I love Backyard Ale House. It is easily one of my favorites places to go in downtown Scranton for some great food and libations. They provide a huge selection of draft and bottled beer along with some outdoor seating in the back, hence the name of the place. There is nothing better than sitting outside on a warm summer evening enjoying food with friends. As The Wing Men, we provide a rating as though it was our first time there and, unfortunately for Backyard, this visit was mired in a series of bad events that dampened the overall experience for everyone in our party. I will say we had a bigger group with us this time, so I knew there was going to be a bit of a lag in food and drinks coming out. That wasn’t the problem though. Our server was unfriendly and unapologetic. They ran out of wings on their wing night, so a couple people had to cancel or reduce their orders, and when the wing orders did come out, there was a wrong order in the bunch. When told about the mistake, the server barely acknowledged the issue and still charged us for the wrong order. Other food orders came out wrong or didn’t arrive at all. Serniak and I ordered 25 wings, but due to the shortage of wings, had to reduce the order to 20. We were told the wings would be cheaper as a result. When the check came, it was still the full price. Eventually, when our server did come around again, we pointed out the issue. He said he would take a certain price off. When the new check arrived, it reflected less than what he indicated he would take off. Finally, when asked at the beginning to split checks, he said that wouldn’t be an issue. What this meant to him though was that he would bring us the full check and we would be the ones who would have to go through the check and write our individual orders on a separate piece of paper for them. Will I return to Backyard Ale House in the future? Absolutely! I understand this was an unfortunate, one time experience and future visits should be much better.
Backyard Ale House only offers wings on their wing night, which is Tuesdays. They provide two options to enjoy your wings. For the light eaters, you order 10 wings of a sauce of your choice for $7. If you’re feeling hungrier and adventurous, they offer 25 wings for $15, which includes 5 wings of each sauce they are offering that week. This is always the option we choose so we can taste every flavor. On this visit, the wing size ranged from average to large and meaty.
I really enjoy how Backyard runs their wing night. This is the only time they provide wings, and they always have a rotating selection of flavors. You will see Traditional on the menu every week. It comes with the option of Mild, Hot, or Gnome’s Nightmare, which is an extremely spicy sauce. From there, the flavors are always changing and are always unique. For example, the Fat Elvis wing offered during our visit was a mixture of peanut butter, bacon, and banana. What they offer on their wing night may not appeal to you, so look for them on Facebook every Tuesday if you want to see what flavors they have for that week.
With the rotating selection of flavors, the taste can be hit or miss. For example, the last time we went to Backyard for wings, the options and wings were fantastic. Hear all about it in our Backyard Ale House Podcast on our website. This time around, I felt as though the wings were decent, but nothing blew me away. The Traditional is their basic hot wing sauce. It is full of seasoning and spiciness that is pretty enjoyable. It is a thicker hot sauce, almost like a spicy spaghetti sauce. It is a definite safe bet. We ordered Gnome’s Nightmare on the side because I’m very interested to try it. Unfortunately, we never received it, so it is very much still my white whale. The Hot Caesar were very similar to the Traditional, with a slight hint of Caesar. I personally could have done with more Caesar because it tasted too much like the Traditional. The Sweet & Sour was exactly what you’d expect. The sticky sauce has that sweet flavor up front with a slight hint of tanginess. It reminded me very much of the sauce of the same name that you get at Burger King. The Mango Habanero BBQ may have been my favorite wing of the night. The sweetness from the mango flavoring and the hint of spiciness from the Habanero really mixed well with the BBQ sauce. I’m not even a huge fan of BBQ sauce, and I would order this wing again if I saw it. Finally, I had high hopes for the Fat Elvis wing. The idea of peanut butter, bacon, and banana on a wing is oddly appealing to me. In our order though, these wings didn’t have any sauce on them at all. These just tasted wings fried in oil. I don’t know if they forgot or they ran out of the sauce. I tried this flavor at Wings at the Waterpark. I remember it being a drier wing, but not like this. I’m not sure what happened here.
The atmosphere at the Ale House is one that should instantly put you in a good mood. Whether it’s their amazing selection of craft brew or creative menu, you certainly won’t be able to be one of those mopes at the bar. Surprisingly, our service wasn’t the best we’ve had there. Some mix-ups with what people ordered, to figuring out the exact total for the bill, made for a confusing evening. These things happen. Michael Jordan had off nights, just like the rest of us.
The Ale House certainly gives you options when you order on wing night. You can either pay 7 dollars to get 10 or you can pay 15 to get 25 wings, which ends up being 5 of each flavor. Just be a pro about it and over indulge. However, beware, these wings are pretty massive. They are potentially the biggest we’ve ever encountered.
What’s really interesting about the Ale House, is that they rotate out their flavors every week. I think that’s a real progressive idea to keep things fresh. This week they had their regular hot, sweet and sour, fat Elvis(bacon, peanut butter, banana) mango habanero bbq and hot Caesar. I know there are only 5 to choose from, but their creativity and uniqueness stands out to me. Even with only 5 flavors, 2 of them are ones I’ve never seen before.
The biggest reason for this rating is because the fat Elvis wings barely had any seasoning added to them, to the point where they were essentially naked. The hot were flavorful and brought a comfortable heat that all can handle. The sweet and sour were exactly that and they did it well. You could taste everything that you’re looking for with this flavor. The mango habanero bbq, I thought was lacking in heat that I figured I was going to get with the habanero. The sweetness of the bbq side of the flavor was dominant. Finally, the hot Caesar, delivered the spice of their hot sauce, with soothing zestiness of Caesar dressing. They did that well with the hot Caesar.
