Bar Review - Pauly D's not for snobs

The bar choices for the evening were Cherry, Cavu or Pauly D’s. By name alone, the first two conjured shiny marble, soft, suggestive red lighting and barflies who always look more streamlined in reality than they do in your Friday-evening machinations. The third seemed bent on cheap chicken wings, big hair and 397 channels of sports.

My two girlfriends were too polite to tell me with words that they had left the cheap chicken wings in the dust when they burned rubber out of their respective small mid-Atlantic towns years ago. So it was done instead with a chorus of groans and synchronized eye rolls — I, not excluded — when we pulled into the strip mall parking lot, the only car there, and faced the neon sign.

But the groans were muffled as we stepped into the light-rock-jazz jams and immediately down shifted to inside voices.

The place was virtually empty and looked to be more for diners, couples looking for an inconspicuous place to break up or grown children feeding their conservatively hungry, out-of-town parents. Kind of like Denny's but with more wood. And hardly the place for women who count shopping at Inserection among acceptable dinnertime conversation.

It's true we had already made up our minds about this place, and our backsides hadn't warmed the barstools for two seconds before my friends simultaneously pulled out their cell phones as if to dial up a night on the town with more social opportunities — the single girl's Automat.

Putting our first impressions aside, we learned that the bar only recently opened because of zoning issues that kept the owners from securing a liquor license. The bartender told us they're launching Wild Wednesday Martini Nights to market accordingly.

We were told enthusiastically of the menu's pith but instead drained three bowls of complimentary goldfish crackers, which the bartender lovingly refilled each time. We collected invitations to the martini night kickoff party before deciding we were too good for the place. If hindsight is as accurate as they say it is, perhaps we might give Pauly D's one more shake before succumbing to the snobs the ATL has turned us into.

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Pauly D's. 1371 Clairmont Road. Mon.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sun. noon-10 p.m. (Nightly closing time varies based on crowd.) Live music Sundays and Tuesdays. Wild Wednesday Martini Night includes discounted martinis, $4-$6. Well brands include Stoli and Cuervo and are $4 as are most bottled beer selections. 404-486-9318. www.paulyds.com.??