Parkersburg HDJ Review - The Root Beer Shack

Who doesn't love frozen root beer? After the last A&W in Charleston closed in the early 80's there was no other root beer place around that offered this frozen goodness. We'd pass by Huntington's Frostop Root Beer and see the giant mug on top of the restaurant with its representation of a head of frozen root beer, but it was only a cruel joke: Frostop has no frost on top. Nor does Stewarts. Nor does Farley's. It seemed that frozen root beer had become just another reason to long for the good ol' days. 

So when we saw some chatter on a recent WV Hot Dogs Facebook post by a hot dog enthusiast from Parkersburg about the hot dogs at The Root Beer Shack, it piqued our interest.  We were thrilled when he mentioned that the root beer was "icy," hoping that meant that it was full of the wonderful icy sludge. But enough about root beer, for now; we're here for hot dogs, right?

Well, you're gonna have to wait on that. Because we sure did. Arriving (we thought) before the lunch rush would allow us to get in and out in short order, but before we even placed our order we were warned that there would be a 20-25 minute wait for food. OK, no worries because we didn't have anywhere else to be so we got our root beer and found a table to wait. (We noticed that many other patrons who came in after we were seated did not choose to wait. While we were there at least 12 people left after hearing about the long wait.)

We had to request mustard and onions as extras, because The Shack's "Slaw Dog" only comes standard with chili (except since this is the Ohio Valley it's called "sauce") and slaw. We were asked to choose between "spicy" and "sweet" sauce, so we got one of each. 

After the expected delay, our hot dogs arrived at our table and we immediately noticed that they were prepared on New England Style buns (and for the umpteenth time, there is no such thing as an "English" bun!) that had been buttered and toasted. The slaw looked decent if a little coarse (although the presence of carrots will offend some purists), but the flavor was a little odd. Like maybe it was a bit past its "best by" date. The spicy chili was a little spicy, but nothing like Fairmont spicy. The sweet stuff was bland. 

Overall the hot dogs weren't very good. Filling, yes, mostly because of the voluminous bun, but not deserving of more than a 2 Weenie rating. 

The consolation prize was that we did get to wash them down with some really good root beer with a frozen icy head, just as we hoped we would find.