Marlow's & River Rats

Saturday we went to Marlow's in Herrin around 5pm which is a little later than our normal trips outside of town.  After we got there the place filled up in a hurry.   They had Founders Solid Gold lager on tap so we ordered a couple of those while we decided what to have.  They also had Stag on tap which is always nice.
We finally decided to split a pizza and a pasta dish to get an idea of how each of them taste.  The pasta dish was expensive especially if you want to add meatballs, shrimp or chicken to it.  We decided to try to get spaghetti with red sauce which is their signature sauce.  Neither of us were very impressed with the dish and I doubt we get pasta when we go back but we will go back.
We'll go partly because of the sandwiches we had the first time we went there but primarily for the pizza.  We got the carnivore pizza and they let us sub mushrooms instead of meatballs.  It was awesome.  In fact it may passed Cummares as my favorite pizza outside of Quatros.  I don't eat pizza a lot leftover but I had a couple slices last night for supper and they were still good.  I really like the addition of salami and "cured meats" on the pizza.
In addition to letting us sub mushrooms they also gave us two salads instead of one at no extra charge.  Customer service like that will overcome a lot of shortcomings.
On the way back we decided to try out the new bar in Murphy, River Rats.  River Rats bills itself as a dive bar but it is far from it.  The inside of it is real nice, hardly any trace of the restaurants that were there previously.  They don't have draft beer or food which is a minus but several big tv's makes up for that.  While we were there several friends came in including Mike and Kathy from Boccelism.  We don't go out to bars very often anymore but this will be a place we will go now and then.