Johnny J's Pub & Grille
 Medina, Ohio        Date of Visit  02/02/14         http://johnnyjspub.com/ 

Grill and Pub or Pub and Grille weekend ends with a journey to the Johnny J’s Pub and Grille in Medina. David B’s disappointed. The Firehouse was much better. Johnny J’s ended up somewhere in the middle. Located in the corner of a strip plaza Johnny J’s is billed as an Irish pub. It’s not that Irish, there are a few items on the menu and its decorated with Guinness and Jameson paraphernalia but it’s more of a bar with a few Irish things added than an Irish place. Our server appeared to be enjoying too much peyote which had turned her mute and distant.
 

Well Corned Beef Made For Tasty Rolls
 

We managed to order an appetizer, a sandwich and a dinner mostly by pointing at the menu. The appetizer was Reuben rolls. Egg roll wrappers stuffed with a deeply cured beef, swiss cheese and kraut. Served with a little cup of thousand island dressing they were a crunchy version of classic flavors. Easily the best thing we had.

The most interesting thing we tried was a pub cake sandwich, which was really the reason for trying the place from the beginning. There are three on the menu and the most odd sounding was the mac n chorizo. Ground sausage, cheddar and nacho cheese mac and sour cream on ciabatta. The cake part is the addition of a fried cake of mash laying on the bottom slice of roll. It was good, it wasn’t GOOD, it could have been. It really needed more cheese flavor and a punchier chorizo. What it had was textural awesome. Crusty bread, soft pasta, ground meat and then the kicker, thinly crisped mash with a creamy interior, which seemed to turn into a sauce of its own. Sandwich with potato sauce, I like.
 

Steph ordered the special rib dinner with slaw and tots. The tots were of a familiar variety but deep-fried which always seems to impart something an oven will never do. The slaw was a mix of dairy and vinegar with some celery seed, standard but edible unlike yesterdays. Then there were the ribs. Like almost every restaurant they were overdone by competition standards, but I prefer overly tender to underso. The serious problem came from the reheating in which the sauce had obviously been brushed on the ribs before hitting the grill and the sugars in the sauce had burned, burned, burned. Overly tender I can take. Charcoal I have a problem with. Barely Irish, mixed success on the plate, Johnny J’s sits towards the lower-middle of the pack of Grills n Pubs.