Midway pub aims to be 'nice place to hang out'

MOSES LAKE — It’s taken Janeen Wagner a lot of work to turn Neppel’s Dockside — now known as Midway — into “a nice place to hang out.”

“There was a lot of cleanup to do,” Wagner said. “We wanted to change the atmosphere, change the clientele. So we’ve added dartboards, updated the deck,and redone the tables.”

“We wanted to clean up this stretch of Broadway,” she added. “To be able to go out and have a good time without problems and fights, to feel that small, neighborhood feeling.”

It’s still a bar — a place to get a beer and burger and watch a Seahawks game on one of seven giant TV screens — but the beers on tap are ample, and as local as they can make them, and the food is what you would expect from a good-quality pub.

“We get rave reviews about our burgers,” Wagner said.

Wagner and her husband Tony farm and own at least one other business in Moses Lake, and they’ve spent the better part of the last six months slowly getting the Midway into shape.

But it didn’t all come together until the last month, Wagner added.

The Midway now offers a number of specials — $1.25 tacos on Taco Tuesday, 75 cent bottles of Rolling Rock on Wednesday night, five drinks for $5 on Thursday Ladies’ Night, among others — and hopes to keep customers coming back.

Thursday morning, Wagner has just had the deck cleaned. The back gate remains open to the lake, she said, so boaters can still find their way to the Midway and a have a beer and a bite to eat.

“We want this to be a little hidden gem,” Wagner said.