STOCKTON — Every small-town bar has its own unique quality, and sometimes the best way to find out about a place is to ask the regulars — even when those questions don’t seem all that regular.

Take the icebreakers at a downtown Stockton bar …

“Are the crab rangoon and buffalo chicken bleu cheese tacos good?”

“How come there are so many Vikings fans here?”

“What’s up with the knights looming overhead?”

Those may seem like curious questions, but the customers at the Red Knight Pub are happy to answer them, and make new customers feel like old friends. It’s the kind of place where a warm welcome will have you feeling right at home with the pub’s easygoing charm, hometown vibe and offbeat flavor.

Before you know it, you might just become a regular too.

Jerry and Brenda Boldock have owned Red Knight Pub for 28 years, and leave its day-to-day operations to Manager Lisa Craig, who’s worked there for 12 years. During that time, she’s come to realize that the atmosphere is what makes the place special, from the first round to the last call.

“It’s kind of a unique experience,” Craig said. “If you’re ever in here, our customers aren’t afraid to approach you and say hi and make new friends. It’s not, ‘Whoa, who’s that guy?’ Our age range is incredible. We’ll have a 20-year-old and he’s talking to an 80-year-old person, and everyone gets along really great.”

That experience extends late into the night, whether you’re having a beer or a bite. Unique among local bars that serve food, the kitchen is open daily until 12:30 a.m., for folks’ late-Knight cravings.

The menu’s heavy hitters are the burgers and Italian beef sandwiches. The burgers made with a third-pound of beef and the Italian beef piled with three-quarters of a pound lead a lineup built on comfort food. Still, Craig’s not afraid to get out of its comfort zone, bringing a touch of global flavor to a small-town bar menu, including crab rangoon and egg roll appetizers.

“That was something I decided to put on the menu because I know a lot of people like Chinese food,” Craig said. “We don’t have a Chinese restaurant — there used to be one here years ago — so this is their little bit of their Chinese fixin’.”

Craig has found that many of her customers like to spice things up, and she delivers. The jalapeño burger is one of the most popular items for those who like a little kick with their meal, and “If you’re really feeling spicy, we have a Mango habanero sauce you can add to the top of it,” Craig said. “It’s a delicious burger.”

She’s also been heading south of the border, recently testing a spicy habanero chicken sandwich as a special. She’s also been toying with the idea of deep-fried jalapeños to go with it, an idea inspired by one of her own family traditions: deep-fried taco shells, which comes from “a couple of grandmas ago,” she said.

“It’s been around since I was a kid,” Craig said. “It was a cheap, easy way to do it. There were 11 kids in the family, and they had kids, and they had kids, and it’s been at family reunions. It’s so easy and cheap. Ground beef and these shells go a long way. It’s very flavorful. It’s not greasy. It crisps the shell up very nicely. It’s a flavor that pops.

The deep-fried tacos are part of the pub’s Taco Tuesday special, and there’s a buffalo chicken bleu cheese taco offered that day, too.

“Everything deep fried is good,” she said.

When it comes to specials, Craig likes to take an open-minded team approach.

“If my employees think of something, they’ll run it by me and I’ll piece it out if it’s affordable,” Craig said. “We take pride in keeping our menu reasonable.”

When it comes to drinks, the Red Knight offers the classics — including cold beer, bourbon and whiskey — but also taps into its medieval vibe with beer brewed specifically for the pub: the Noble Steed Lager, made by the Lena Brewing Company. It’s a light, easy-drinking lager that took two years of back-and-forth discussion to create and name. Today, it’s become one of the bar’s best sellers, right up there with Busch Light. Want to try a mug? Just point to the tap handle, which features a knight atop his noble steed.

“You’ve heard of Elf on a Shelf?” Craig said, “We have a Knight on a light.”

In addition to the main bar, Red Knight has a bar area set aside for private parties, local bands and celebrations.

The bar’s medieval moniker wasn’t as much about celebrating all things Middle Ages as it was about making a name for itself in the local bar scene. “The owners were looking for a different theme from everybody,” Craig said, and came up with Red Knight Pub.

Inside, the bar has a more rustic vibe, with wood-covered walls, touches of medieval decor and casual seating. Standing guard in the back is the Red Knight himself, a suit of armor that survived when the bar suffered a fire in 2017, and two more smaller knights stand watch over the main bar room.

The bar also has six gambling machines, two dart boards and two pool tables. An old Megatouch RX game still glows at the far end of the bar counter, a relic of early 2000s that’s become a bit of bar nostalgia these days, which customers can enjoy — as long as it keeps working. The machines aren’t made anymore, Craig said. The 19-inch touchscreen pay-to-play countertop arcade machine features a variety of games such as puzzles, cards, quizzes and sports.

Like many bars, its TVs are often tuned to sports, and come football season, there’s more likely to be a Minnesota Vikings game on it than a Chicago Bears one. “We have a lot – I’d say 60/40 – of Vikings fans and then Bears,” Craig said. “We have a large family that comes in that are huge Vikings fans, and some of our bartenders are Vikings fans.”

Come select holidays, the Red Knight likes to say “thanks” to those who’ve supported it. Each Thanksgiving and Christmas, Craig takes it upon herself to cook a full spread of food at home and bring it in for anyone who walks through the door.

“I make a whole bunch of food up, and it’s no charge — it’s our gift back to our customers,” Craig said. “You can come on in and enjoy a great meal. It’s a lot of work, but we have a really great turnout. A lot of times people have come forward with donations to help me offset the cost.”

The Red Knight Pub is a kind of spot where the lights are warm, the fryer never sleeps and where someone can be on a first-name basis by their second beer.

“We don’t judge anybody,” Craig said. “You can be anybody and come through our doors. We welcome everybody in and everyone’s treated like family, sometimes better.”

The Red Knight Pub, 111 E. Front Street in Stockton, is open from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday and noon to 1 a.m. Sunday. The kitchen closes daily at 12:30 a.m. Find it on Facebook or call 815-947-2591 for more information.