Here in Bangor there just aren't that many choices if you're looking for a
good restaurant. We're talking an area where the folks think that Olive Garden is a real Italian joint, a proposition that anyone from NY, NJ, CT, RI or MA would get a chuckle out of.
One of the best and oldest, Pilot's Grill, just went belly up this past winter.
The Denny's here is on the highway, so all the state troopers are cooping in there late at night and the drinkers don't go near the place.
Bangor and Brewer are about evenly split between smoking and non-smoking establishments, so each crowd can pretty much avoid each other if they so desire, but the chances of getting anything but a pedestrian meal in either venue is nil.
Our Denny's is near the I-15/I-86 interchange (off I-86). We don't have enough troopers to find them camping anywhere. The drunks keep the local PD busy at 2 AM. As for Olive Garden, we're still too "small town" to attact their attention. We have a very old Italian bar/restaurant. It is small and permits smoking. My wife and I hit the place about once a week. Great salads, spaghetti, rigatoni and ravioli. The bar is too smoky for me, but the restaurant side is ventilated enough to ignore what is left. Closed on Sunday. The Italian restaurant (Buddy's) has half the floor space of the Denny's, yet never reeks. The tobacco stink at Denny's is detectable 10 feet from the front door...even in a light wind. I wonder what Buddy's does differently?