I have been accused of being relentlessly negative about Morgantown, something which troubles me. Although I passionately dislike its utterly incompetent leadership, I don’t live in this city by accident. It is my home, and I love it here. So it is that I present Negativity Free Fridays. This weekly post will extol a virtue of this wonderful town of mine.

Because I don’t frequent the bars (5 times in 3 years doesn’t count as frequenting, does it?), I don’t have the opportunity to consume the concentrated evil that is bar food. This is good for my waistline but bad for my mental state of affairs, which demands plates of greasy horrible food be consumed regularly. So it was that I found myself going to Mario’s Fishbowl several weeks ago with my wife. She was taking a consultant to dinner and I tagged along because I had visions of crispy chicken wings drowned in sauce dancing in my eyes. Those visions were accurate.

Mario’s Fishbowl has what can only be described as the best wings in Morgantown. It is a bar without competition in this regard, no matter what advocates of Bw3 or Keglers try to claim, anybody who has ever had all three knows the score. (Mario’s chicken salad sandwich is nothing sneeze at either, nor is its loaded grilled cheese sandwich.)

-First and foremost, the wings come crispy, even if they’ve been sauced. This represents a marked improvement over those institutions which just can’t wait to pull their wings out of the fryer before they’ve been properly crisped. This is a function, perhaps, of the much smaller size of the assembled customers at Marios on a given night. Mario’s is a small, squat brick building that can’t seat 100 people. While I understand that those other restaurants are serving larger collections of customers at a given time (thus forcing speed), Mario’s is advantaged because they don’t rush your food out to you. It’s done when it’s done. That means it arrives tasting better because it’s been allowed to properly finish.

-Second, the environment in which the wings are consumed is far superior. Coming out of Keglers, you smell like a cigarette. Coming out of BW3, you smell like a carton of cigarettes. Coming out Marios, you come out smelling like a fried cigarette, which while not good, is far superior when compared to my other two options. Fried stuff just smells good, no matter how ungodly awful for you it is.

-Third, its more fun being in a place with genuine character, like Mario’s, than it is being in either of those other two places, both of which are entirely antiseptic by comparison. At the Fishbowl, you can read the history of its customers on the signs covering its walls. You can do neither at Morgantown’s established wings joints. Also complicating things is the waitstaff’s treatment of the customers. At Keglers, the staff seems to hate pretty much everybody who dares to sit down for a meal. At BW3, the staff seems to be an odd collection of misfits disinterested in the customers. At Marios, establishing yourself takes a moment, but once done, you’re treated well.

-Fourth, and most importantly, is the wing sauce. Mario’s is a simple butter and hot sauce combination that when mixed entirely serves to effectively coat but not soak the crisped wing. Again, there are so many people so anxious to overwhelm you with the sauce that the chicken itself is a forgotten component. Mario’s perfectly mixes the sauce experience with the chicken experience without attempting to declare a winner.

So in the end, there is no comparison: if you’re going out to eat wings, go to Mario’s. Even if you care about the fact that you come out of there smelling like a fried cigarette, you’ll be too happy to care.

An incredible thing happened last night. My wife and I went to Mario’s Fishbowl for wings (they have the best in town, a point I will not argue about). We sat and talked and ate our wings and paid and left. We came home and curled up on the couch. We watched Breaking Bad’s scintillating season premier.

You might say, “That doesn’t count as incredible!” It would be a fair comment. But that’s only because you’re looking at what we did do.

Here’s what we didn’t do: we didn’t walk outside and gag at our own smell, we didn’t come home and pour bleach on one another, we didn’t stop by the fire department to get hosed off at industrial strength. In short, we didn’t do any of the things that were once a standard requirement of your day after enjoying the Fishbowl.

More than a month ago, I wrote about the ban and predicted a freak-out scenario that has largely failed to materialize (much to my surprise given the history of smoking bans in Monongalia County). Perhaps in part it is because of the businesses that have jumped the gun on the ban. There are several bars throughout the city who have implemented no smoking policies well in advance of the ban’s implementation, and presumably, some of the businesses that haven’t are looking around as if to say, “Hey, wait a minute. Maybe we’ll survive Smokepocalypse.”

At least one of those businesses is Mario’s Fishbowl. Mark Furfari, the Fishbowl’s owner, commented here (how he found the site, I’ll never know), saying that the Fishbowl was going smoke free immediately after it made accommodations for its smoking patrons. Simply put, the change in the place was fantastic. Anytime you can leave a place and not immediately think to yourself that the best way to describe your smell is “deep fried cigarette”, a genuine good has been accomplished.

I recognize that I’m not a significant part of Morgantown’s bar-going community, in that I neither smoke (very common!) or drink (remarkably uncommon!). The simple fact is that I’m not the target demographic by any stretch of anybody’s consideration. But the smoking ban makes it more likely that I’ll find myself going back to the places that I left when I quit drinking. Every annoyance of any bar is amplified if you’re not falling down drunk, and I know I’m not alone when I say that smelling awful is an annoyance for the overwhelming majority of people who go to bars where smoking is still legal. The smoking prohibition makes it more likely that more people are going to go to those institutions, even if they’re weirdoes like me.

Yes, it’s an inconvenience for the smokers left amongst us. But then, so is their smoking. Times change. Rules change. Regulations change. Institutions though? They survive, and in the case of places like Mario’s, I think they’re bettered. I’d hazard a guess that you’d agree after the next time you eat there.

Matt Hafer is a local pastor, and although that isn’t my thing, he has always seemed like a very nice guy on Twitter, which is the only place I know him from. He’s new(er) to town and wrote an interesting post about the best food available in Morgantown. He cheated a bit - some of the places he listed aren’t actually in the city limits - but more concerning to me are some of the answers he didn’t give. I fear that this means he hasn’t been to the places that I am about to list. This is problematic. Here is my reply:

1. Best Wings

Hafer says Chik-N-Bones, which is wrong. The correct answer is Mario’s Fishbowl, hidden away in Woodburn. The key to the Fishbowl’s wings is how deeply they fry the actual chicken. The skin is crisp, which makes their sauce - a delicate combination of butter and hot sauce by the 55 gallon drum - all the more delightful. The Fishbowl is a Morgantown institution, and will hopefully remain one forever more.

2. Best Coffee 

I am new(er) to the coffee game than most, and my standards are remarkably low. “When was this brewed?” I’ll ask. “Last month,” they’ll tell me. “Perfect!” I’ll say, pouring myself a cup. Still, I think Slight Indulgence makes a delicious cup and always has three carafes out. However, I don’t drink coffee anyway other than black, so if you prefer dolled up drinks, there are places that are better. Hafer says Cafe Mojo, which I’ve never been to. Still, the variety on offer at Slight Indulgence makes every morning adventurous, especially if you’re 31 and incredibly boring.

3. Best Sushi

Hafer says Ogawa. I’d argue that it is Lavender Cafe, if only because everything else they offer is so delicious. To be fair though, Lavender’s sushi chef moves at roughly the speed of glacier, which can be slightly annoying if you wanted to eat your food that day. All is forgotten when the selections actually arrive. (Sadly, Lavender’s website seems to have disappeared. It used to be one of the most hilariously awful and unusable websites in the history of the genre. It was an incredible thing to behold.) 

4. Best Bakery

He says Wild Mountain Bakery, downtown in the old Dairy Queen. Perhaps. But the bread they make at New Day Bakery are absolutely sublime. And Ray’s Pastries is still around, isn’t it? It gets awfully difficult to choose in this category, so Hafer gets a pass.  

5. Best Mexican Food

He says Carmona’s, which is where the cheating comes in. That’s beyond the city’s limits. I’d argue for Chico’s Fat. The trick that they get right for me is the rice. It’s always moist. For some reason, every other local Mexican joint insists upon serving dry rices that always go down as smoothly as wallpaper paste. I’ve never understood what a little more chicken stock would hurt. 

6. Best Desserts

Cheating again: Hafer says Naticakes, which isn’t in the city. Besides, the correct answer is plainly the downtown Dairy Queen. To be fair though, I am hugely biased, because I’ve been going to the downtown Dairy Queen since I was a boy and nothing has ever come close to a medium chocolate Oreo blizzard. I understand the appeal of Naticakes - “Add Your Own Stuff Fatty!” - but Dairy Queen gives you the opportunity to stand in lines, to people watch, to sit outside, to celebrate the return of the Spring, to be waited on by amusingly sullen teenagers.

7. Most “Morgantown” Place To Eat

Hafer chooses Black Bear. I don’t know though. It’s too new. It’s too modern. It’s too recent. It’s a great place, even if the rice is dry, but I’m not sure I’d rank it as being particularly Morgantown. To me, Morgantown’s places that really get at the heart of the city are the ones where a wide variety of people gather. Here I’m thinking of Gene’s Bar in South Park or the aforementioned Mario’s Fishbowl. And in fact, I think the Fishbowl would be my answer. The place screams townie while simultaneously being the location to take out-of-towners if you want to introduce them to the city itself.  

All of this said, three cheers to Hafer for moving here and enjoying the place. He’ll figure out the correct answers soon enough.