A giraffe looks down from above the dining room, antler chandeliers glow overhead, and a bear appears to be making its way up a towering stone fireplace. That is not the setup for a roadside attraction off some lonely highway out West.
It is dinner at Pub 199 in Mount Arlington, New Jersey, where the outside gives away almost nothing and the inside goes completely, wonderfully off-script.
Set at 199 Howard Boulevard, not far from Lake Hopatcong, this Morris County pub has the kind of personality you cannot manufacture with a few framed photos and a neon beer sign.
It feels part hunting lodge, part seafood joint, part “wait until you see this” local legend. The menu leans hearty, the room is packed with wildlife mounts, and the whole place has that rare New Jersey confidence of knowing exactly what it is.
The Unassuming Mount Arlington Pub With a Wild Surprise Inside
Pub 199 does not exactly announce itself like a spectacle from the road. The building is modest, the sign is simple, and the name sounds like the kind of place where you would expect cold beer, a burger, and maybe a few regulars at the bar talking about traffic on Route 80.
Then you walk in, and suddenly your brain has to recalibrate. Mount Arlington is a small Morris County borough near Lake Hopatcong, so the setting already has a little outdoorsy character baked in.
Still, nothing about the approach prepares you for the full hunting-lodge treatment waiting inside. This is not a restaurant that hung one deer head over the bar and decided it had a theme.
Pub 199 went all the way. The surprise is part of the fun.
You step from ordinary North Jersey into a room filled with mounted animals, wood-paneled warmth, antlers, stone, and the kind of visual overload that makes people stop mid-sentence. It is the rare local restaurant where new visitors spend the first few minutes looking up, looking across the room, and pointing things out before they even look at the menu.
That contrast is what makes the place so memorable. Outside, it is a neighborhood pub on Howard Boulevard.
Inside, it feels like someone combined a rustic lodge, a taxidermy gallery, and a family seafood restaurant, then somehow made the whole thing feel casual instead of staged. The official Pub 199 site describes it as a gathering place for “family, friends, and food lovers,” which is accurate, but a little understated.
This is the kind of gathering place where the conversation starts before the server gets to the table, because everyone is still trying to decide which animal they noticed first.
Step Into a Hunting Lodge That Feels Miles Away From New Jersey
There is a very specific New Jersey dining-room look: sports banners, framed local newspaper clippings, a few beer signs, maybe a photo of the owner with someone who played for the Giants in 1998. Pub 199 is not that.
Pub 199 looks like it took a left turn somewhere in the Rockies and ended up in Mount Arlington with a full seafood menu. The room has that lodge feeling because the details are not timid.
The walls are lined with mounted wildlife. Antler chandeliers hang overhead.
The large stone fireplace anchors the room like something you would expect to find after a day of skiing, fishing, or pretending you know how to chop firewood. It is dramatic, but not fussy.
That is an important part of the appeal. Some themed restaurants feel like they are trying too hard to impress you.
Pub 199 feels more like a long-running local place that simply committed to its own strange and wonderful identity years ago and never looked back. You can sit under a chandelier made of antlers and still order a cheeseburger, a plate of wings, or a Taylor ham and cheese without anybody making a production out of it.
The bar area helps keep the place grounded. Pub 199’s own site leans into the sports-pub side too, noting that TVs are set up across the bar and patio for games throughout the week.
So yes, you can watch a faceoff, kickoff, or tipoff while surrounded by enough wildlife to make your group chat demand photos. That mix is very New Jersey in the best way.
It is big personality without big pretense. One minute you are admiring the lodge décor, the next you are debating whether to start with two dozen steamed clams or fried calamari.
Somehow, both things make perfect sense here.
The Taxidermy Collection Is the Main Attraction
Let’s be honest: people do not first hear about Pub 199 because someone quietly recommends the side of fries. They hear about it because of the animals.
The taxidermy collection is what turns a regular meal into a story. According to the original feature that inspired this article, the room includes a wide range of mounted animals, from North American game to more exotic species, with bears, deer, elk, birds, and African wildlife all contributing to the “am I really seeing this?” effect.
A giraffe head watches over the dining room. A zebra appears in the mix.
A bear mount near the fireplace gives the whole room a bit of theatrical drama. What keeps it from feeling like clutter is the scale of the place.
The mounts are everywhere, but they are part of the architecture of the room rather than a few random objects tacked up as an afterthought. They give diners something to discover from almost every seat.
You may notice one animal when you walk in, another once you sit down, and a third halfway through dinner when someone at your table suddenly points toward the ceiling. It is also the kind of décor that breaks the ice fast.
Bring someone here for the first time and there is no awkward silence while everyone reads the menu. The room does the work for you.
People compare favorites. Kids try to count animals.
Adults pretend they are too sophisticated to be impressed, then immediately take a photo anyway. Not everyone is naturally drawn to hunting-lodge décor, and that is fair.
But even if taxidermy is not usually your thing, the sheer commitment here is hard not to respect. Pub 199 is not dabbling in a theme.
It has built an entire dining experience around one, and that confidence is exactly why the place sticks in your memory.
The Fireplace Alone Is Worth Looking Up From Your Plate
Some restaurant features are background details. Pub 199’s fireplace is not one of them.
It is the centerpiece, the landmark, and probably the thing your eyes keep drifting back to between bites. The stone fireplace rises through the room with the kind of presence that makes everything around it feel more lodge-like.
It is surrounded by mounted animals and rustic lighting, so it does not just warm the space visually. It gives the whole room a focal point.
Even in photos, it reads as the heart of the restaurant; in person, it gives you that “okay, this is a lot” moment in the best possible way. The antler chandeliers deserve their own little nod here, too.
Lighting can make or ruin a dining room, especially one with this much going on visually. At Pub 199, the overhead antlers add to the hunting-lodge mood while casting the kind of warm glow that makes the space feel welcoming rather than cavernous.
That matters because the room could easily tip into novelty if it felt cold or museum-like. Instead, the fireplace and lighting pull everything together.
They make the wildlife displays feel like part of a lived-in lodge rather than a static exhibit. You are not walking through a collection.
You are eating in the middle of it. And yes, this is one of those places where you may want to put your phone away after taking the first photo, because the room is better when you actually sit with it.
Look up from the lobster tails. Look past the plate of clams.
Notice the stonework, the mounts, the ceiling, the bar, and the little details tucked into corners. Pub 199 rewards the kind of diner who pays attention.
Seafood, Steaks, and Pub Favorites Keep Locals Coming Back
The décor gets people through the door, but the menu is what makes Pub 199 more than a one-time curiosity. This is not a delicate small-plates situation.
The official menu is built around seafood, steaks, sandwiches, burgers, platters, and pub staples, with plenty of prices that still feel refreshingly straightforward for North Jersey. Seafood is a major part of the identity here.
Pub 199 says it owns its own seafood company, meaning the fish and shellfish served at the restaurant come directly through them, and the pub also sells fresh seafood to take home. That is a pretty good flex for a place that also looks like a wilderness lodge.
The starters set the tone. Shrimp cocktail is listed at $13, two dozen steamed clams at $18, fried calamari at $14, and wings in a few styles hover around the $10 to $11 range.
From there, the seafood signatures get serious: two lobster tails are listed at $36.95, snow crab legs at $35.95, and both can be paired with shrimp cocktail or two dozen clams. King crab legs and whole lobster are marked at market price, which is exactly what you expect from a seafood-heavy pub that knows people come hungry.
Steak lovers are not left wandering in the woods either. The T-bone steak is listed at $25.95, while the porterhouse comes in at $30.95, with options to add shrimp cocktail, a lobster tail, or two dozen clams.
That surf-and-turf energy fits the room perfectly. It is hard to imagine nibbling something precious and tiny under a giraffe.
Pub 199 calls for a plate with some confidence. There are also useful backup plans for mixed groups: chicken parmesan, veal parmesan, eggplant parmesan, burgers, chicken fingers, fried chicken baskets, clubs, hot sandwiches, and a kids’ corner for children 10 and under.
In other words, nobody has to pretend they want crab legs just because everyone else is ordering them.
Why Pub 199 Makes Such a Memorable New Jersey Day Trip
A good New Jersey day trip does not always need a boardwalk, a lighthouse, or a historic mansion. Sometimes it needs a lake nearby, an easygoing meal, and one restaurant that gives everyone something to talk about on the ride home.
Pub 199 works especially well because of where it sits. Mount Arlington is right by Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey’s largest lake, making this an easy add-on if you are already spending time in the area.
You can make an afternoon out of the lake, wander through nearby towns, then head to Howard Boulevard for dinner in a room that feels nothing like the rest of your day. It is also practical, which is not a small thing.
Pub 199 lists its hours as noon to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and noon to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
The address is 199 Howard Boulevard in Mount Arlington, and the restaurant publishes its phone number as 973-398-7454, which is handy if you want to double-check current hours, specials, or market-price seafood before heading over. The appeal is not that Pub 199 is polished into some glossy destination version of itself.
It is memorable because it is so firmly its own thing. It is a sports pub with a patio and TVs.
It is a seafood-and-steak spot with lobster tails, clams, crab legs, burgers, and parmesan platters. It is also a room where a bear, a giraffe, antlers, stonework, and a whole lot of local legend somehow share space without asking permission.
That is why people remember it. New Jersey has plenty of good places to eat, but not many where dinner feels like stepping into someone’s wildly specific imagination and realizing, halfway through the meal, that the food is pretty satisfying too.