Last week I met an old college friend for lunch at a somewhat new restaurant out near my office in Mason, The Old Bag of Nails Pub. This is the first Cincinnati area location for the Columbus based chain of just over a dozen restaurants. It sits in the space formerly occupied by Blockbuster in the Kroger plaza on Kings Mills Road just west of I-71.

Outside

The Old Bag of Nails is one of only a few open storefronts in the rather depressing shopping plaza and parking was a breeze in the massive lot out front. The outside of the building is very plain and simple, and it is actually rather tough to see that a restaurant is operating on the inside.

The inside of the restaurant is actually much larger than it would appear from the outside. There is a large bar on one side and numerous booths and tables on the far side of the room. There were a few others tables occupied during our visit, but the restaurant appears well capable of handling additional crowds. Our server only had a couple of tables so she was constantly at our side asking if we needed anything else, which was nice.

Turkey Reuben

I ordered the Turkey Reuben on marble rye with thousand island dressing, melted Swiss cheese and coleslaw ($8.99). I should have paid better attention when ordering the sandwich as I would have much rather had the more standard sauerkraut than their runny slaw. Since the slaw was on the bottom of the sandwich, it immediately caused the lower piece of bread to become overly soggy and it quickly fell apart. I actually had to eat most of the sandwich with a fork and knife. My complaints aside, it was a fairly good sandwich and it was served with perfectly cooked thick steak fries.

My friend has visited the restaurant before and was complimentary towards their fish offerings. On this visit he had Gaylord’s Fish Dinner - freshwater farm-raised white fish filet, broiled or blackened, topped with garlic butter and served with wild rice and a vegetable garnish ($11.99).

Overall during my lunch visit to the Old Bag of Nails Pub our service was wonderful, the food was average, and we were in and out in well under an hour. There is definitely room for improvement as far as the food is concerned, at least with my very sloppy sandwich.