mr. peabody’s bar & grill / encinitas, ca

Mr. Peabody’s is a cool little dive bar/grill in Encinitas, CA that I was invited to check out last week. It’s tuckered into a strip mall right off the freeway at Encinitas Blvd. It’s kind of hard to spot since the sign doesn’t really stand out and it’s way back in the lot, but it’s worth a visit to this semi-hidden spot!

They got some sweet happy hour deals as well as Daily Specials plus live entertainment nearly every evening. You can see all of the menu here: Menu Page 1 | Menu Page 2 | Menu Page 3 | Menu Page 4

We started out with some beers, Stacey making me try her Sculpin which I did not enjoy AT ALL. I had a Yellowtail which is something I actually enjoy not like that damn bitter Sculpin. UGH. I was the one really making this face after I had a sip of that stuff. I think she’s making this face because I told her I was going to take her photo and she had no choice in the matter. If I had thought about it, I’d have positioned it so the shark would be right behind her shoulder. Damn it. Lost opportunity!

[mushroom saute]

Stacey and I share a great and intense love of mushrooms. For years we have talked about how someday we’re going to have our own little mushroom party with all mushroom items and that no one else is invited so we can eat all of the mushrooms items ourselves. Gangster.

Naturally when I saw the word “mushroom” under “sides” I knew I had to order it for us. It’s simple mushrooms cooked with onions (again, another favorite) and sprinkled with green onions (oh baby). This was a delicious dish and we treated it more like an appetizer. We only wished that it came with some crusty bread to better stuff this into our gullets. They do have plain ciabatta bread you can order or you can do what we did and order this:

[garlic cheese ciabatta]

It’s ciabatta bread with a crusty layer of Parmesan and garlic. Really yummy with the crust on top, though a bit hard to eat with the mushrooms (though trust me, we totally managed to do it – we were quite determined).

[frings]

I can never resist ordering Frings. It always seems better to have both options together – you want some fries with your food but onion rings are also so delicious. Frings is the answer!

The fries are pretty average – cooked nicely, crispy, but nothing “wow” about them. The onion rings though have really thickly cut onions on the inside so there’s a lot of onion packed into these suckers. Nice simple breading which lets the onion shine through since it’s super thick. The other rad thing about Mr. Peabody’s is that all of the dressings and sauces are housemade! We tried a bit of the ranch which was delicious – nice and creamy, a bit tangy – really delicious with the frings.

We visited on a Tuesday and so I figured I’d try Tuesday’s Daily Special – which is a 1/2 burger. The cheese and bacon are extra but that just lets you customize it however you’d like as they have a bunch of addons you can do to make the burger your own. I got cheddar cheese which was really nicely melted over the ENTIRE burger (YUM) plus some nice crispy bacon on top. You really cannot go wrong with the addition of a little bacon and the bacon here is a bit thick.

I asked for my burger to be medium rare and lo and behold, I actually got that! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ordered a medium rare burger and gotten medium well instead… irksome. This patty was juicy and flavorful and very, very thick. It had a nice char on the outside and was placed on a toasted bun (no sauces come on it – you must add it yourself). Overall a very yummy burger.

[potato soup]

I decided to also try out the potato soup. This was more like a loaded baked potato soup – it had lots of cheese, more green onion and bits of yummy bacon on top. It’s a creamy soup with chunks of potato in it. My only complaint about this soup would be that I wished the potato chunks were a little smaller and cooked maybe a couple of more minutes – they were slightly hard and I would preferred them to be a bit creamier.

Stacey took this photo of me on her phone as I’m digging into the soup – so cheesy! I enjoyed the overall flavor and loved the amount of cheese in this. I had most of this for my lunch the next day (I ended up dumping the leftover mushrooms into it and making a potato-mushroom soup).

[buffalo chicken salad]

We had talked about trying the wings and instead Stacey ordered the buffalo chicken salad so we could try the buffalo sauce. She swapped out the ranch dressing for bleu Caesar dressing so we could try that (and it sounded good with buffalo chicken anyway). This salad… is MASSIVE. I don’t know if you can tell, but that is a really, really gigantic bowl. You can’t even see any of the lettuce yet, that stuff is on the bottom and you have to get through the mound of chicken and delicious housemade croutons to get to the healthy stuff. The chicken was moist and flavorful and the buffalo sauce had a nice kick of spiciness. The bleu Caesar dressing was also really excellent with the mix. This salad could easily serve multiple people and Stacey took most of it home for leftovers.

[mud pie]

This is the only dessert Mr. Peabody’s offers so naturally I had to get it. I warned Stacey earlier but she forgot and kind of had a look of doom on her face when the waitress asked if we wanted to try the mud pie and I said “YES!”. I did warn her.

This is another house made dessert which has mocha fudge ice cream (oh yes), an Oreo cookie crust (mmm), caramel and fudge (hot damn), real whipped cream (praise the lord) and almonds. Oh and there’s a cherry but Stacey and I are firmly in the “no maraschino cherries” group so we pretty much pushed that off the top and promptly ignored it.

This thing is a work of art with all of that ice cream and caramel and real whipped cream. It was heavenly delicious and we did not come close to finishing it. We tried folks. We tried.

All in all I got to say Mr. Peabody’s is a pretty rocking little divey joint with lots of tasty food options! They’ve got various happy hour specials and daily specials to keep you in check with your budget and everything’s delicious so your tummy and your wallet will leave pretty happy. Check it out if you have the chance!

Mr. Peabody’s Bar & Grill
136 Encinitas Blvd.
Encinitas, CA 92024
760-753-7192

Open 7 days a week 7am-2am
Breakfast: 7am-4pm
Dinner: 4pm-Midnight (1am Friday & Saturday)

Disclaimer: I was invited to dine here by the restaurant. Our meal and drinks were complimentary. I was not further compensated for this review and all opinions stated here are my own.