Nightlife in Middletown

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Escort your appetite into Mad River's cheerful, casual confines and sample some hugely portioned eats off of the enticing board of fare. Tasty meal preludes include Angus beef sliders ($8), flash-fried calamari ($7), and barbecue-chicken quesadillas ($7). Full plates can come topped with an assortment of crisp salads, sandwiches, burgers, and pasta nests, all of which pair impeccably with views of flat-screen TVs and competitive chewing. If your appetite tends more toward the alcoholic, set your tongue goggles loose on Mad River's bounty of brews on tap and encased in handy glass cylinders. Trivia takes place on Tuesday nights and tests the limits of amateur quiz masters and time-traveling Renaissance scholars alike.

Elliott's raises the drinking bar, lowers and fills it with beer, and raises it again with its 20-beer tap tower serving all craft beer. Happy hour runs 4 p.m.–7 p.m. Monday through Friday and refreshes with half-price drafts, $2 domestic bottles, $3 import bottles, and $4 mixed drinks. Delighted drinkers who arrive before 7 p.m. on Tuesday evening will discover that their drinks remain at happy-hour prices for the rest of the night. All customers are encouraged to ask about the nightly pint and bottle specials, but if you know what you want and won't be dissuaded, grab an all-day, everyday economy-buster special such as the $12 pitchers of any draft, $15 domestic bucket or $20 import bucket (six bottles per bucket), or $4 Orange Things. On NFL Sundays, kick back with the $1 domestic bottles whenever the Ravens are playing. Baseball fans can enjoy $2 domestic suds and $1 hot dogs during Orioles games.

Classic pub fare combined with ample big-screen televisionery makes Padonia Station an ideal venue to catch your favorite game while indulging in the menu’s flavorsome features. Await the seventh-inning kickoff with six French-bread slices of crab toast served with tortilla chips and salsa ($8.99), or chase three meatball sliders with a side of apple sauce ($7.99), then condemn your mouth to a blazing eternity with 10 wings from hell, bleu cheese dressing, and celery sticks ($8.49). While legume lovers kick home runs with a vegetarian quesadilla ($6.89), meateaters might find themselves enamored by the antics of a homemade, chili-topped, Texas-style burger ($8.99) or a six-piece buffalo tender dinner ($11.99).

Repeatedly deemed Best Rock Club and once voted Best Drunken Hookup Bar by City Paper readers, Ottobar hosts an ongoing calendar of local and touring bands, DJs, and comedians. With bars on both floors of the two-story venue, guests can sip on mixed drinks and beers while listening to live music or pumping quarters into an award-winning jukebox. The venue also hosts special nights including spelling bees and underground dance parties, wherein guests shake their hips to the sound of shoveling.

The Life of Reilly Irish Pub & Restaurant recreates the feel of an Emerald Isle public house. Framed jerseys decorate an exposed brick wall opposite the bar, above which flat-screen TVs showcase the latest international rugby matches. The bar itself stocks an extensive selection of Irish whiskeys, and its 10 drafts spotlight classic Irish brews such as Guinness and Magners Irish Cider.

But the kitchen's head chef, Dale Fields Jr., hasn't forgotten he lives in Baltimore. Alongside fish and chips and shepherd's pie, he underscores regional classics including a melt comprised of two mini crab cakes served on toasted english muffins. He rounds out his menu with other pub staples such as chicken quesadillas, beer-battered buffalo shrimp, and steak fries smothered with cheese and bacon.