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Restaurant Review: BY
RICK GRANT
Entertaining U Newspaper, 9/9/04
At the new Twisted
Sisters, inside the old Nolan's at the
beach, everything is homemade and different, from the eclectic
American
cuisine to the hand-drawn signs, to the hip decor. Twisted Sisters'
motto is:
Cuisine, Cocktails, and Catering.
Forget any preconceived
notions of this location's past
sports bar incarnation-Twisted Sisters is a welcome change from the
mediocre
bistros and wing bars. It's a unique and creative restaurant and bar
featuring live entertainment Tuesday through Saturday. I slipped in to
check out an acoustic duo called Just Because and to talk to the two
vivacious co-owners of this unique eatery and bar-Sunny Gray and Tracy
Arrendale.
The first thing I
noticed was the decor is tasteful,
feminine, but not too girlie-girl, and in place of the line of
televisions over
the bar, the ladies have installed lava lamps. Tracy's collection of
old
vinyl records are framed in groups on the wall. Lounge chairs and
couches are
arranged throughout the room with fancy silverware and antique
decorations on the tables.
Sunny and Tracy have a
successful background in professional
catering and they are continuing that tradition in this eatery with
two
catering vans and the Twisted Sisters' large kitchen. Their menu is
American cuisine with a New Orleans slant. Twisted Sisters also plans
to start
serving breakfast this Sunday at 9 AM.
The ladies serve a
variety of seafood and other delicacies
such as Thai chicken, crab cakes and calamari steaks. Thank heaven its
not
another wing joint, there are enough of those around town. But they do
serve their style of "twisted wings." The twisted theme is pervasive
through
the menu.
In keeping with the
eccentric theme of this eatery, there is
a ping-pong table where the pool table used to be located. Like me,
Sunny
said that she grew up playing ping-pong, so they installed a
professional
table tennis setup in the former pool room.
TS's menu includes
homemade salads, soups, and entrees such
as shrimp and grits, crab cakes, oysters Nigiri, drunken mussels,
calamari
steak, Thai chicken, Twisted Wings, and angel hair pomodoro. They also
serve sandwiches such as the fish and grilled sandwiches. They also
offer
many popular vegetarian selections.
For all the tech-heads,
Twisted Sisters is a wi-fi hot spot
for wireless laptop operation or Blackberry communications.
Twisted Sisters' weekly
entertainment schedule is: Tuesday,
Homemade Radio live 8:00 to 11:00 P.M. with $2.00 Smirnoffs and $2.00
drafts. Wednesday is Open Mic Night hosted by Zach Attach. Thursday is
acoustic night with Just Because from 8:00 to 11:00 P.M. Friday is the
Nightfall Trio featuring Don Casper on guitar from 9:00 P.M. to close.
Sunday 7:00 to 8:30 P.M. is Open Mic Poetry and Nolan cranks it up at
9:00 until close.
The duo playing Thursday
night, Just Because, consists of
two lads who are also in a progressive rock band called Hatrick-Jeremy
Baker on acoustic guitar and Joey Ball on electric guitar. They jammed
as an
instrumental duo improvising on original motifs. Sometimes their
improvisations worked and sometimes they didn't, but it fit the
positive vibes of this ultra-hip bar.
The JB lads join Jordan
McDowell on vocals and Mitch Dyer on
drums for their progressive rock punk band called Hatrick, which will
be performing at the Freebird October 22nd.
Hatrick has a CD out
called Don't Worry About It with four
hard-hitting original songs, which, if you are not hip to the
chain-saw-growl of progressive rock, it might rearrange your DNA.
Hatrick's music is fast,
frantic, and hotwired to shock one
into submission. The intro on the first song, Won, was interesting,
and then
it segued into what I call nervous breakdown rhythm, which stimulates
young people to gyrate and shake like they just touched a live high
voltage
electricity line. It's good clean fun-and necessary shock treatment
therapy for the tangled brains of today's youth. More importantly,
it's anger
management for the 2000s. The manic music cancels out the bad vibes.
Twisted Sisters is
located at 1266 Beach Blvd. next door to
Max's Restaurant next to the old Worth Antique location. This is no
ordinary
restaurant and bar. It's twisted. | 
