The diner who ordered it devoured every
bite.
Smoked turkey BLT ($9) arrived on a ciabatta roll the size
of a life raft. The deli meat was thinly sliced and fully flavored, its smoky
notes echoed in the thick-sliced bacon, and balanced with sweet, ripe tomatoes.
That life raft – er, ciabatta roll, was soft and supremely chewy. The pickle
spear served alongside was nice and crunchy, not limp or flabby like so many
afterthought garnishes.
Prime rib ($21) was served with a particularly good tiny cup
of au jus. Had it been my dinner, I would have asked for a big cup, and then
stolen all the rolls to dunk in this garlicky, beefy elixir that somehow
avoided being salty – the end point for so many of its kind. The generous slab
of roast beef was cooked to order (medium, in this case), a little chewier than
I’d prefer, but my guess is that that was due to being cooked further than I
would order rather than any flaw with the meat. The flavor was pretty
unimpeachable.
Chicken Caesar salad ($11) was big, cheesy, crisp, cool and
creamy. The chicken breast was grilled, so it leant the dish a hearty, charred
taste that worked nicely against that rich parmesan saltiness coating the
crunchy romaine lettuce. This is a simple salad, but just plain good.
Baked scallops ($19) were cooked perfectly, just like their
shellfish cousins in our appetizer. Scallops take on the texture of a pencil
eraser when overcooked, but these were delicate and juicy. They also were
covered in salty, buttery cracker crumbles, which is a preparation I’ve never
had before. They rendered this into a decadent, kind of naughty dish, perhaps
inelegant, but definitely yummy. The baked potato was cooked through, and Maria
kindly brought profuse amounts of butter and sour cream in order to check every
box I have for a satisfactory starch.
Our only letdown came when Maria told us the desserts
weren’t made in-house, but came from boxes out of the freezer. I hope our
visible disappointment didn’t ruin her evening. But other than lackluster
cheesecake ($6), which had a dense, gelatinous texture more like a dried out
pudding pie than cheesecake, we were pleasantly surprised.
Coconut cake ($6)
was moist, with strong coconut and vanilla flavors and an achingly sweet
frosting, while the chocolate lava cake ($6) was served warm, with rich, dark
chocolate flavor and that gooey pudding-like consistency.
Dinner for five, with one cocktail and one glass of white
wine, cost us $142.23. The view was free.
We enjoyed being among the chatty, relaxed groups in the
dining room. Oddly, there were no couples out on date night. Gentlemen of the
north country, what are you thinking? Your ladies want to be wined and dined
here. Get on it. The waterfront deck isn’t quite finished being set up yet for
sunset cocktails, but it’s close.
I award The Barracks Inn a seven on the Big Hungry Shelby
scale. This Lake Ontario legend is back, folks, and it’s good. You won’t find
fancy, but what you will find is friendly service, a laid-back atmosphere, and
the unbridled beauty of Northern New York, plus casual but tasty food. It’s
adding a whole new page to my childhood culinary book, and the writing is
fabulous.
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