Scores Sports Bar and Grille is a fairly new bar that opened up this past September. Located at 82 Main Street, this bar is hard to miss with a painting of a giant baseball and “Scores” written over it on the outside.
I have never gone to Scores for food or drinks, but I have been on the inside and can get a good feel on what this place is about.
Scores is a casual place, and not too out of the ordinary from what you’d expect a sports bar to be like. However, I must add that Scores has a more modern feel to it, and looks a lot cleaner on the inside than other bars around Keene.
The restaurant has a lot of seating available which includes booths, high-top tables and additional seats by the bar. The bar itself is large and has 16 different types of beers available on tap.
Scores also has a dance floor and a pool table. Sports paraphernalia can be found all over the bar, and even the tabletops have photographs of sports teams on them. The bathrooms are even labeled “Boys Locker Room” and “Girls Locker Room.”
With so many bars in Keene, I think the one feature Scores has on all of them is the amount of TVs that are located in the bar. Thirteen flat-screen televisions were hung on the walls and throughout the restaurant, making it impossible to have a bad view when watching a game. They also have every major sports package available for the TVs, so those who do not get a certain sports channel at home can come to Scores and watch it.
Karina Barriga Albring / Senior Reporter:
An assortment of alcohol including 16 different draft beers lines the shelves behind a Scores Sports Bar and Grille employee.
Owner Ben Fournier said the martinis and margaritas are very popular. The food menu includes your typical American bar food: burgers, wings, pizza, sandwiches and salads, along with a variety of appetizers. Food is served all day, but toward the end of the night, the menu becomes more limited.
“Our burgers and our wings are definitely what I think makes us. I think the burger is one-hundred percent definitely the best thing on the menu. It’s a rare mix of short rib, and it’s definitely something that’s unique that you don’t find around here by any means. I don’t think anyone has the same type of burger that we do,” Fournier said.
According to Fournier, what makes the burgers here different from any restaurant is that a chef named Pat Lafrieda came up with a burger that is a mix between short rib and ground chuck, and Scores is one of the few places that serves these burgers.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights are usually the busiest for Scores Sports Bar. With a dance floor and a DJ every Friday and Saturday night, the music venue out back is where many people gather to enjoy their drinks, listen to music and dance.
Another bar on Main Street that has live music, DJ’s, and a dance floor is McCue’s Billiards and Sports Lounge. I’ve often wondered if they are a big competition for Scores since McCue’s was originally the only place in Keene with a dance floor and a DJ on the weekend
“There’s definitely some places out there that also can provide the same stuff that we do, so we just do what we can to try and do as many different things as possible. We really pride ourselves in thinking outside of the box,” Fournier said.
Some of these outside-of-the-box events include trivia on Monday nights and acoustic music on Wednesdays.
Caroline Curley, a senior at Keene State College said she only used the dance floor at Scores once, but would prefer to go to Scores instead of McCue’s.
For Curley, it’s the large amount of TVs Scores has that keeps her coming back.
“I mostly like all of the TV’s that they have, because you can watch all the sports games that they have there and I like their tables, how they have pictures on all the tables of Boston sports, because I’m a big Boston sports fan,” Curley said.
A junior at KSC, Jesse McNeil, said he has only been to Scores once, but has not gone back because their prices are too high.
However, he said he enjoyed going to watch the Patriots play because they had a big projector that they brought down in addition to all the televisions that they already have.
Overall, Scores is a great place to go for those who are huge sports fans, or simply want to go to hang out with a good crowd and enjoy some food, drink and music in a sporty atmosphere.
Scores may be the new bar in town, but people are catching on quickly and making Scores their first pick when going out.
“We definitely know there are some other places for people to go, but, being the new bar in town and having a really nice, clean atmosphere and really great staff, that’s something that we really pride ourselves on,” Fournier said.
Brooke Stall can be contacted at bstall@keene-equinox.com