After visiting Costa Rica's southern pacific zone for a while, one begins to notice that Costa Rica is not bound by the normal 3 rules of picking a good spot for your restaurant. Those 3 being:
- Location
- Location and then
- Location
Jolly Rodgers is this in spades. It's just a bit off the beaten path.
What's kinda funny is that it is up by where I live in Escaleras so it is actually convenient for me. But if you don't live in Escaleras, you've got to engage your 4 wheel drive differential and get on up the hill.
The access is part of the charm. Nat & I went over for our loosely styled tradition. Saturday nights at Jolly Rodgers are a regular poker night and so we like to get there around 6:00, which is before the poker players show. We don't play poker, but we enjoy the festive feel of the evening.
We like to get there a little early so that we can enjoy Jolly Rodgers in "Quiet Mode". It has these times when it's super tranquilo. But it can change in an instant, and on Saturdays, and during special football nights, it gets to be quite the hot spot.
We enjoy a nice relationship with the proprietors, Storm & Amy. So we do some getting caught up when we get there, peruse the chicken wing selections (which has just about doubled in size recently) and then we choose our table and proceed to play Spite & Malice, or Boggle (5 across).
Sometimes we get to play our game, sometimes not. The flow of folks, most of whom we know and that know us, is constant, and the evening moves right along.
The Ceasars come out, followed by the wings. We usually get a side of bleu cheese with our wings for dipping. Its usually right about this time that the place really starts to fill up.
Storm is back there cooking up a storm, the bar is in full swing, other games are starting up around the place - but the main event hasn't yet begun.
The poker game starts at about 8:00, give or take. This is usually about the time that Nat & I make our exit, which happens slowly as we walk past the players setting up the chips and getting ready for the big game. I hear they had an evening with 27 players recently which set a new record.
If you are looking for a really nice evening during your visit to the Dominical & Uvita area, pencil in an evening at Jolly Rodgers.
