GOOSKIS

Pierogies are for lovers.

It only happens about once or twice a year, but occasionally I am shocked by the food you can get in a really dirty bar that smells like someone peed in an ashtray. I'm thrilled to say that Gooskis is this type of bar. The pierogies are excellent. They offer a few different varieties from Pierogies Plus in McKee's Rocks including potato, cottage cheese and sauerkraut. One of my happy hour patrons complained that the onions weren't right because some guy named Billy wasn't cooking that evening, but I thought they were fine. If you've never been to Pierogies Plus, they really know their stuff. They'll even allow you to customize your own pierogies with kick-ass ingredients such as hot sausage, bacon and jalapenos.

Now, the pierogies were good, but the wings really stole the show. I consider myself a bona fide expert on the subject of chicken wings. When I was growing up, my parents both worked long hours and it was often difficult for them to come home and prepare meals. As a result, I consumed chicken wings roughly 3-4 times a week with a group of misfits at an old strip mall restaurant in Moon called Wiggy's.Wiggy's was so consistently fantastic that I've always been very skeptical when consuming other wings or when taking wing advice from amateurs.

Amateur wing eaters are pathetic clowns!

Gooskis makes the cut. Their wings are perfectly seasoned with an excellent crisp which is heightened by the very modest amount of breading accompanying each wing. I'm really at a loss regarding how I can convey the excellence of these chicken wings. I'll be taking my wing-fanatic friend from Oklahoma to Gooskis next time he visits. (The dude basically only eats wings and Italian food and if I took him to a shitty wing restaurant he'd probably kill me.)

Gooskis pro tips: the bloody-marry is damn good. I don't even like bloody-marries and I was extremely impressed by the quality. The juke box is fantastic as well, an extremely eclectic collection of music that can't be found on the modern Touchtones machines. Lastly, the patrons and bartenders don't mess around. If you want to bro around with your bros, I wouldn't recommend Gooskis. You might get a punk rock boot right up your ass.