You Won’t Be Blue at Blue Mountain
Blue Mountain (north south side of 87th and Highway 2, inside the gas station; 402-421-1877) is a relatively new entrant to Lincoln’s dining scene. Many of you will be pleased to find out it is not Yet Another Mexican Restaurant. In fact, it is something quite different. Unique, even.
Blue Mountain bills itself as a “Smokehouse Grille” featuring “Wood Fired Cooking”. I’m not so sure I concur with that billing; it doesn’t feel like a “smokehouse” at all. The restaurant features a few salads, ten toasted sandwiches, and a variety of pizzas, plus garlic bread and a soup of the day. (My scanner is broken, so if you want to check out a menu you will have to put up with these lousy photos: Outside | Inside) Drinks include the usual pop, tea, and coffee, of course, but you can get wine and beer as well. (My father’s favorite, red beer, is even listed on the menu.) Don’t forget to save room for dessert! Blue Mountain features more than a dozen flavors of Ashby’s ice cream, smoothies, apple crisp, and other desserts.
The restaurant atmosphere is cozy and inviting. Or at least, as cozy and inviting as a restaurant can be when it shares a building with a gas station convenience store. Patrons order at the counter and then either carry out or sit at one of a handful of tables or 4-person booths. Decorations are minimal, but they include the pizza oven along one wall and some goofy salt and pepper shakers. I do suggest they consider adding some quiet background music that matches the restaurant’s mood. The aural environment last night felt a bit empty.
Service was most certainly friendly. The ordering process wasn’t particularly speedy. That was no big deal last night, but I could see how it might generate a line in some conditions. I felt like the actual time between ordering and receiving our food, between 5 and 10 minutes, was appropriate for the type of food being prepared and the nature of the establishment.
We ordered three distinct items. First up was a kid’s meal ($4.29) for Robert, our three year-old. Kid’s meal options include hot dogs, pizza bites (or something like that), and spaghetti. Robbie chose the spaghetti. There was plenty of spaghetti topped with a little white cheese, and the meal included a slice of garlic bread. I tasted the spaghetti and while it’s nothing to write home about, it wasn’t bad for a kid’s meal.
The Missus and I split two items, one sandwich and one pizza. For our sandwich we opted for the turkey cordon bleu ($5.99), ciabatta topped with turkey, ham, roasted bell peppers, lettuce, provolone, and pesto mayo. The bread was fresh and the sandwich overall was very tasty. The pesto mayo on top and bell peppers on the bottom merged nicely with each bite. Although the flavor was excellent, the temperature was odd. On the menu board the sandwich is described as being toasted, but our sandwich didn’t really know if it was hot or cold. Either way would have been fine, but the middle ground didn’t work for me. I suspect the sandwich was finished before our other items and had cooled before it was served. That’s something for Blue Mountain to work on.
Next up: a 7” BBQ chicken pizza ($4.99; 12” is $8.99). The pizza featured chicken, red onion, cilantro, and mozzarella on top of bbq sauce. For me, a barbecue chicken pizza hits or misses almost entirely based on the sauce. Doughboyz (RIP) used to get it right; daVinci’s gets it close. And Blue Mountain? The sauce wasn’t quite there for me, coming in too far on the sweet side. Unfortunately my taste buds aren’t sophisticated enough to make any suggestions for fixing it. Let me be clear: the sauce isn’t bad, it just doesn’t work for me on a pizza. Give it to me in a different context and I think I would like it fine. As for the rest of the ingredients, the chicken, onions, cheese, and cilantro all worked well together. The Missus said the crust reminded her of a Ritz cracker. I still don’t know if that was a compliment or not, but I liked the crust very much. The bottom of the pizza was blackened by the oven, while the top was tastefully browned. In between was a pleasant combination of crispy and chewy, with an almost buttery taste. In the end, although the bbq sauce wasn’t my favorite, the overall pizza was very good.
I should note that pizzas come in 7” ($3.99-$5.99) or 12” ($5.99-$10.99) sizes. The 7” will serve one small-to-average appetite, while the 12” is likely to serve two.
Robbie finished off the meal with a single junior scoop of strawberry ice cream ($1.29). He had no complaints!
The final verdict? The overall value is very good. For $21 we received three quality meals and three drinks, plus an ice cream cone to top it off. That’s not too shabby these days. We probably won’t go all the way out to 87th and Highway 2 just to visit Blue Mountain, but if we’re in the neighborhood there’s a good chance we will stop by. I encourage you to do the same.
The Comments
Nikkidemas says Nice review June 11, 2009 at 9:39am
Good review - I’ll have to check it out. Sidenote: Robbie seems to be getting cuter & cuter every time you post a photo!
Fletch says Not to nitpick, but actually June 11, 2009 at 11:03am
Not to nitpick, but actually it’s on the south side of the highway.
Mr. Wilson says RE: Not to nitpick, but actually June 11, 2009 at 11:10am
That’s what I said. North side—I mean, south side of the highway. Aw crap.
Fixed!
Andrew says Is the menu online anywhere? June 11, 2009 at 11:32am
Is the menu online anywhere? Pizza and pasta sounds like it will have veggie options, but was there anything else?
Mr. Wilson says RE: Is the menu online anywhere? June 11, 2009 at 11:54am
Nuts, I even meant to include a veggie-related paragraph. I tend to forget now that my wife is more of a carnivore. Then again, I’m eating less and less meat these days. I guess the universe is balancing itself out.
I added links to a couple bad photos of the menu to the review. You can grab them here: Outside | Inside. As you can see, vegetarians aren’t Blue Mountain’s primary constituency.
MCB says teh cuteness! June 11, 2009 at 5:30pm
Haven’t tried Blue Mountain on a Lincoln trip yet, but I have to award you and Robbie Cutest Blog Photos of the Year!