Who would call a serious restaurant “Birravino”.
It sounds like the name of a drunken clown in an Italian Puppet Show:
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“Birravino” = “Beer-wine”
Well, I’m no connoisseur, but I really liked the first thing I ordered there (Orecchiette Rapini) and Mark thought the Chicken Parm (whatever their name for it was) was pretty good. I will admit that’s a small sample.
That location is stellar. He is right near two hotels (and others if you count surrounding areas.) Plus the traffic filters into the town from 35 and the parkway via west front. People may disagree but that is a prime location. Basils used to be decent but after going to birravino twice I never went back. This is coming from a mug club member who was a patron for a long time.
The old 5 dollar wing, burger and pizza specials were the jam back in the day. I still rock the mug collection at my bar…good memories.
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What mugs are those? All their mugs use to be brown. I use to get a kick out of the guys who came in with jugs to get filled with beer. Cork her up and hit the road!
Yep, that’s pretty much their strategy and positioning in one word.
Jr that’s about a decade worth of mugs. Each year they came out with a new mug.
I can’t knock it too much. It was a good stretch. The specials for mug club members were awesome if you were in the crew and knew the bartenders. It is a shame it turned to crap 
I could swear on my life they had the same dreary brown mugs, with their members number sharpied on the bottom, hanging there for years. I never remember seeing mugs of any color. Maybe they stopped the colors after 2009?
I still have my key to my cigar locker from Ashes!
Maybe it was the lighting lol. They definitely changed colors each year as you can see in the pic.
Does anyone know if/when triumph is opening?
I swear it’s the mug club that keeps that place open. Even if it’s not official anymore, there are always buts in barstools at that place.
All of that said I do have to say that they make one of the better meatballs in our area.
But at $ 16 for one with a small portion of homemade spaghetti it’s no bargain.
Viking I presume you have had Joanne’s meatball parm? I’m not a meatball parm guy but this is one a can do
Sorry by Joanne was referring to Oceanview in long branch. Good mb and chicken parm there which you probably have tried. I like fratellis chicken parm.
I thought you meant Joanne Trattoria:
It’s also supposed to have pretty good meatballs. I’ve been meaning to give them a try.
I thought I read that someone asked recently about the up-charge for the “bubbles” at Birravino. I had some business entertaining yesterday and we agreed to meet at the Dublin House since I had read their out door bar was open and I felt that was about as good of an option as we had. Alas, I show up and the outdoor bar was NOT open ((sigh)) and looking through the window I did not like the indoor bar scene.
I decided to go over to Birravino since I knew they were committed to doing responsible out-door dining maybe they had an outdoor bar set up. They did not, however they were gracious enough to let me and my colleague occupy a table (we were the only table at 5pm) in their large very social distanced spaced main tent. I would say the tables are easily 10’ feet a part and the heaters made it very comfortable. We stayed for about an hour and there were 4 other tables occupied by the time we left. I got a good look at the private igloo’s which are actually more like greenhouses than an igloo and honestly are very private.
I have not done any tent dining and only indoor dined once (which admittedly was a mistake at a location which shortly after my visit wound up being a super spreader location) however I would be comfortable dining in the private igloo or the larger tent. They do seem to be doing it “right”, obviously our comfort levels all differ, but this seems to be about as good as it can get.
I didn’t inquire about pricing but if you are crawling out of your skin (kind of like I am) for a nice dining experience this might be your spot. Whatever they are charging it seems like it would be worth it. My only word of caution is I would book an early reservation because I didn’t get to see what their between reservation cleaning regimen is, however my guess is it’s probably pretty good. (that is just a guess, err on the side of caution and be the first one to use it for the night, that is my personal advice)
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Also, just FYI - to rent those little igloos isn’t free. I think it is between $25-100 based on the size and if it is lunch or dinner.
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That’s what I was referring to. I’m not sure how much it is, but I would pay it for a nice night out.
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Funny enough I just bought one for my patio! I’ll get my friend Dave the caterer and we could go into biz!
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