Cleveland Free Times August 11, 1999

Wag the Dog
The Happy Dog’s
Sandwich Project

BY JOHN HYDUK

Sometimes you want to go where everyone knows your name. Rarely do you want to eat there. At the Happy Dog — a West Side kitchen dishing "way cool" french fries, "extreme" meatloaf and "quiller" (pronounced: killer) quesadillas — you’ll make a neighborly exception. Great saloon food in a casual atmosphere is the key, even if the strongest sip in the joint is something called the Tea of Life.
The bar vibe is genuine. Once upon a drink tab this was Mom Socotch’s Kitchen, a corner shot-and-a-beer oasis that was the home of some of the heartiest ethnic food on Detroit Avenue. Regulars gathered for decades to live La Vida Polka. Mom’s reputation was exceeded only by her years. (True story: When an investor was thinking of buying into a neighborhood establishment, he set up a meeting with Mom through a go-between. Waiting nervously at the oval bar, he spied a woman perhaps two years younger than God exit the kitchen and begin to meticulously wipe the tables. "So that’s Mom," he said. "No," came the reply, "that’s Mom’s daughter.") Like happy hour, all good things come to an end. For the past 14 years, maison Socotch sat empty, gathering cobwebs, not compliments.
Enter a partnership including one Billy Scanlon, a late night devotee who’s filled the place with kitsch and the kitchen with the kind of classic grub that goes down well at midday or in the midnight hour.
First step: a fresh coat of paint, although the color scheme is something a Mom couldn’t love. Red, green and yellow stripes are the dominant motif, which makes an extended stay feel a little like you’re eating inside Peter Tosh’s hat. The original oval bar is intact (the heavy wooden cooler doors are still label-marked for Duke, Pabst and Budweiser), but the stools host walk-ups from the surrounding blocks sipping Hershey ice cream sodas on a sweltering day The restaurant’s original booths were rescued from a basement storage room and reinstalled; otherwise, it’s every Elvis for himself. The King (in lamp form) croons into a boom mike from behind the bar, and a young Presley swivel-hips in a pendulum clock incarnation. Local deities like Bartolo Colon and the Barons’ Freddie Glover share wall space. Gotta love anyplace that sides a framed reproduction of da Vinci’s Last Supper with a poster of Joe Walsh.
The menu is heavy with non-garden variety sports-pub grub — it has sections
called "Pregame," "Game," "Sidelines" and "Extreme" — but you’ll want to check out the chalked specials board for restaurant-quality entrees. The appetizer section (from $2.50 to $5 for a bowl of guacamole) features a great bowl of chili (beef-chunked or vegetarian skinny) and orders of chili-n-cheese fries that are hand cut and cooked to a nice crunch. The Dog’s burgers are big, bun-lapping and bar-worthy — try the mushroom-onion-Swiss variatiow for $6; skip the BBQ Beast that drowns in sauce and onion rings and finally succumbs to taste bud overkill. The Italian sausage sandwich on a grilled bun ($3.75) came spicy and covered in a garden of grilled green peppers and onions, with plenty of marinara sauce for dipping. Cool touch: The platters are green-rimmed and weighty as a discus.
About those sgecials: The day we were there, a pesto fettuccine was selling like, well, platters of fresh pesto fettuccine sell whei3~ they’re the $5 feature. Other times, the full course selections run to breaded wiener schnitzel sided with sauerkraut and smashed spuds ($7.50) or a Good Dog Tbone for $12.50 ("take the bone home for your good dog" is the fine print suggestion).
The Happy Dog lacks the obvious keys to success in the current Clevetown dining Olympics — namely, a walkway connecting it to Gateway or an address smack in the path of the reborn Browns nation. What it does have is a kitchen that dishes to the wee small hours (midday to the midnight hour weekdays, ‘til 4 in the am on Friday and Saturday nights, although the full dinner selections retire early at 11 pm) and an ear for tunes. Time to stop and hop: the Thursday night jazz-to-electronica jams that begin after 9 pm (a small cover charge keeps the riff rats out).
Service at the Happy Dog can be spotty at times, but that’s a testament to growing pains and a staff that’s coping with early success. Otherwise, this place — a Formica rest stop on a busy urban highway just a sprint from the Cleveland Public Theatre—, wags the dog. Mom would be proud.