Rivals Sports Kitchen proves heavyweight champ of genre
REVIEW
karenFELDMAN cuisine@florida-weekly.com

All together now: "Wings, burgers, nachos and fries. Wings, burgers, nachos and fries. Wings, burgers, nachos and fries."

Everyone knows the four food groups of sports bars.

Now that Rivals Sports Kitchen has entered the competition, the playing field has changed for the better.

Yes, you can still get those wings, burgers and fries. But that burger could be a vegetarian one. Or it would be slathered in bacon, barbecue sauce and pepper-Jack cheese. The fries might be made of sweet potatoes or substitute the housemade chips with balsamic glaze and blue cheese.

Instead of nachos, how about flat bread crisps with housemade hummus, roasted red peppers, olives, feta and green onions?

This is sports bar fare according to Robert Parks, who owned and ran the popular Twilight Café on Sanibel for several years. Parks took the imaginative touch he used on the Twilight menu and applied it to sports bar fare. The result is a winner.

The bar, which is conveniently situated on the easternmost end of Miromar Outlets, has plenty of parking in the area of the lot that faces Treeline Drive.

PHOTO KAREN FELDMAN The Chicken wings and three-bean chili from Rivals, a new restaurant at Miromar Outlets.

There's a large outdoor dining area with tables well-shaded by large umbrellas. The inside is spacious, too, with lots of tables, a smattering of roomy booths, a bar, a video game area and walls covered in flat-screen TVs and sports memorabilia.

We settled into a roomy booth and checked out the various games playing around us as well as the game jerseys, signed footballs and such. I noticed a decided lack of FGCU paraphernalia - odd considering the restaurant's proximity to the university.

Then it was time to turn our attention to the menu.

As I mentioned earlier, it's a radical departure offering, a goodly selection of vegetarian dishes, a number of dishes marked with a running figure known as "Triathlete Man," indicating the dish is low in sugars and fats but provides complex carbohydrates for energy.

One such item is the vegetarian threebean chili, which we tried along with an order of Buffalo-style chicken wings.

The chili had a distinct cumin aroma. The beans had been cooked with plenty of Southwestern spices then topped with three cheeses and a dollop of sour cream, which added just the right touch of creamy richness to the mix.

The wings, ordered medium-spicy, had adequate seasoning without being salty but could have been crisper and were in need of more hot sauce as well. On the plus side, there was an ample amount of good blue cheese dressing and celery sticks accompanying the wings.

Our entrees arrived before we were halfway through our appetizers.

We tried a selection from the menu's Bowl Season section, in this case the Thai bowl, which contained crisp chunks of chicken, crunchy pea pods, water chestnuts and red bell pepper with noodles and a mildly spicy peanut sauce. All the ingredients were fresh and hot. Personally, I'd have liked the sauce to have a little more bite.

The grilled portobella with herbed goat cheese and roasted red peppers came on a firm foundation of focaccia bread, so that it didn't disintegrate while being held, as so many of portobella sandwiches do. It was a delicious and hearty dish. We also enjoyed the homemade potato chips that accompanied the sandwich. We liked them even more when our server, realizing the batch on the plate had not been anointed with the balsamic glaze or blue cheese we'd ordered, hustled back to the kitchen and had a new order made up. With the sweet-sour sauce and tangy cheese applied, we could have made a meal of these - and almost did.

And, for the final round: deep-fried Oreo cookies, which were tasty little cookies covered in funnel cake dough then fried. They came with chocolate sauce for dipping, which may sound like overkill, but wasn't.

Service was the one factor that isn't quite in fighting shape. Although our server was pleasant and wanted to please, we only saw him sporadically. There wasn't anyone assigned to visit the table a few minutes after a course is served to make sure everything is fine. In fact, there didn't seem to be anyone in the front of the house making rounds of any sort through the large room. Timing of courses could have been better, too.

But the glitches weren't enough to spoil the meal or discourage us returning. It's a young restaurant after all - having opened less than two months ago. It will need some time to get into championship shape. But Rivals has plenty going for it already and is likely to prove a formidable adversary for the rest of the sports-bar pack. ¦ If you go Rivals Sports Kitchen

Miromar Outlets, Corkscrew Road and Treeline, San Carlos Park; 495-4655

Ratings: Food: . . . ½ Service: . . ½ Atmosphere: . . . .

>>Hours: 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. every day >>Reservations: No >>Credit cards: Major cards accepted. >>Price range: appetizers $4.94-$$9.95; entrees, $8.75-$15.95 >>Beverages: Full bar >>Seating: Roomy booths, standard tables, high-backed bar stools or tables with large umbrellas on the outdoor patio.

>>Specialties of the house: three-bean vegetarian chili, soft pretzel sticks with dipping sauces, pork chops with bourbon and green apple reduction; The Italian Stallion (burger with sweet peppers, mushrooms, marinara and mozzarella) >>Volume: Moderate >>Parking: Free parking available in lot directly outside entrance. >>Web: www.rivalssportskitchen.com

. . . . . Superb

. . . . Noteworthy

. . . Good

. . Fair

. Poor