Vancouver, WA

I read a post at 1000 Things To-Do in Tucson, Arizona about The Frog and Firkin and was surprised when I drove by The Firkin and Frog here in Vancouver the other day. The sign alone made me want to take a look inside. Today (Sunday) I gave them a call to make sure they were open…it turns out they had opened at 9:30…but we decided to wait until lunchtime.

Once we were seated and had ordered, I had a chance to look around. My first take was that this was for the die-hard sports fan whose wife wanted him to take the family out for a fancy dinner. There were at least six flat screen TV’s with almost that many different games, a couple of the screens were tuned to the same channels, but there was golf, football and basketball all going at the same time. My husband would love to have this setup at home. The interior was elegant, with a choice of tables, booths or a fabulous bar. 

This is a restaurant/pub with two menu boards for specials; one for drinks the other for food. Since neither of us are beer drinkers, we settled for their hamburgers and they brought huge platters with open-face hamburgers and large sides of French fries AND onion rings. The hamburger itself had the look of a true home-style patty that had to have weighed at least a half-pound. There was sauce on it, and while they also brought ketchup and mustard to the table, my husband needed his mayo fix; which they brought right away. We made a valiant effort, but neither one of us was able to finish everything on our plate.

The Firkin and Frog is located at 2714 NE 114th Avenue (in local language that is just east of 112th Avenue on Burton Road…MAP). They have a small outdoor area for when the weather is nice and fantastic firkin signs. Does anybody know why some of these places are called The Frog and Firkin and others The Firkin and Frog?

As a trim carpenter, one of my husband’s favorite activities is looking at tools and we decided to top the day off by window-shopping. There is a new Lowe’s going in at 192^nd and Mill Plain but we discovered it was not yet open. We settled instead on browsing through Wal-Mart and Home Depot. We separated once inside Wal-Mart because we have different interests. I love to cruise the school aisles since I am addicted to paper, pencils, pens, and of course, books.

When we hooked up again, we headed to The Home Depot where my husband looked at the tools and I went to the garden section. We pulled out a bunch of shrubbery in front of the house the other day and I was looking at ways to make it into a small patio. I found several possibilities; small interlocking bricks, cement blocks, stones. I need to come up with something before the whole things gets overgrown again. It’s pretty bad when a date ends with me drooling over a bunch of rocks, but it has been a fun afternoon.