Chuck E Cheese for adults: Popular vintage arcade bar, restaurant coming to Lexington
A popular Louisville restaurant and bar known for fun and food is expanding and coming to spot near downtown and the University of Kentucky campus.
The owners of Recbar, a grown-up games spot with beer, burgers and more, will be opening a new vintage arcade bar and restaurant in Lexington. Tilty Bob’s is expected to open at 319 Cedar St., on the corner of South Broadway, in January 2022.
The new restaurant and bar is expected to open in January 2022.
Corey Sims and Tony Thomas opened Recbar502 in Louisville in April of 2016 with the theme of “Games, Grains, Grub: Bringing Retro Back.” Both are veterans of the bar business and wanted to run their own place. They hit upon the concept of a pinball and video games arcade steeped in nostalgia and the concept has taken off.
They opened a second location, Recbar812 in New Albany, Ind., in February 2020, just before the COVID pandemic hit. But the restaurants have come back strong and now they are ready to expand.
“We have been looking in Lexington for a while now, initially at larger properties that are more the footprint of our current two Recbars. But nothing fit,” Sims said. So they started looking a little smaller and found the three-story vacant restaurant blocks from UK and close to downtown and Rupp Arena.
“That building itself is beautiful. So we decided to create a smaller-scale concept to fit,” Sims said. They named it “Tilty Bob’s” after the tilt bob inside old-school pinball machines that send the game into “Tilt” if players tip it too much.
“We were trying to think of something fun,” he said. “We’ll probably come up with some kind of a mascot to go with it.”
Even thought this restaurant will be smaller, Sims said it will still have “a decent amount of games, 50-60 different machines,” including pinball and classic video arcade games from the 1980s and 90s. All will play with a special token rather than quarters.
“There’s something super nostalgic about a branded token,” he said. And the tokens will work at all their locations.
The sense memory of tokens, lights and sounds is a big part of the draw. “It’s similar to Chuck E Cheese or Malibu Jack’s but vintage and for grownups. The nostalgia really hits home for those 30 and up.”
Sims said that first-time customers are often excited to see games they remember and some they’ve forgotten.
Some of the arcade games they have as of July in Louisville include After Burner, Centipede, Contra, Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Ms. Pac Man and Space Invaders. Nostalgic pinball games include Batman, Lethal Weapon, Royal Rumble and Star Wars. Sims said if there is room they will have skeeball and arcade basketball in the Lexington location.
“I think it’s one of those things that let adults kind of feel like a kid again. They see some stuff that the might have played at a movie theater,” he said. “It brings back happy memories for me.”
Sims said that what sets their places apart from other similar concepts are the sheer quantity of games — they have hundreds and are always looking for more — and the food.
The food menu is still in flux but they will bring over many favorites from the Recbar menu, heavy on burgers and sandwiches, pub comfort food, shareables and appetizers, he said.
“We want people coming in in groups,” he said.
Tilty Bob’s won’t have as much of a restaurant feel as the Recbar, he said. The ground floor will be mostly a bar with dining and a few games, while the second and third floors will be all games and bars with lots of regional craft beers and bourbons.
“It won’t be 21 and over all the time, but it will definitely feel more ‘bar,’” Sims said. “The crowd will probably trend a little more toward the adult side, while Recbar is family friendly until 10 p.m.”
The Cedar Street building was most recently the Lexington location of Napa Prime, but that restaurant closed in 2019. Built as new home for JDI Grill in 2012, it also had been an Alexander Bullitt’s. The property was sold to a group of investors in November 2020 in a master commissioner’s sale for just over $1 million.
This story was originally published October 18, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
