Cramdon's Tap & Eatery

At Cramdon's Tap & Eatery, the best order depends on the day. Sunday brings all-you-can-eat broasted chicken; Monday is wing night; Tuesday turns to a pickerel dinner; Wednesday is burger day; Thursday pairs steak and shrimp; and Friday lands on halibut fish and chips. Six days each carry their own feature, and that calendar tells you most of what you need to know about this South Windsor comfort pub on Dougall Avenue: broasted chicken and wings sit at the centre, and the rest of the week fills in around them. It is a place regulars plan their visits by.

The broasted chicken is the house read. It comes with coleslaw and a choice of soup, garden salad, or fries, in two-piece, three-piece, and ten-piece formats sized for one diner or a full table. The wings are the other anchor, bone-in or boneless in eight-, twelve-, or sixteen-piece orders, with a sauce list long enough to take them mild, sweet, smoky, or hot — mango chipotle, dill pickle, hot honey, Buffalo Caesar, garlic parmesan, Korean BBQ. Between the Sunday chicken and the Monday wings, those two orders carry the identity, and the long sauce list is what keeps the wing order from ever feeling like the same plate twice.

Past the anchors, the kitchen leans into stacked comfort food. The Beef'd Up Grilled Cheese piles braised beef, cheddar, mozzarella, and goat cheese onto garlic-toasted focaccia with housemade crispy onions; confit duck wings come under mango chipotle or Korean BBQ; and the Nashville Crunchy sets crispy chicken in housemade Nashville hot oil on a brioche bun with dill pickle chips, coleslaw, and chipotle aioli. The sandwich board runs just as deep — a Clubhouse built on turkey breast roasted in house, a Steak Sandwich of New York striploin on a garlic-toasted bun with Swiss and crispy onions, and a Reuben stacked with Lester's corned beef on marble rye.

What ties the long menu together is a kitchen that does the small work itself. The buttermilk dill ranch, the Nashville hot oil, the crispy onions, and the beer batter on the halibut are all made in house, and even the everyday sides — poutine under Quebec curds, deep-fried pickle coins, a five-cheese jalapeño dip — get the same treatment. That habit holds across burgers, build-your-own penne or fettuccine, and Greek and fajita steak salads, none of it straying from the comfort-pub register Cramdon's has worked since 1997.

The breadth is built for groups as much as for regulars. Catering and barbecue menus run separately from the dining-room menu, and the kitchen stays open late toward the end of the week, into the early hours on Friday and Saturday when a South Windsor crowd wants somewhere to land after the night winds down. The midweek specials pull their own weight here too — Wednesday's burger day and Thursday's steak and shrimp give the back half of the week a reason of its own. It is the kind of neighbourhood table a mixed group can settle on: someone after broasted chicken, someone after a Cowboy Burger, someone there for pickle coins and a pint while the game is on.

For all the menu's reach, Cramdon's keeps its identity narrow where it counts: broasted chicken, wings, and a weekly calendar that hands South Windsor a different reason to show up each day. The sauces are made in the kitchen, the chicken comes out broasted, and the specials hold their slots week after week. Come on a Sunday for the chicken or a Monday for the wings; the other five days each have their own argument to make.