Delicious Pub Food

The Dancing Bear menu at The High Dive (476 Carolina Way in Highlands) is marvelously seductive. But keep your wits about you – especially on Trivia Night.

Our visit to the High Dive on an electric summer’s evening was ostensibly a deliberate effort to evaluate the Dive’s new food truck service – The Dancing Bear.

But somehow the evening morphed into an unforgiving morality play worthy of Sophocles, with a few scenes lifted from The Odyssey. This tale of seduction and overweening hubris, just like those tales cultivated in the theaters and salons of BCE Athens, began in the most seductive of settings.

The High Dive, also known as The Highlands Dive, has become something of an insider’s getaway from the stresses of Plateau life.

We were there to sample The Bear’s menu of fine pub food and we were prepared to give in to our basest gustatory desires for deep fried, slightly messy fare.

And the Bear’s kitchen delivered in spectacular fashion – within a few moments our table was groaning under the weight of a generous Cheeseburger; a deeply comforting bowl of Macaroni & Cheese; absolutely irresistible Warm Pretzels served with both Mustard and Melted Cheese; a basket of French Fries; and Chicken Tenders carefully battered and spiced.

Blissful.

And our Bartender Renata kept our table lubricated with a select Stout, a precisely constructed Margarita; a straightforward Gin & Tonic and, for me, a sweet Tonic.

So you see – my friends and I were being cleverly seduced into a gentle stupor, just as Odysseus and his hapless crew were truckled by Circe and her generous helpings of wine and cheese.

And here’s the thing – though we were sent to survey The Dancing Bear’s bill of fare on The Laurel’s dime, my friends and I showed up on a Thursday night specifically to defend our first place standing on The High Dive’s legendary Trivia Night.

Jollied by that hard cider and buoyed by an early question about the size of late Cretaceous dinosaurs (about which, I know more than 97 percent of Plateau residents), I became infected with a dangerous strain of hubris

We blazed through three rounds of progressively tricky questions and at the end of regular competition we were securely in first place.

With the arrival of the Bonus Round, we elected to swing for the fences and bet everything.

And this is where this Trivial drama reaches its tragic denouement – we were asked to name the Capital of Wyoming.

Swollen with pride, I announced to my teammates that the answer was, of course, “Casper.”

My teammate Stuart (the same Stuart Ferguson who reviews local books in this magazine and an unimpeachable scholar in his own right) asked me not once, not twice, but three times whether I was sure of my answer.

Without a doubt, I replied.

And, of course, the correct answer was “Cheyenne.”

So, a lesson proposed by the Greeks nearly 2,600 ago, and delivered once more by a visit to The High Dive: Whom the Gods Would Destroy They First Drive Mad with Delicious Pub Food and a Generous Barkeep.

by Luke Osteen