A giraffe peers down from the wall while a bear appears to scramble up a massive stone fireplace. Antler chandeliers hang overhead, steaks hit the tables beside piles of shellfish, and somewhere across the room, a television is carrying the night’s game.
This is not a lodge in Montana or a themed attraction tucked into the Poconos. It is Pub 199, a wonderfully unconventional restaurant on Howard Boulevard in Mount Arlington.
From the road, the building offers few clues about what is waiting inside. Cross the threshold, however, and the place reveals itself as part neighborhood tavern, part seafood house, and part wildlife gallery assembled by someone who clearly decided subtlety was overrated.
The décor gets most of the first-time attention, but the kitchen gives people another reason to remember the address. Steamed clams, crab legs, lobster tails, T-bones, and porterhouses make this much more than a place to stop for photographs.
An unassuming Mount Arlington pub hides a full-blown wilderness spectacle
Howard Boulevard is not where most people would expect to stumble upon a restaurant that looks as though it were airlifted from a mountain hunting lodge. Pub 199 sits at 199 Howard Boulevard in Mount Arlington, a small Morris County borough stretching from the southeastern shore of Lake Hopatcong toward Interstate 80.
The surrounding area has plenty of outdoorsy character, but the restaurant still manages to deliver a genuine surprise. Its low-key exterior and straightforward name suggest a familiar local bar where you might grab a burger, catch a game, and hear somebody complain about traffic.
Then the door opens, and the scenery changes fast. Wood, stone, antlers, and mounted wildlife fill the dining room.
First-time visitors tend to slow down as soon as they enter, partly because there is so much to take in and partly because the contrast with the ordinary roadside exterior is so dramatic. Pub 199 did not decorate one corner and call it a theme.
The wilderness look reaches across the room, climbs the walls, hangs from the ceiling, and surrounds the tables. That sense of total commitment is what separates the pub from restaurants that use a few rustic props to create a cabin effect.
Here, the visual spectacle feels inseparable from the place itself. You can come in expecting a quick lunch and find yourself studying the walls before opening the menu.
The location adds to the odd charm. Mount Arlington covers less than three square miles and sits along New Jersey’s largest freshwater lake, with boating, parks, and hiking nearby.
Yet even after an afternoon around Lake Hopatcong, stepping into Pub 199 feels like traveling much farther than a few blocks inland.
The enormous taxidermy collection turns dinner into a wildlife adventure
Try counting the animals and your food may arrive before you finish. Bears, deer, elk, birds, and African wildlife appear throughout the restaurant, with a giraffe surveying the dining room from above and a zebra adding an especially unexpected set of stripes to the wood-and-stone surroundings.
Some mounts command attention immediately. Others reveal themselves halfway through dinner when somebody at the table looks up and says, “Wait, was that there the whole time?” That delayed discovery is part of the fun.
The collection is not arranged like a quiet museum exhibit with neat labels and carefully spaced displays. It occupies the restaurant on a much larger scale, turning walls, corners, ledges, and architectural features into a sprawling indoor wilderness scene.
Every section of the room seems to offer a different view, which means two tables can have completely different creatures watching over dinner. The effect is theatrical without feeling polished into a corporate theme.
Nothing about Pub 199 suggests a focus group designed it. The animals, rustic details, and oversized visual flourishes have the accumulated feel of a place that developed its own eccentric identity and then kept leaning into it.
Naturally, the collection becomes an instant conversation starter. Children can search for animals while adults compare the strangest thing they have spotted.
Even diners who would never choose hunting-lodge décor for their own homes may find themselves impressed by the sheer scale of the display. This is not a lonely deer head hanging above a beer cooler.
It is a complete environment. Not everyone will be equally enthusiastic about taxidermy, and the setting certainly does not aim for neutral.
That is precisely why it sticks with people. Pub 199 knows what it is, fills the room with personality, and gives diners a story before the first plate lands.
A towering stone fireplace anchors the rustic lodge-like dining room
The fireplace is the room’s exclamation point. Rising above the dining area in rough stone, it has the proportions and drama of something built for a remote lodge rather than a Morris County pub.
A bear positioned against the stone makes the structure even more striking, as though the animal has been frozen midway through an ambitious climb. Without that fireplace, the wildlife collection would still be memorable.
With it, the entire room gains a center of gravity. The stonework visually organizes the antlers, wood paneling, mounted animals, and warm overhead lighting, pulling a potentially chaotic collection of details into one unmistakable lodge scene.
Look upward and the antler chandeliers continue the effect. They are not merely lamps placed in a rustic room; their branching shapes make the ceiling part of the décor.
The combination of stone and amber-toned light keeps the dining room from feeling like a cold exhibition hall. There is a great deal happening visually, but the room still feels like somewhere people settle in for dinner rather than shuffle quietly past displays.
Then a television shows a basketball game, somebody orders wings at the bar, and Pub 199 reminds you that it is still a neighborhood sports pub. Screens are positioned around the bar and patio for football, basketball, hockey, and other games, creating a funny but surprisingly natural contrast.
You may be sitting beneath antlers while watching a power play or checking the score between bites of calamari. That mix keeps the décor from becoming overly precious.
Nobody needs to whisper around the fireplace or admire it with solemn respect. It is simply the grandest feature in a lively restaurant filled with cold drinks, big plates, sports chatter, and the occasional newcomer trying to photograph a giraffe without blocking the aisle.
Steamed clams and seafood platters are as memorable as the décor
Two dozen steamed clams make a convincing opening argument. They are among the simplest dishes on the menu, but they fit Pub 199 perfectly: plentiful, unfussy, and meant to be shared across a table that is already busy pointing out wildlife.
Shrimp cocktail and fried calamari offer a couple of other familiar ways to begin before moving on to the restaurant’s larger platters. Shellfish is not a side attraction here.
Pub 199 says it operates its own seafood company, allowing fish and shellfish to come directly through the business rather than an outside middleman. Fresh seafood is also sold to take home, an unusual detail for a restaurant better known at first glance for its fireplace and taxidermy.
The signature section of the menu gets serious quickly. Diners may find lobster tails, snow crab legs, king crab legs, whole lobster, and combinations that pair shellfish with steak or additional seafood.
Availability and market prices can vary, particularly for lobster and crab, so the exact choices may depend on the day. There are smaller seafood options for anyone who does not want to wrestle with a mountain of shells.
A beer-battered shrimp basket offers straightforward pub comfort, while grilled salmon provides a lighter choice. Mussels can be prepared marinara-style or with garlic and butter, and mussels Parmesan delivers exactly the sort of old-school, satisfyingly messy dish that belongs in this room.
The appeal is not delicate presentation or trendy reinvention. Pub 199 treats seafood like pub food in the best sense: recognizable, generous, and built for people who arrive hungry.
By the time discarded clam shells begin filling a bowl and crab legs cover the plate, even the zebra across the room may briefly lose the table’s attention.
T-bones, porterhouses, and surf-and-turf combinations satisfy serious appetites
Some menus make diners assemble a satisfying steak dinner through a maze of add-ons. Pub 199 takes a more direct approach.
The T-bone and porterhouse arrive as recognizable steakhouse cuts served with a baked potato or fries, exactly the kind of sturdy meal that looks comfortable beneath antler chandeliers and a towering stone fireplace. The restaurant’s real personality appears in the combinations.
Both steaks can be paired with shrimp cocktail, a lobster tail, or a generous order of steamed clams, creating surf-and-turf plates without the white tablecloth, formal pacing, or tiny side dishes arranged with tweezers. Those combinations also explain why the restaurant works well for celebratory meals that do not need to feel formal.
A birthday dinner can involve lobster and porterhouse while televisions glow over the bar and someone at the next table works through a basket of wings. The food feels substantial without forcing the evening into steakhouse ceremony.
Not everybody arrives ready to challenge a T-bone, of course. The menu includes practical alternatives such as steak salad, cheeseburgers, bacon cheeseburgers, chicken Parmesan over pasta, and cheesesteaks with peppers and onions.
There is even Taylor ham and cheese, because no North Jersey pub menu should become so distracted by lobster tails and giraffes that it forgets where it lives. Still, the large steak-and-shellfish plates best match the scale of the surroundings.
A modest entrée might look slightly intimidated beside the dramatic stonework and wall-mounted wildlife. A porterhouse sitting next to a lobster tail, however, seems completely at home.
It is big, familiar food in a room where everything else has also been turned up several notches.
The relaxed neighborhood-pub atmosphere keeps the wild setting surprisingly welcoming
For all its visual drama, Pub 199 does not behave like an attraction with a restaurant attached. It functions as a local gathering place where families eat dinner, friends meet for drinks, sports fans watch games, and regulars order familiar favorites without treating the wildlife collection as anything unusual.
The menu helps create that easygoing mood. A table does not have to agree on steak or seafood to eat well here.
One person can order crab legs, another can choose eggplant Parmesan, and somebody else can stick with a turkey club, burger, or grilled cheese.
Younger diners have straightforward choices such as chicken fingers, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, and pasta, making the restaurant more approachable for families than its imposing décor might suggest.
The bar and patio screens add another layer of normalcy. Games run throughout the week, turning the space into the kind of place where people track a score, talk across the table, and stay for another round.
The restaurant also has indoor and outdoor areas suited to private gatherings, reinforcing that this is a working community pub rather than a room preserved purely for its unusual appearance. Its Howard Boulevard location places it close to Lake Hopatcong, Interstate 80, and the everyday rhythms of Mount Arlington.
It works just as naturally for lunch after a morning near the lake as it does for a full steak-and-lobster dinner on a weekend evening. That balance is the secret.
The giraffe, bear, zebra, antlers, and stone fireplace make the first visit unforgettable. The straightforward food, broad menu, televisions, patio, and neighborhood energy make the restaurant feel usable.
Beneath all that wilderness spectacle, Pub 199 remains what its name promises: a pub where people can get comfortable, eat heartily, and let the animals stare.