"If there’s ever a place I would immediately suspect the onion rings would be frozen, it would be a place like Sportman’s Restaurant. An unassuming sports bar in a summer tourist destination, it seems like a place designed for efficiency first and taste second. The onion rings arrive in a red basket with white-and-green checkered paper, a slight though insignificant departure from the norm. I’m pleasantly surprised by how the onion rings appear to be hand breaded, although less so by the severely cracked and patchy nature of that breading. They are cooked to a light, golden brown and, with the exception of the top ring, mostly positive in retrospect. The platter is rounded out by a mysterious container of the amorphous and obligatory sauce. There are fewer surprises in the taste. They’re about exactly what you would expect from a sports bar on the shores of Lake Michigan: a greasy fried circle of onion and salt. The onion taste is mild, the batter slightly seasoned. They’re designed to be quick, hot, and forgotten. Most of the time, the sauce is either a complement to a decent onion ring or the one shining light bringing flavor, depth, and moisture into something lacking. For the first time in my memory, this mystery sauce actively detracts from the good parts of the onion rings, bringing the entire dish down. The sauce is incredibly, almost painfully, salty, a salt-bomb raining shrapnel of salinity down on on my unassuming and once-peaceful taste buds. Every bite is nothing but salt and, for all I know, this sauce is just industrial grade mayonnaise mixed with half a cup of salt. One could almost forget one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes is mere minutes away, and instead that it’s the Dead Sea just over the horizon. Much like the taste, the texture couldn’t be more middle of the road. The batter is crunchy, but not too crunchy. The onions are soft, but only just-too-soft, a bit of slippage eking through the cracked exterior. Beyond the slippage, there’s no significant textural issues, but nothing really stands out either. I think that my subconscious interpretation of value is inherently pegged to the cost of living in west Michigan, but years of experience has given me ample opportunity to weight appropriately. $4.49 for a side of onion rings of middling quality is overpriced, by that baseline, but about on the money for a place like Ludington. If you’ve ever had onion rings before, you’ve had these. If you’ve ever been to a sports bar before, you’ve been to Sportsman’s. They are the prototypical basic ring, almost an art unto itself, but dragged down into the mire by whatever salty, creamy beast unleashed in the sauce."
