New restaurant, Man Cave, mimics Hooters atmosphere

THE MAN CAVE
1522 W Lindsey St.
Rating: 3/5

What is a man cave? Well it’s not your boyfriend’s bachelor pad — it’s a new restaurant on Lindsey Street.

I didn’t know what to expect from a restaurant called The Man Cave. After a little bit of help from Google, I came to the conclusion that it was a Hooters knockoff.

That set an expectation of what The Man Cave was going to be: wings, beer and women that want tips. So I set off to review The Man Cave the way it should be: with a group of men.

The Man Cave looks decently normal; however, that normality stops when you notice the huge trampoline right by the front door.

I found out this is where the waitresses go and beckon people to come to The Man Cave, a spectacle I am unsure of how to feel.

The restaurant is dimly lit, with most of the light coming from the array of TVs that line the back and side walls, which were all tuned to the same channel. The wait staff was composed of women dressed in skimpy faux-referee jerseys and altered workout shorts.

We took a seat at one of the booths, and our waitress greeted us with our menus. The menu offers a nice mix of typical bar food: pizza, beer, sandwiches and appetizers.

Like any good Hooters copycat, The Man Cave makes it evident its wings are its stand out item. The menu lists 37 different flavors of wings, which includes normal flavors, such as spicy BBQ, but also offers some more abstractly titled flavors, such as “Thunder” and “Sooner.”

We ordered a couple of beers with chips and salsa for our appetizer, along with some wings for our main meal.

From there, a common theme began to present itself: The service was slow. The wait staff didn’t seem terribly knowledgeable about the prices and was unable to answer simple questions. It took a while to get our drinks, which speaks for how understaffed the establishment currently is. There were only two waitresses and a bartender working the entire restaurant.

After a long wait, we got our chips and salsa, along with free queso. The queso and salsa were decent — nothing spectacular. They also gave us a corn and black bean salsa, which was actually one of my favorite dishes I had during my visit.

However, the appetizer was sparse in chips, and with the speed of service, we were left with a bunch of full salsa bowls.

The wings were delicious, although they come priced at about a dollar each. I picked curry, “Thunder” and “Sooner” for my flavors, none of which disappointed.

I expected the curry to be more of a sweet kind of Thai flavor, yet they went for more of an Indian flavor. The “Thunder” and “Sooner” both were pretty good. The “Thunder” flavor was a normal tangy wing sauce with some jalapeno pieces on it, while “Sooner” was a spicy ranch mixture.

The food was pretty good in the wing department, but the beer selection wasn’t anything to write home about.

Overall, it has pretty high prices for somewhere to just hangout, which feels out of place for its target audience. It is hard to choose to eat there when Buffalo Wild Wings offers similar selections. If it could speed up its service, possibly rework its pricing and keep people in the seats, it will have the makings of a really good cave.

For now, though, it is resting in a mediocre-cave limbo.

Shawn Stafford is an international area studies junior.

Shawn Stafford

Shawn is a former staff member of The Oklahoma Daily who worked as Life & Arts Reporter.