Cox: Eat late at Sebastopol’s Lucky Star Dive Bar

It’s a brave tavern that bills itself as a dive bar, but Lucky Star Dive Bar in Sebastopol does so proudly.

And if by “dive bar” you mean a place that’s shabby and populated with seedy characters down on their luck, then Lucky Star isn’t really a dive bar at all. Oh, it has the prerequisites - a couple of dart boards, juke box, pool table, a Terminator pinball machine with a graphic of electronic-eyed Arnold Schwarzenegger - but the vibe is definitely upbeat.

The décor is clean, simple, and fun, unlike the former occupant of this space, the Greenhouse Tavern, which really was a dive bar. Different nights bring different treats. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, a sign offers “PBR and well shot $5,” which translates to a shot of cheap booze and a cheap beer. Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. there’s a trivia contest. On Fridays, karaoke starts at 9 p.m.

Lucky Star has a full bar, so you can enjoy cocktails if you wish. And you can enjoy them late, as the place stays open until 2 a.m. every night except Sundays, when it closes at midnight.

Food service starts at 6 p.m. nightly and runs until closing, offering something unusual for the night owls among us: Food after midnight.

There’s nothing fancy about the food. Chef Adam Raymundo has one burner in the back, so if you show up with your posse in tow, be prepared to wait while Chef Raymundo does his best with what he’s got.

The menu is usually five items and it can change daily or stay pretty much the same for a while, depending on the chef’s whim. On a recent night, it featured a winter chicory salad, hot wings, and that down-home southern favorite, red beans and rice.

On a first visit, our party ordered everything on the menu. Here’s the run-down:

First up was the Skillet Fried Chicken ($7 ??½), featuring three pieces of juicy dark meat (it’s so easy to overcook chicken; all props to the chef for getting the meat right) whose batter was aggressively salty, crunchy, and fried to a dark brown. The chicken was helped along by two other southern staples, a properly made buttermilk biscuit and cole slaw that unfortunately lacked enough vinegary tang to give it pizazz. In addition, the slaw was room temperature rather than refrigerator cold. All in all, not a bad bite for seven bucks.

Then came a bowl of Mac and Cheese ($6 ???), and it was a very good bowl at that. The pasta wasn’t macaroni but rather conchiglie, those little seashell-like pastas, tossed in a creamy sauce made with sharp and savory cheddar cheese, then dusted over with shaved Parmesan.

The kitchen places food orders on the back end of the bar, and the bartender is your waiter. In our case, she brought us an astonishingly imperfect bowl of Beef Stew ($8 ?). How Chef Raymundo can go from a glorious bowl of mac and cheese to this beef stew shall remain a mystery. It was a small bowl, with a short handful of pieces of browned beef in a brown, watery soup with an odd flavor that no one in our party could recognize. Also in the mix were pieces of turnips and carrots. With the bowl came a piece of marrow toast, according to the menu. One pictures the chef digging marrow from roasted beef bones and spreading it like thick butter on the toast, but if there was marrow there, it was indiscernible to us.

Things got back on track with the next item, very much like a Vietnamese banh mi, but cleverly called Banh Ni ($7 ??½) because the featured meat was rabbit sausage. The sausage was delicious, joined on its ciabatta bun by cilantro and lettuce. Each bite was satisfyingly spicy, and for those who like even more heat, there was a carrot and jalapeño slaw on the side.

Dessert was a Warm Cookie with a Shot of Milk ($2 ?). You have a couple of choices of cookie, based on white or dark chocolate. The cookie is thin and served warm. The milk is cold. It’s comforting. When was the last time someone gave you cookies and milk?

To sum up: Eat cheap late into the night.

Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review for the Sonoma Living section. He can be reached at jeffcox@sonic.net.

Lucky Star Dive Bar ?and Restaurant

Where: 116 South Main Street, Sebastopol

When: Open 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays, and on Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 2 a.m. and Sundays from Noon to midnight. Food service from 6 p.m. until closing all nights

Reservations: First come, first served, but call for take-out at 755-0322

Website: https://www.facebook.com/luckystarsebastopol

Wine list: NA

Ambiance: ??

Service: ??

Food: ??

Overall: ??

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