But first, a few words about this site.  It’s a work in progress.  I’ve got a lot done on it and will continue to tweak and add features.  Be forgiving.

Okay, last night we went to John Currence’s new place, Snackbar.  It’s right next door to Big Bad Breakfast, which has recently gotten a ton of fanfare from being named one of the top 50 breakfast joints in the country by, I think, Esquire.  Or maybe it was Men’s Journal.  One of those.

Anyhow, since BBB is only open as late as lunch, Snackbar uses its kitchen for its dinner-only menu at night.  John or perhaps his wife has made a temporary website that features some construction photographs as well as a fairly up-to-date draft of the final menu.  For the open house event, there was no picking what you wanted to eat.  The staff just brought out food.  We had the “lobster mac & cheese” (Conchiglie pasta, not elbow macaroni), the Oysters Rockafeller, and Paté de Campagne.  All three were unbeatable.  I didn’t expect such good food on such a busy first night.   And free!

Ground-level seating.

Like his last two restaurants, BBB and Bouré, this restaurant is pretty completely accessible.  Doorways are fine, bathrooms are good.  However, there’s a raised section near the bar that is up three steps, making it unreachable.  Fortunately there’s also a nice ground-level table seating and banquette area across from the raw bar.  This limitation of the seating area might provide call for complaint by some but I didn’t mind it.  I didn’t feel excluded or like I was at the kids table.   Waitstaff is on hand so there’s really no need to have to go up to the bar.  One of the people visiting our table pointed out that the ground level seating are has a bit of a Twin Peaks vibe.  Nice.

The food was delicious.  It was an open house event and just about everybody in town showed up.  Paige Osborne, owner of the recently burnt Yocona River Inn, was there and was accepting donations for the rebuilding.  You should consider helping her out if you were a fan of her restaurant.  In fact i took a moment that night to ask her if she’d given accessibility some thought on the rebuild and she was way ahead of me.

One last note about Snackbar (and BBB for that matter):  Some manual wheelchair users may find the ramp to the building slightly difficult.  It’s an old strip mall building and the ramp is, like a lot of public ramps in Oxford, is a little steeper than what would be allowed now.