Breakfast at the Grille in Galax, Virginia

For those who like a little dive bar with their breakfast, The Grille on N. Main Street in Galax, Va. is the spot.

Down and dirty, this is the place in Galax where you can drink a red eye (tomato juice and beer) and no one in the place will look at you strange. In fact, while you refresh with the red eye, the bartender will turn around and make you breakfast on the flat top grill.

The menu is limited for breakfast, and probably for other meals, but for those looking for little other than some eggs and bacon, there's no disappointment. And the meal cost exactly $4.

I think that the lunch special (whatever that was) weighed in on the menu at $4 as well.

The eggs were good, but the bacon was a little burnt. But the bread (two slices of otherwise ordinary white bread) tasted better than average, for whatever reason.

It was around 9 a.m. when I showed up and there was a guy in a sleeveless shirt sitting at one end of the lunch counter who was chunking a roll of quarters into what looked like a Megatouch video gaming machine.

Beyond him, towards the back of the bar there were some booths that provided the only other seating in the place besides the lunch counter which runs pretty much the length of a restaurant that is tucked in what from the sidewalk looks like the mail-slot slice of real estate. But The Grille has at least a 25-foot ceiling that keeps the place from feeling too small.

The great thing about The Grille was that the people behind the bar were nice and tended to their regulars with a familiarity and politeness that keeps people coming back for more than one meal, or one beer.

An upshot for smokers is that the place allows smoking, although in Virginia that's supposed to be banned in restaurants by the end of the 2009. Although, if you smoke Tahoe cigarettes, it appeared as if they sold them by the pack.

Also, I didn't review the songs on the juke box, but I didn't need to to because there was a TV mounted high above the bar that was tuned to a satellite TV music channel that was playing old country music.

The other great thing is that this is a place that can help make a memory for those tourists who are inclined to seek out places the natives go. The Grille is no International House of Pancakes ... I need not repeat.

If for no other reason it's a good place to strike out from on the morning when your planning on taking in some of what downtown Galax is made of, including The Rex Theater and scads of antique shops and boutiques.

The Grille is several doors up (in the same block and on the same side of the street) as a restaurant that is worth checking out too, called the Galax Smokehouse , which where the banana pudding is refreshing after a helping of pork brisket.