Locale Profiles: Step Back in Time to Ogie’s

At Ogie’s Trailer Park, the West Side’s newest bar / restaurant, you can relive the zoot suit glory days of the ’50s.

First impression: I was pretty floored by the interior decoration. I’m really not a stickler for décor; bars with puke from the ’80s staining the walls usually do just fine for me. But it’s clear that every detail, right down to the lava lamps and the fake flower pots, has been carefully curated. The walls are lined with some of the great American cat rip-offs, like an American Gothic and a Warhol. Weird, spiky light fixtures that look like some kind of underwater mine hover over a spacious room with plenty of tables, bright retro stools and a pretty sizeable crowd for a Thursday night.

The drink selection was as eclectic as the décor. You can sit back and slam three dollar ‘Gansett tall boys all night or treat yourself to a weirdly classy bottle of champagne, like the Dom Peringnon. In addition to a huge collection of bottles, they offered eight draft beers (three of which were kicked) including a few Dogfish Heads and a Foolproof, at a pretty steep price. They don’t let down cocktail enthusiasts, with options like the Moscow Mule, the Bloody Mary or the Juan Collins.

The guys in the trailer-shaped kitchen are doing a lot with a little, slinging old-fashioned  favorites like sloppy j’ogie and Granny’s Boos’ Badass Bacon Burger, and fancy French-sounding stuff like mac and cheese croquettes and string bean casserole with béchamel sauce. But the zenith of the menu seemed to be the tots, so I chose the “Canadian Style,” figuring they would just be poutine-style with curds and gravy. What I got was some kind of bizarre alchemy that seemed to defy the laws of tots themselves. There was a fried egg on top, a cream cheese elixir, some kind of gravy and bacon.

Ogie’s Trailer Park has something for everybody; if you can’t have at least a mildly good time, there may be something deeply wrong with you. Even the soundtrack, with the Pixies to gangsta rap to dubstep attempts to appease every taste. The best part is that this place has come nowhere near its potential because of the frigid conditions. A sweet beer garden with chairs and a fire in the back and a few tables near the entrance means that Ogie’s will turn this mostly dead strip of Westminster into a ragin’ good time in the summer. The fact that it closes at 2am on weekends is huge, as nearby bars (not mentioning any names, E&O and Avery) shutter at a paltry midnight! So swing yourself on over to wig out to this hip new scene. Or something.

Ogie’s Trailer Park is located at 1155 Westminster St in PVD.