For endurance, not many area restaurants can beat the Dixboro spot currently known as Roger Monk’s. Opened in 1928 as the Country Cupboard, when Plymouth Rd. was a major thoroughfare, it served family-style meals to travelers and neighboring families–including my husband’s–for decades. Eventually new owners dignified the space with a formal decor, menu, and name–the Lord Fox–that endured for decades.

During the long Lord Fox hiatus, I worked there, very briefly, under a chef who screamed more than he spoke, and for owners who regarded their employees with suspicious disdain. The chef, however, had real talent, and the owners had serious ambitions, and they struggled within the constraints of the Lord Fox tradition. While old-time patrons often ignored their carefully constructed specials, the kitchen didn’t neglect those diners’ perennial favorites–great slabs of rosy-pink prime rib and whole duck halves, skin mahogany-brown and crispy, meat succulent and juicy, sauce savory and deeply flavored.

But as the twentieth century drew to a close, the Lord Fox seemed stuffy and out-of-date. In 2007, Erik Kolodzinski bought the place from his parents, and three years later, he plopped a bar and TV in the middle of the dining room, tossed the carpeting and white tablecloths, tweaked the menu, added new cocktails, and made up a new name: Roger Monk’s.

Living in the area and excited at the prospect of a casual, comfortable neighborhood joint, my husband and I visited soon after the renovation. But dinner that night, though pleasantly passed on the outdoor deck, was expensive and unrewarding, particularly my roast duck, ordered in memory of those I’d helped prepare many years before. It arrived topped with a pear puree and accompanied by a brandied cherry bread pudding–both disconcertingly dessert-sweet, without any savory notes.

Four years later, though, friends assured me that good meals could be had at Roger Monk’s. I had also noticed an increase in cars there on Friday nights–a consequence, perhaps, of Dixboro’s seasonal afternoon farmer’s market and the restaurant’s coinciding happy hour. So I visited again several times during the fall.

The restaurant hadn’t changed much–it still feels like a half-finished renovation of a tired, worn-out building. The dining room smells musty, like a boarded-up lake cottage before it’s reopened for the season. The bar, usually occupied by neighborhood gents loudly proclaiming in colorful language, doesn’t fit comfortably in the room, nor do the utilitarian tables and chairs. Everything needs paint or freshening or replacement. The real fireplace is wonderful, a draw for many on a chilly night, including, one evening, a table of young hipsters fleeing Ann Arbor’s trendy lounges. Unfortunately, only those sitting at high-top tables near the bar can appreciate the crackling fire.

Surprisingly–at least to me–that duck dish, in its entirety, is still on the menu. I ordered it again to see if the plate had evolved–a bit of cheese, perhaps, in the pudding, some duck or chicken stock in the sauce, less sugar everywhere. But it’s just as it was four years ago. The bird was fine, if less moist than its Lord Fox predecessor. I scraped off the too-sweet sauce, enjoyed the meat and the broccoli garnish, and saved the bread pudding for the next day. (In fact, the same bread pudding is offered, without apparent irony or embarrassment, as a dessert, when it tastes quite delicious.)

The kitchen’s real strength lies in the cooking of meat, specifically beef. A special coffee-rubbed rib eye was nicely enhanced, wonderfully rich and perfectly cooked. A new menu item–New York strip–was also tender and beautifully seared, and the hamburgers, of which there are many variations, along with a few other sandwiches, came out consistently cooked as ordered.

At one meal, my husband’s salmon, dusted with blackening spices, would have been excellent cooked medium rare, but he hadn’t requested a specific temperature, so it arrived well done; the flavor remained good, but it was drier than I would have liked. My nut- and spice-encrusted rainbow trout lacked much of any flavor and could have been fresher. A pasta dish, heavy with mushrooms in a cream and cheese sauce, thoroughly satisfied my mother, though I found it a bit bland. Accompanying most of these entrees were a rice pilaf or roasted potatoes and a vegetable–steamed broccoli this autumn–which, while providing minerals, vitamins, and fiber, weren’t exactly inspired.

Inspired and assuredly not bland were two soups–West African peanut and North African split pea–we picked off the special board. Piquant, savory, and complex, they suggested underused talent in the kitchen. I would order each one again, particularly with winter upon us.

Portabella fries, served with a goat cheese dip, made another good starter, crunchy in a cornmeal coat with meaty interiors. Butter- and beer-sauteed shrimp also piqued the appetite, but we found the crab cakes bready and stale. Equally stale was a chocolate pave we had for dessert one evening.

Like the rest of our experience at Roger Monk’s, we found the service inconsistent–sometimes efficient, even professional, other times untrained and inattentive–but nearly always friendly.

The restaurant is trying–and often succeeding, judging by the bar crowd–to be a neighborhood joint, promoting cocktails named for historical Dixboro sites, local beers, happy hours and yappy hours (dogs and their owners on the deck, in conjunction with the nearby humane society), a relatively inexpensive and expansive menu. And I enjoy dives with good food or warmly appealing places with mediocre food. But at Roger Monk’s there isn’t quite enough of either, at least for me. I wish there were, because I’d love to be a regular at my own neighborhood’s meeting place.

Roger Monk’s

5400 Plymouth Road

662-1647

rogermonks.com

Appetizers $6-$13, sandwiches and salads $4-$12, entrees $16-$29.

Tues.-Sat. 3-10 p.m., Sun. 3-9 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Wheelchair friendly.