Good Karma Vegan Cafe, San Jose

The Silicon Valley underwhelms with its beer scene, which is odd considering its affluence and large population. But recently I found out about an oasis of good beer served by knowledgeable people that's located right in the middle of downtown San Jose: the Good Karma Vegan Cafe. Talk about your hidden gems -- they didn't put "beer" or "bar" in the name at all. But squeeze your way past the deli counter into the tiny bar area, and you'll find 16 well-chosen beers on tap. "Well-chosen" is probably not an adequate description of the beer list -- knockout is more like it.  On a recent visit some of the taps were:

• Russian River Pliny the Elder
• Logsdon Seizoen
• Haandbryggeriet Bestefar (smoked imperial porter)
• Allagash Interlude
• Dogfish Head Old School Barleywine
• Stone Vertical Epic 12
• North Coast 15th Anniversary Old Rasputin
• Sierra Nevada Ovila Quad

I won't bother listing the other half of the taplist, but there were no duds on it.  There is also a small selection of similarly high-end bottled beers.

Good Karma attracts a small crowd of local beer lovers -- you know the type, everyone has an opinion on what beer you should order.  The atmosphere is very casual, and even though it's a restaurant/deli first and a beer bar second, the waitstaff take an interest in the beer.  Beer prices are on the high side: pints of Pliny were $7, and most of the strong beers listed above were $6 for 8- or 10-ounce pours.  Not cheap, but reasonable given the quality level.  On the plus side, the small pours were served in glassware marked in centiliters so you knew what you were getting.  What's more, with ABVs ranging from 7% to 15%, small is beautiful.

The food is really good also -- no meat or cheese of course, but a nice selection of curries, salads, stir-fries and the like, served with rice or in tortillas.  In contrast to the beer prices, I thought the food prices were very cheap -- you could eat a hearty meal for $7, or choose smaller snack options in the $2-$5 range.  So you can go in there, eat some healthy cheap food, and spend your surplus on fancy beer.  It's a win-win.  And if you're wondering -- as I did -- why a vegan restaurant has an antler chandelier, rest assured that it too is vegan:  the antlers are made of poured resin.

Here in Portland I'm always complaining when interesting beer places aren't open during the day -- thank God Bailey's now opens at 2 PM -- but Good Karma poses the opposite problem for a business traveler:  it's open for lunch but closes at 9 PM every night except Sunday when it closes at 7 PM.  The good news is it's easy to get to on public transit from other towns in the area -- the VTA light rail stops right out in front, and only a couple blocks away there is a stop for the workhorse #22 bus that follows El Camino Real all the way to Palo Alto.

Highly recommended next time you're in the Silicon Valley.

My New Local

At the beginning of the year I got excited when Caps and Corks opened within sleepwalking distance of the office I was renting. Alas, after a few months I changed offices.  Homebody that I am, I rarely make it by C&C these days.

There are definitely some good watering holes near my new digs:  I'm just a few blocks from the Deschutes pub; Bailey's is only about five blocks away and plausibly on the way home; and the new brewpub Pints is just across the park.

But one place that I was surprised to find myself returning to for a beer at least once a week is the Pizza Schmizza at 11th and Glisan.  The thing that keeps me coming back is that happy hour starts at Schmizza at 2 PM, which is often about when I get around to eating lunch.  Happy hour means $1 off beers and slices priced from $2.50 to $3.  The beer list is not geeky, but it has as its basis a simple three-beer spectrum that works well at lunch: Widmer Hef, Ninkasi Total Domination IPA, and Oakshire's fabulous Overcast Espresso Stout.  One of those will work with whatever mood I'm in on a given day.

I mentioned happy hour.  The picture above doesn't do justice to the "Mighty Mug" of Hef sitting there.  I haven't measured its volume, but I've been obsessing about glassware lately so I feel pretty confident in guessing that it holds at least 24 ounces of beer, and goes for just $5 at happy hour.  If I'm right about that, it's an SPE of $15 -- not the best happy hour SPE in town, but pretty good, especially if you consider that you might be saving money and tips by just having one giant beer instead of two smaller ones.  Regular-sized pints are $4 at happy hour.

Big beers, quick service, cheap prices.  Fine qualities to find in a new local.

Portland Beer Carts

Today's Oregonian has a front-page article about the new Cartlandia food cart pod on 82nd applying for a liquor license from the OLCC.  Since the modern style of news reporting mandates that every story must convince you that you are in grave and immediate danger, the article sets the scene with phrases like "the issue has new urgency now", "waves of concern among Portland officials", and -- the pièce de résistance -- "they envision alcohol flowing from nearly all of the 700 carts across town, creating a new source of public drunkenness and neighborhood disorder".  Run!  You are in great danger!  Your neighborhood is being overrun by barbarians right now!

What the article glosses over is that there are already beer carts quietly operating alongside food carts, with no apparent ill effects.  Captured by Porches has been selling beer from their beer buses for a year and a half now, and Buckman Brewery (a.k.a. Rogue's Green Dragon) has a cart at the food cart pod just up Belmont from the Horse Brass.  The article does mention that "carts asked the OLCC about regularly selling beer and wine" two years ago, but it fails to point out that carts are already selling beer under temporary licenses, though the online version links to an earlier story about CbP's cart near 33rd and Division.

The online version has a fairly staid headline, but in the print edition today it is "Alcohol with food carts gives city indigestion".  What gives me indigestion is the podunk worldview of our local paper -- and friends, I lived most of my life in Oklahoma and Texas.  The Oregonian is an unending source of disappointment for me in many ways, though their declining beer coverage -- they're cutting back John Foyston's The Beer Here column in the Friday entertainment section to once every two weeks, and last year they referred to Colorado as "Beervana" -- seems ill-advised when the local beer culture is continuing to grow at a healthy pace.

I mentioned the CbP and Buckman carts.  Are there any other beer carts around town right now?  [Update: Jim points out in the comments that there is a Lompoc beer cart at 51st and Foster.]

Don't Cook with Expensive Beer!!!

Cooking with beer is nothing new, but the trend does seem to be taking flight as of late.  I have occasionally cringed to see recipes that use a beer that would be better put to use by drinking it -- say, making an ice cream sauce from Deschutes Abyss.   But the recent event that made today's rant inevitable was Beer Advocate's Thanksgiving installment of the Homebrew Chef, which counseled readers to brine their turkeys with 4 (four) 750 ml bottles of Allagash Tripel, and serve it up with cranberry sauce made from an even rarer Deschutes beer than Abyss:  The Dissident.

Beer can chicken is one thing, but soaking a turkey in $40-$50 worth of beer which then has to be dumped down the drain is just sick.  And no matter what your opinion is on extremely sour American takes on Belgian ales, can you see opening a bottle which is nearly impossible to get hold of right now, and pouring it into cranberry sauce?

Look, if you find that beer adds a flavorful dimension to your cooking, that's great.  But suppose a recipe calls for red wine.  Are you going to add 2 cups of Châteauneuf-du-Pape to it?  No, because it's an insult to a wine of that quality, not to mention a silly waste of money.  You'll use a good-enough table wine, and your food won't be any worse for it.

I suppose a Deschutes chef cooking with Abyss is just using what he has on hand, though I don't think the dish would have suffered any from the use of the less costly Obsidian Stout instead.  Here's a picture of Alan Sprints whipping up some chocolate-raspberry sorbet that includes some Hair of the Dog Adam.  It's not a cheap beer, but he's the brewer and it's what he's got.  Even so, I doubt he would pull out some of his barrel-aged creations and give them the same treatment.  [Oops! Matt points out in a comment below that Alan has made cheesecakes and ice creams with Cherry Adam from the Wood.  Now I don't have to feel so bad for making him the expensive-beer-cooking poster boy.]

I'm not the first person to inveigh against the evils of cooking with rare beer  Here's a year-old blog post from across the pond that gets it about right:  "Sometimes, it seems the point is to impress with big beer names. Regardless of the impact it actually has on the dish’s flavour."   There are also a couple of quasi-sensible comments about it on the Beer Advocate turkey-brining fiasco mentioned above.

Respect beer: don't cook with the rare stuff!

Bierbrasserie Cambrinus, Brugge

After leaving Amsterdam, we spent a couple of nights in the well-preserved medieval city of Brugge, Belgium. It's undeniably an amazing place, but because its sole purpose today is as a tourist center, our family was divided on how fun it was to be there. Me, I'm not afraid to be a tourist when that's what I am, and I give Brugge (pronounced Brew-[throat-clearing-noise]-Huh in Flemish) a thumbs up. It's easier to say the French version of the city name, Bruges, with a soft "g" like the second one in "garage", but it is in Flanders and most of the people in the area seemed to speak Flemish first. The post after this one will be a compendium of a few interesting Brugge beer spots -- including the story of accidentally wandering right into De Bier Tempel in our hour of greatest need -- but today I want to single out an outstanding gastropub in Brugge: the Bierbrasserie Cambrinus.

We were advised to call ahead for dinner reservations, but we wouldn't be pinned down like that, and the four of us stumbled into Cambrinus about 7:30 PM on the Monday night that we arrived in town.  At the door, we were greeted somewhat coolly by a pretty hostess who was exasperated by our foolish lack of reservations, but she told us we could sit at the bar -- even our two teenagers -- and see if anything came up.  Luckily there were four seats at the bar, and the place had such a lively atmosphere that we didn't mind hanging out for a beverage, even though the bartender had no time for conversation and it sounded like there was no way we would get a table.

We expected to have a beer there and then move on to someplace less crowded, but a nice table was found for us before Carla and I had even finished our beers.  They never asked our name for the waiting list, so I can only assume the entries were something like "unkempt American with wife and two daughters" or "drunk Australian couple".  Whatever the system, we were quite grateful to be seated, and our waiter patiently helped us figure out the next beer as we waited on our food.

Oh my goodness, the food.  It was a little pricey, but it was one of the most memorable meals of our vacation.  The picture at the top barely does justice to the giant steaming pot of delicious mussels that was served me, and I'm sad that I cut the accompanying fries out of the picture.  Nor did I get a photo of Carla's Flemish beef stew with a side of homemade applesauce, but it was also fabulous.  Even the vegetarian in our party was content with her French onion soup.  If you want to drool over the menu, it's posted here in English, though for some reason it omits the various mussel options.  I believe there were 8 beer taps, but the choices weren't that stunning.  The real beer action was in the large wood-bound tome that listed the hundreds of bottles available.

We enjoyed Cambrinus so much that -- after taking a look at a couple of other restaurants -- we ended up there for dinner the next night also.  Same modus operandi: walk in at 7:30 to a frosty reception; "you don't have reservations?"; wait at the bar; here's your table.  They aren't kidding about being busy -- every table was always full -- but somehow our timing was right both nights to get us a table in a comfortable amount of time.  Another stunning meal was had, accompanied by some mighty fine beer.  I especially liked the Viven Porter that Carla ordered, and the Straffe Hendrik quadrupel from local brewery De Halve Maan.

I can't recommend Cambrinus enough.  Excellent beer, food, and atmosphere.  The service is a little bit brusque, but that seems to be the nature of a tourist town, and the servers were actually quite professional under their hard shell.

Hair of the Dog Food

Back in December when I finally phoned in a review of Hair of the Dog's tasting room on Water Avenue, I was kind of dismissive about the food, saying that it was generally a little overpriced, and that it looked like there was a lot more bustle in the kitchen than was called for by the menu.  Granted, it was just an early impression offered with the caveat that I hadn't done a lot of dining there.

Well, I still haven't dined there much, but last Saturday I was in there for a double date, and we were all extremely pleased with the food.  Carla and I were not all that hungry, so we split two small items from the menu: the $6 slab of beef brisket, and a $4 plate of carmelized brussels sprouts.  Already from previous visits I had decided that the brisket was the best deal on the menu, and Saturday it was served with a simple green salad on the side, which makes it an even better deal.  So what, cheapskate?:  the price doesn't matter if the food is bad.  Saturday the food was a home run -- deliciously moist and flavorful brisket, an interesting citrusy dressing on the lettuce, and the sprouts cooked exactly the right amount.  Our friends Joe and Lisa were also quite happy with their respective orders of macaroni and pork spareribs.  So, I take back my earlier grousing about the menu and the prices.

Unfortunately we missed the bourbon-barrel version of Fred from the Wood that had been on tap earlier last week.  But I finally got to try the Adam version of HotD's Little Dog small beer.  It was smashing.  They bill it as "smoky", and while there's a little of that Adam smokiness, it doesn't seem to me to be the dominant flavor.  I get more of a plummy, dark fruit flavor, though since this is a very light 3.5% brew, it's not plummy the way you think of darker dessert beers.  It reminded me of Anchor Bock, but with more flavor and less alcohol.  I've really liked all the Little Dogs I've tried -- including the Fred version which was also on tap Saturday -- but the Adam variant is really something not to be missed.  It's also fun to taste it alongside the big dog Adam.

Now I've got to figure out how to get by there more often Wednesday through Saturday after 2 PM but before 8 PM.  Oh, and sorry about the headline, I couldn't help myself.

All Ninkasi, All the Time

It's weird, sometimes the name of one brewery pops up over and over in the course of a few days. Last week, Ninkasi kept invading my consciousness:

• The brewery started shipping 6-packs of Total Domination IPA and Spring Reign Pale Ale.
• The East Burn Beer Belly Dinner for March featured Ninkasi.
• One of my favorite beers at the Lucky Lab Barleywine Festival was Ninkasi's 2010 Critical Hit.

The ticket pictured above is from a 6-pack commemorative party two Saturdays ago.  Heh heh, "drinketfaster".  Take that, Ticketbastard.  I heartily applaud Ninkasi's move to six-packs.  The $12-13 SPE price on Total Domination 22-ounce bombers always rankled me.  It looks like the six-packs are going to have a regular price of about $10, usually on sale at $9?  I'll take it, especially if Believer gets down to that price.  By the way, the other day Zupan's -- which I always think of as having ridiculous beer prices -- had Ninkasi bombers for $3 (SPE $9.82).

A few days after that, this past Thursday, Carla and I went to the Ninkasi dinner at EastBurn, hosted by brewer Jamie Floyd.  If you haven't been to one of these monthly dinners, pick a brewer you like and go to one.  $35 gets you a really nice 5-course meal, 5 or 6 beers, and congenial company on the back porch.  Proceeds benefit Ride On.  Thursday most of the Ninkasi offerings were pretty standard:  Spring Reign, Believer, Total Domination, Tricerahops.  The dessert was served with side-by-side samples of Oatis and Vanilla Oatis, the latter dry-hopped with vanilla beans, which add a delicate sweetness to the already smooth oatmeal stout.  We also got a taste of Ninkasi's 2011 entry in Eugene's KLCC Collaboration -- a sessionable pale ale that Jamie hopped with Hop Union's Falconer's Flight hop pellets.

Friday I snuck over for a brief session at the Lucky Lab's Barleywine Festival.  I hope to write a little more about the fest in a couple days, but as I said above, one of the winners in my book was Ninkasi's 2010 Critical Hit.  It was a classic take, located on the Old Foghorn/Bigfoot branch of the barleywine family tree, with decent but not overpowering alcohol heat and massive hops.  I preferred the fresh article to the 2009 version, which was still good, but quite a bit cloudier and with less distinct flavors (maybe a little oxidation already creeping in also).

Speaking of Critical Hit, I won an EastBurn hoodie at the dinner Thursday night by answering -- close enough -- Jamie's trivia question about how he came up with the name Critical Hit.  Luckily, Jeff Alworth had mentioned that bit of information to me recently:  it's a Dungeons and Dragons double-damage dice roll.  Pretty cool name for a barleywine, actually.  Er, not cool, but apt.

Just four years ago, who could have foreseen Ninkasi's meteoric rise to become the brewery with the biggest-selling IPA in Oregon?  That is, who besides Jamie and company?  Keep your eye on them:  the six-packs are going to propel them even further in their goal of Total Domination.

Hazy First Impressions of Burnside Brewing

Burnside Brewing has been open for a couple of months now, and the tap list is starting to fill in with house brews.  I haven't been able to go there nearly as much as I'd like, but I've finally sampled enough of their beers to be able to jot down a few impressions.

The space itself is very comfortable.  Compared to most of the recently-opened pubs in Portland, there is a lot of open space, the seating areas are not cramped at all, and the high ceilings in the room add an even more expansive feeling.  Some attention was paid to lighting, to get it cozy but not dim. It's not exactly an open kitchen, but the long bar offers some views into the food preparation area.  The pub opens weekdays at 3 PM and weekends at 2 PM; minors are allowed until 8:30 PM.

No unicorns were harmed in the opening of Burnside Brewing, because the pub started right off serving honest pints.  The $5 regular price isn't the cheapest in town, but it's perfectly reasonable -- its $19 six-pack equivalent (SPE) price beats the most recent Portland Beer Price Index by about 30 cents.  The happy-hour price of $3.50 is a steal, and the $3 Wednesday and Sunday pints are the best deal in town right now (SPE $11.37).  In addition to the house beers, there are about a half-dozen guest taps.

Here are some thoughts on the Burnside Brews I've tried so far:

• Gratzer (smoked wheat beer): Not sure if this will be a regular, since they have to hand-smoke the wheat malt for it, but this was a wonderful beer.  Light but flavorful, with just the right touch of smoke.  It's not like a yeasty hefeweizen -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- but it has more body and flavor than, say, a kolsch.
• IPA: A well-done, middle-of-the-road take on the style, not trying to cram as many hops as possible into the glass.  Put it in the category of northern California IPAs like Union Jack and Racer 5.
• Sweet Heat: Since this sounded so much like Roots 2008 OBF entry Calypso -- a wheat beer brewed with apricots and habanero peppers -- I was very excited to get my hands on it.  As usual, high expectations can set you up for a downfall:  I like this beer a lot, but it didn't stand up to my golden memories of Calypso.  I think Sweet Heat has a little heavier body than Calypso did, and the apricot and habanero flavors seem stronger than I recall.  Calypso was such a perfect summer beer; maybe it's fitting that Sweet Heat is a little more substantial at this time of year, though it's still a very reasonable 4.2% alcohol.  If nothing else, I think Sweet Heat would be better if the apricot was dialed down a little.  Ezra described it as reminiscent of a Caribbean chutney, and that's a great description:  there's fruit, chile, and a dash of vinegar flavor.  Still definitely worth a try.
• Oatmeal Pale Ale: A few years ago when Ft. George made an OPA, I thought it was kind of a goofy joke, a play on oatmeal stouts.  Who knows, maybe it's a normal thing to do.  Back then, I was surprised at the tangy flavor of Ft. George's ale, and Burnside's OPA also seems to have a tangy component that I would not have associated with oatmeal.  Is that typical of beer brewed with oats?  Anyway, this is a nice, moderately hoppy pale ale; the tanginess is an interesting touch; very drinkable.
• Stout: I didn't have my own glass of this, I was just stealing from the wife, but my impressions were of a well-balanced, slightly dry, drinkable stout.

It's notable that Jason has so far taken something of a light touch with the beers, like the balanced IPA and lower-alcohol wheat beers.  When I think of his previous venture, Roots, I think of exuberantly-hopped bruisers like Island Red and Woody IPA, and famously outsized winter beers like Festivus and of course Epic.  Of course Roots also had two lighter, hopless beers -- the Heather and the Gruit -- so maybe that was Jason's bag all along.  It's a good plan: it's nice to have some very flavorful beverages that won't put you under the table.

A whole nother article could be written just about the food at Burnside -- it's really an equal partner to the beer -- for now let me just say that it's a cut above most pub food in town, with prices in the $12-$18 range for most items.

To sum everything up: a very respectable start for Burnside.

Nostalgic Beers of the Tropics

Saturday we went early to the New School's Brewing Up Cocktails event at the Hop & Vine, and when the crowd overcame us we headed back east on Killingsworth to get some Ethiopian food at E'Njoni. Their menu included a surprisingly broad selection of Ethiopian bottled beers, plus a couple of other international beers that I don't recall seeing elsewhere in Portland. I'm not suggesting these are excellent beverages that you should run out and try, but a couple of them startled me into such nostalgia that I wanted to point out where to find them.

The beer I had to order right away was Castel. Twenty years ago when I was in the Peace Corps in the West African country of Mali, the only bottled beer produced there was sold under the Castel label. Castel is a French company that licenses their brand and perhaps their recipes to breweries in developing countries. We drank the Castel in Mali only out of necessity: we called it "Casse-Tête", which actually means "jigsaw puzzle" in French, but the literal translation of "head-breaker" described the quality pretty aptly. If you were lucky enough to get it in a 66 cl brown bottle, it might be a little better than the more common green bottles, and the rumor was that it contained formaldehyde as a preservative, though I doubt that was true.

The Ethiopian Castel was better than my recollection of what I experienced decades ago, though it was still not very good. Seemed lighter than I recall. It gets a C on Beer Advocate, though of the five reviewers, the only B- is from a guy who thought it would make a "tastey (sic) binge beer".

A little more recent nostalgia hit me when I noticed "Jamaican Stout" was also on the E'Njoni menu. "Oh, you have Dragon Stout?" I asked. "No, it's just called Jamaican Stout." Turns out to be from Big City Brewing in Kingston. Last year when we were in Jamaica, I never saw anything local except Red Stripe, Dragon Stout, and locally-brewed Guinness, so I was surprised to see it here in Portland. It was a too-sweet stout along the lines of Dragon Stout, though it was a little better than Dragon: not as sweet, with a little fuller flavor. The Beer Advocates give it a B. It was the best beer we had at E'Njoni.

They also have Tusker from Kenya -- I remember having that as an occasional novelty years ago in Austin. If you can't go for the imports, they do have Mirror Pond and Widmer Hef, or you could get a refreshing glass of water. Here's the full list of off-the-beaten track beers at E'Njoni (from Ethiopia unless otherwise noted):

• Meta
• Bedele
• Harar
• Hakim Stout
• St. George
• Bati
• Castel
• Jamaican Stout (Jamaica)
• Tusker (Kenya)
• Alhambra Negra (Spain)

The food's good too -- the usual Ethiopian vegetables and stews served on tangy flatbread. Even though the Ethiopian beers are not likely to bowl you over, it's interesting to see such a broad assortment, and I appreciated the chance to order a Castel with my meal. I'm not sure if Jarra's on Hawthorne or the attached Langano Lounge has any Ethiopian beer, though they usually have a decent Deschutes and something from Spaten on tap.

4-4-2 Soccer Bar

Another place that has opened recently in SE is the 4-4-2 Soccer Bar at 18th and Hawthorne. Okay, okay, it's not a Portland beer geek paradise and probably never will be, but there are a few qualities that immediately endear it to me. First off, no Bud/Miller/Coors is served at the place -- the furthest down the ladder you can get is the Heineken tap. I asked the proprietor what he would say if a thirsty soccer fan demanded a Budweiser. "Not in my bar, some other place," he said. When I was in there the other day, the taps were Heineken, Spaten Pils, Paulaner Oktoberfest, Caldera Pale Ale, and Ninkasi Total Domination. A third tap reserved for Oregon beers was empty, but kegs from Deschutes, Lompoc, and Laurelwood were in the cooler waiting to be hooked up. There is also a decent selection of mostly German bottled beers -- Aventinus and Paulaner Salvator are what I remember from the top of my head.

Another thing that 4-4-2 has got right from the very beginning is Honest Pints. My Ninkasi came to me in a Spaten mug with a 0.5-liter line that left plenty of room for a head on the beer. Bravo! Remember folks, every time a new brewpub or taproom opens in Portland serving beer in shaker pints, a unicorn loses its horn. And yet here is a simple sports bar that gets it, and not only serves a full portion, but uses marked glassware. "I'm not stingy," says the owner.

The third reason you might stop in even if you're not a soccer fan is the delicious Bosnian food on the menu. I used to occasionally have lunch here before the remodel, when it was the European Market grocery store. There are an assortment of sandwiches, including a few vegetarian models, but I never get past the Ćevapi -- seasoned grilled ground beef -- served simply with onions and ajvar (red pepper relish) on homemade bread.

The three TVs are loaded up with every soccer channel the satellites can shower down upon us, and the pub regularly opens at 6:30 or 7 in the morning for important games -- where important has a meaning that I am not enough of a soccer fan to fully understand. It's not a very large space -- probably a half-dozen large tables and about the same number of small ones, plus space at the bar -- but I think a bar dedicated entirely to soccer is an idea that should succeed in Portland. Another welcome addition to the neighborhood.

Update on the Cheese Bar

Several weeks ago I wrote up the Cheese Bar on Belmont -- a cheese shop that also has a rotating selection of five or six good draft beers and a few dozen nice bottled beers. While I said it was worth a visit, there were a few things I complained about. Since then, I've run into proprietor Steve Jones a couple of times, and also been back for another visit. Some of my issues have been corrected, in other ways I was just off base, so I want to talk a little more about the place.

On our first visit we ended up getting several $1 orders of crostini (4 pieces), to get through the cheese and meat plates we ordered. I complained that it would make more sense to offer baguettes instead of small, expensive toast. Well, it turns out there are baguettes available, and reasonably priced at that: $1 for a smallish "demi" baguette, or $3 for a typical very big baguette. The demi was worth about 4 orders of crostini, and makes a good accompaniment to a cheese plate or an order of house-blended potted cheese.

In the first writeup, I was also puzzled by the prices of bottled beer. Some of them seemed ridiculously cheap, others insanely overpriced, but the real confusion was on the take-home price, which subracted either $1, $1.50, or $2 from the price. Steve explained to me that the $1.50 premiums were a mistake that has now been corrected. The $2 surcharge should only be on big bottles -- those that two people would share at the bar -- and the $1 for single-serving bottles.

Steve also mentioned to me that the cheeses on the daily special are kept out at room temperature. That had been my other quibble -- I felt like the cheese we got on the first visit was served too cold. There's no way around it if you select your own cheeses -- they come straight out of the cooler, as they should. But if you stick to les fromages du jour, they'll be served to you at a tastier temperature. You'll get an explanation of the cheeses when they're served to you, but if you're like me it's so much new information and unfamiliar names that it tends to go in one ear and out the other. Maybe someday the cheese plate will come with a little printout that names and describes the cheeses, so you can remember them afterwards.

So the things that grated on me a few weeks ago turn out to be non-issues. One thing I would reiterate from the original post is that you'll have a much more relaxed time sitting at the tables than at the bar. Four of us sat at a table on this second visit, as opposed to two of us at the bar, and it made all the difference in the world. There's just too much activity on both sides of the bar for it to be very comfortable. I took a look at the back patio also, but I can't really recommend the couple of tables out there right now: they're in a tiny space loomed over by the back parking lot, not a very good atmosphere.

Grab a table, a beer, a baguette, and some cheese, and you'll have a good time at the Cheese Bar.

Produce Row Makeover

As I noted last August, the end-of-the-line location of the Produce Row Cafe is a two-edged sword: it's either a brilliant hideaway, or a place you forget is there.  I usually end up in the latter category, but it does have a loyal clientele.  The cafe reopened this week after an extensive remodel, which owner Alan Davis told me took only seven weeks. 

It's an amazing transformation inside and out. In the main seating area, pastel murals and tiled walls have replaced the drab tan walls, giving the place a lighter look. A more open feeling has been created by moving the bar from the back wall to the side wall. The non-descript wooden tables and chairs have been replaced by nicer tables, cloth-backed chairs, and velvet couches in part of the space. The pool table -- which was primarily an odd obstacle on the way to the patio -- is now gone, giving the little side room with its deep circular booths a darker, more private feel. Outside, the worn wooden deck has been replaced by a paved patio with more open space and more covered seating. Even the facade has been spruced up.

Here are before and after pictures of the interior ("before" photo credit: Samurai Artist):

← Before

After →

And the patio:

← Before

After →

For some better photos of the new furnishings, look at John Foyston's writeup or Ezra's report.

The new bar added 3 beer taps to bring the total to 24. About half of those will be comforting Northwest standards, with the other half rotating in some variety. Since Alan describes himself as a whiskey guy, he improved the selection of bourbons and scotches when he bought the place a couple years ago, and added a menu of beer/whiskey pairings. The food menu is looking good: about a dozen sandwiches between $6.50 and $8, a few $12 entrees, good soups and salads.

To get to Produce Row by bicycle, turn on to SE 2nd from Ankeny or from the continuation of the Water Avenue bike path after it turns into Stark. It's just a little too far from the new Hair of the Dog location to qualify as a beer district, but there are some nearby options for a pub crawl or progressive dinner. On the beer side, you could hit the Grand Avenue cluster of bars like Slow Bar and the Side Door; places with interesting food but limited beer include Olympic Provisions just a couple of blocks away and Montage a little beyond that.

Alan said that the entire staff has returned after the remodel. It will be interesting to see if the regular customers also approve of the changes. Will it be like the grumbling about Bridgeport's makeover? You know, something like, "Oh man, I used to go there when it was this excellent grungy place, and now it's all Pearl District and overrun with hipsters/yuppies/lawyers." It would be too bad if that was the attitude; on the other hand, Bridgeport's business doesn't seem to be suffering, so hopefully this revamp of Produce Row will be a similar success.

Where Angels Fear to Tread

This week I was in the Silicon Valley for work. Not my favorite place in the world, but I was determined to make the best of it. The rental car place had upgraded me from a Hyundai to a Cadillac, so Monday evening I decided a drive to Santa Cruz was in order. Beermapping.com recommended that I hit Red Restaurant, and I was really glad I did.  The place had a great laid-back atmosphere with lots of couches spread out around a cozy room, and a wonderful tap list of about 30 beers  The goblet of Lost Abbey Angel's Share in the picture only set me back $5.50.   Friendly service and serviceable food rounded it all out.  If you're headed there, don't be confused by the ground floor -- a burrito place and a smoky bar called the Red Room -- find the stairway outside that leads upstairs to the Red Restaurant.

That Angel's Share was a thing of beauty:  dense toffee flavors with a boozy brandy edge, balanced with unobtrusive hops.  Despite what a big beer it was, it wasn't at all cloying.  I would have drunk one after the other if I didn't have to steer a land yacht 40 miles through the rain on winding mountain roads to get back to my motel.  Back at the motel, a Unibroue Maudite -- a Belgian-style beer that I usually love, and which garners an A- on Beer Advocate -- seemed syrupy and one-dimensional compared to the memory of the Angel's Share.

Tuesday evening I took Caltrain up to the City to hang out with our friend Andy and check out a couple of North Beach places that I hadn't been to.  La Trappe is a Belgian-themed beer-snob favorite that I was embarrassed to have missed during our family vacation in March.  With my sights set on La Trappe, Beer Advocate came up with another North Beach gem to try: Kennedy's Irish Pub and Curry House.

Kennedy's has a respectable 30-some-odd beer taps, but I was also interested in the Indian-food angle of the place.  I figured the menu would consist of British-inflected curries, but when we got there I was surprised to see that in addition to the standard fare, they also served South Indian dosas and utthappam.  This was a bit of overkill for me -- I had already had a huge pesarattu dosa with upma for lunch that day at Dosa Place in Santa Clara -- but there is so little in the way of good South Indian food in Portland that I was happy to repeat myself.  The Kennedy's dosas were not exactly kosher: in fact we ordered a spicy chicken dosa and a lamb utthappam.  Those are odd variations on a basically vegetarian cuisine, but they were tasty enough and a welcome departure from usual bar food.  If you go there, one dosa is enough for two people.

The schizophrenia at Kennedy's doesn't end with the Irish-Indian juxtaposition.  There's also sort of a sports-bar vibe to the place, with TVs in every corner, and pool, foosball, and air hockey.  Andy was excited when we ambled up to the door -- "This is one of the last bars in San Francisco that has air hockey," he said.  If that wasn't enough, on our way out we discovered that one room in the place is now a wine bar with rotating exhibits of modern art, and local meet-the-winemaker events.  With something for almost everyone, Kennedy's is definitely a place to check out.

Full of spicy food, Andy and I made our way over to La Trappe.  There was a kind of resonance with my Red Restaurant experience:  the cellar dining area of La Trappe has a similarly dark and relaxed ambience, and even has a little candlelit cove of couches and coffee tables if you are just there for a beer or two as we were.  What really resonated with me was that they also had Angel's Share on tap, though at a more diabolical big-city price of $8, for a less generous pour than the one I had the night before in Santa Cruz.  I was really happy to get another shot at such a wonderful beer that isn't available in Portland.  Andy ordered a Kwak that was served in one of the more ridiculous pieces of glassware ever seen -- a round-bottomed beaker that rests in a cheesy wooden stand.  Good beer, and a really fine atmosphere that left me wishing I had more time and money to spend there.

The beer tourism was a welcome relief from the woes of business travel.  I highly recommend La Trappe and Red if you find yourself in SF or Santa Cruz respectively, and Kennedy's is a fun, funky place that I expect to return to again.  And take as many shares of Angel's Share as you can get -- it's a stunner.

Cascade Brewing Beer Belly

Following on the heels of the Fred Fest report, here's another opportunity for you to rub shoulders with local beer luminaries, enjoy special beers with good food, and benefit a good cause. You don't even have to wait a year to do it: the EastBurn hosts a new Beer Belly Dinner every month on the 2nd Thursday. It's hard to beat a $35 four-course meal, paired with five beers presented by the brewers themselves. And proceeds go to Ride On, the local non-profit that helps drivers get home with their cars when they shouldn't be behind the wheel themselves.

Thursday's Beer Belly with Cascade Brewing found Carla and I -- and probably some of the other attendees -- slightly out of our comfort zone, in the world of sour and fruit beers.  But if your comfort zone has to be breached, this is the way to do it. Ron Gansberg and Curtis Bain brought along a brilliant set of beers to show off their talents at brewing wild things, then aging and blending them to near perfection.  The weather was perfect on the patio, we had interesting and affable table mates, and chefs Jeff Pagel and Joe Dougherty served up a delicious menu.

The beers on hand were:

• Spring Gose: German wheat beer with salt and coriander
• 2009 The Vine: Belgian Abbey ale barrel-aged with wine grapes
• Busta Nut Brown: mild brown ale
• 2009 Cascade Kriek: Flanders Red aged with cherries
• Noyeaux: Belgian blonde with raspberries and apricot pits (!)
• 2009 Apricot Ale: another Belgian ale, with apricots

The sample of  Noyeaux was an unannounced bonus at the dinner.  Ron introduced it by saying he thinks it's the first truly world-class beer that Cascade has produced.  I think others would disagree that it is the first, as the accolades for their sour beers are starting to pile up, and it really took some chutzpah to make that statement right as the diners were finishing their glasses of the show-stopping Kriek.  Noyeaux was a fine beer with a kind of mingled raspberry/apricot flavor, and the apricot pit adjunct makes it an interesting conversation piece as well as adding almond notes to the smell and taste of the beer.  When I first heard that Gansberg made a beer with the meat from apricot pits, my first reaction was, "Is he trying to poison people?".  Turns out that roasting the pits detoxifies them and leaves you a little almond-like nut (there's a trace of cyanide left, so you wouldn't want to eat a pound of them).  I was glad to get a taste at the dinner, though I did watch Ron take a drink before I tried mine.

Finer palates than mine may pronounce Noyeaux the top of the Cascade line, but for me the highlight of the evening was definitely the Kriek.  I had never tried it, because the 750 ml bottles seemed out of my price range for something I suspected I might not like.  But it was an astonishing beer, rich and lush with dark cherry flavors, and went especially well with the lamb entree.  What is it about cherries that makes them work so well with beer?  I hardly ever think I want to eat a cherry or a cherry pie, but the cherry beers that have come to my attention lately have been wonderful -- Hair of the Dog Cherry Adam, Bridgeport's 2009 Stumptown Tart, Upright's Four Play, and now Cascade's Kriek.  Whereas the lighter Tart and Four Play had more of a pie-cherry flavor, the Kriek was reminiscent of darker bing cherries.  It was an eye-opener for me; I'll be looking for more of this.

There wasn't a bad beer there that evening.  Even Carla liked the Gose, and she didn't like the Goses I plied her with before.  It was my second dose of The Vine that week, though I had to wait for my glass to warm up before it reminded me of how much I had liked it at Fred Fest.

Cheers to Cascade and EastBurn for putting together a wonderful meal.  Definitely keep an eye on the Beer Belly calendar -- they're great events.

The Cheese Bar

Friday evening Carla and I made an accidental stop at the Cheese Bar, a new, uh, cheese bar at about 60th and Belmont. I had heard about the place, and we happened to pass it after two different moviegoing plans fell through.  It filled the bill perfectly for us: we needed a light dinner, and I needed another taste of Upright's Oyster Stout since I had given away the first bottle I bought and Beermongers was sold out when I checked there. Actually, that's kind of funny: in addition to beer bars and cheesemongers, Portland also has a cheese bar and a beermonger.

As the name indicates, the main attraction of the Cheese Bar is its dairy case, with a hand-picked selection of artisan cheeses from around the world.  You can buy cheese to go, or sit at the bar or one of the five or six tables and enjoy a small snack.  But the Cheese Bar also has a nice selection of beers -- 6 taps and about 30 bottles.  The space is nice, it's a comfortable place to hang out in, especially if you can get a table (it's a little hectic to sit at the bar).  After our oyster stout, we split a pint of the nice Chinook Single-Hopped IPA from Terminal Gravity.  There's a lower "take-home" price on the beer bottles, though I'm pretty sure the prices are higher than those at most bottle shops and groceries in the area.

Let's talk about those prices.  Some of them are a little high -- $4.30 for a 12-ounce Terminal Gravity ESG?!? -- but some of them are almost charitable: $2.70 for a Firestone Walker Pale Ale.  Hold on a second, on further reflection the problem is that the beer prices are just weird.  Take a look at the "here" prices on the menu below.  There are 25 beers on that side of the menu, and 19 different prices!  That's pretty delicate bookkeeping.  The take-home discount also varies from beer to beer, it's either $1, $1.50, or $2; that doesn't make a damn bit of sense.  Some order to the listing would be nice also, if not by style, then good old American alphabetical order.

The food prices are on the high side, for example $8 for the daily cheese plate with three small tranches of cheese, or $9 for the charcuterie sampler, but those are kind of typical for Portland, and not unreasonable considering the quality and uniqueness of the meats and cheeses.  On the other hand, the menu also has a $6 sandwich and a $4 salad (exact ingredients change day by day), so there is a way to economize.  That is, unless you're an unfortunate wine drinker: wine bottles are mostly about $35, within a range from $20 to $80.  And the only by-the-glass price on the printed menu is $10, though maybe they have some daily specials.

I have two gripes about the food at the Cheese Bar.  First, the sample plates come with 4 little coins of dried-up bread -- excuse me, crostini -- which is not really enough to do the job.  Each additional order of 4 crostini is $1, which is quite simply a laughable price for something so small, hard, and flavorless.  A better option would be to offer a couple of choices of baguette or roll; heck, if you want people to buy more $30/pound cheese or meat snacks, just give them some bread for free, and don't bother drying it out first.

My second issue with the food sounds a little silly, but it will be familiar to beer fans: the cheese is served too cold.  Like good beer, you want to taste the flavors in your good cheese, but that means it can't be right out of the fridge.  You could sit there a while and let it warm up, but that kind of goes against the owner's stated goal of a place to have a quick bite, shop for some cheese, and be on your way.  I don't know if there's really a solution to that problem: of course they need to keep their perishable wares cold.  Maybe some portions of the daily special could be kept out at room temperature during busy times, or the cheese could be served on a warm plate.

The place is pretty new, so maybe some of the pricing issues will get tweaked as they go.  It is a nice place, and definitely worth a visit, especially if you get a hankering for some cheesy comestibles.  By the way, I was hoping to be the first to report the factoid that it's a favorite hangout of Oregon Brewers Guild CEO Brian Butenschoen, but Portland Monthly stole my scoop in their review.

San Francisco vs. Portland

While waiting in line at the Rooftop Coffee Bar at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art earlier this week, I couldn't help but overhear a young lady nearby ranting about -- of all things -- how pretentious Stumptown Coffee is. She was talking to a somewhat older gentleman -- her father? her art professor? -- and seemed particularly offended that Stumptown's cafes serve French-pressed coffee instead of drip coffee. "Of course," she added with disgust, "Stumptown is from the most pretentious city I've ever been in: Portland."

Interesting.  She's enjoying a visit to a museum that currently exhibits not just one rectangular painting of a uniform gray but also a second such work, yet she thinks coffee presses are pretentious. Not to mention the fact that the Blue Bottle cafe we were standing in serves an espresso drink designed by kitsch-meister Jeff Koons, whose porcelain Michael Jackson is also on display at SFMOMA. I mean no disrespect to the museum or the art world, but isn't irony delicious? As I stood there pretentiously sporting my Hawthorne Bridge T-shirt, I turned to ask the Stumptown hater, "Portland is more pretentious than San Francisco?". "Well," she replied, "it certainly has a higher ratio of pretentious to non-pretentious people."

Oh well, Portland will always have its detractors. In fact, the girl at the art museum reminded me in a way of cranky Portland beer blogger Dr. Wort, though instead of finding us too pretentious, he thinks things are too sloppy here, and he pines for the more refined San Francisco beer scene he experienced as a lucky denizen of the Bay Area. Though conceding that SF has a relatively small number of breweries and brewpubs, the Doc fondly remembers them as places where -- this is a quote -- "the gastronomic delights abound". It's tempting to pick apart the doctor's fawning over some California places that he would excoriate for their blandness if they magically appeared here in Portland, but I think I better get on with my own report of this week's trip to San Francisco.

It was a family vacation, so there weren't any late nights or beer-soaked days, but Carla and I made it out to a few beer places. Sunday evening we swooped down on our San Fran man Andy, who hiked us from his apartment to Zeitgeist and then Toronado, neither of which I had been to before. Toronado was smashing -- an interesting, well-rounded selection of draft beers, reasonably priced. It's got a little bit of a dive bar feel to it, in the sense that you could sit there in the dark and be perfectly at ease. The place is famed for bartenders with attitude, but I thought the service was good, and they even forgave me a faux pas when I accidentally slammed my empty glass down on the zinc bar with a loud bang. The delicious cheap sausages from Rosamunde's next door were the icing on the cake. Kind of ridiculous I'd never been to Toronado; now I'll make sure and get there every time I'm in the city.

On the other hand, Zeitgeist was a disappointment. In his recent report on San Francisco, Ezra said Zeitgeist has about 40 taps, but Sunday at least 25 of those were blown -- the Sierra Nevada Imperial Stout blew with my order. My wife only gets IPAs anymore, and there wasn't a single IPA or even Pale Ale left when we were there. She ended up with a so-so amber called Poppy Jasper from El Toro. The Zeitgeist beer garden is set up pretty nicely, but it was way too crowded. We found a vacant place to sit, but had to wait awhile for the empties from the previous occupants to be bussed, and forget about a rag to wipe the table. Of the 500 people in the yard, 350 were smoking cigarettes and another 25 were openly smoking pot. I've got no particular beef with those activities, but it wasn't our scene.

On other nights we made it out to 21st Amendment and the Thirsty Bear, both walkable from our Market Street hotel. It had been a few years since I'd been to 21A, so I was glad to get the chance, but the taplist was a little disappointing -- IPA, Amber, Red, Light Golden, Watermelon Wheat... ho hum. The Smoked Imperial Porter was the standout, though it bore a cruel California price tag of $7 for 10 ounces, plus tax. Of course Carla went with the IPA, and it was very tasty -- the hop aroma would remind you of orange blossoms or apricots. The food we tried was quite decent, if a little spendy for what it was -- a brick-oven pizza and a loaded cheeseburger (no tater tots).

We didn't try any entrees at the Thirsty Bear, but the oysters with avocado granita and sea salt were brilliant. I enjoyed the abbey-style Belgian ales (one golden, one "amber") that were on as seasonals, although we found the cask IPA to be a little humdrum. It's an odd place -- they get a lot more business from the convention center nearby than from any kind of regular local crowd. It's worth a visit if you're in the area.

I realize that this post meandered around quite a bit, and might not have all that much to do with the headline. For me the main beer lessons of this trip were: first, Toronado goes a long way toward redeeming the sparsity of San Francisco's beer scene; second, be it ever so pretentious, there's no place like home.

Full Sail Beer Belly

Carla and I had a great time at East Burn's Beer Belly Dinner last night. It was the one-year anniversary of the dinners, so they brought back Full Sail's John Harris as the guest brewer, since he did the first such dinner.  A new beer was previewed, Hop Pursuit Extra Pale Ale,  and I got to try the Pilsner Room exclusive Slainte Stout for the first time.  The appetizer courses matched up well with the two lagers of the evening: Session Black and LTD 1, and of course any night is a good night if the dessert is served with barrel-aged Top Sail Imperial Porter.

Hop Pursuit is a nice biscuity pale that John said was his way of getting back to his brewing roots, with the "old-school hops" that were all he had to work with early in his brewing career:  Willamettes, Mt. Hoods, and Cascades.  It will be out in 22-ounce bottles in a few months as part of the Brewmaster's Reserve series.  There are lots of flowery hops in there, but it's not overly bitter.  Nice stuff.

These Beer Belly dinners are a great deal, $35 a head for five wonderful courses paired with beer.  The setting on the East Burn's patio is pleasant and relaxing, especially if you get one of the tables with porch-swing seats. Best of all, the proceeds from the dinners benefit a worthy cause: Ride On, the non-profit organization that will drive you and your car home for a small fee if you've had too much to drink.

I foolishly forgot to bring a camera, so all I got were some blurry cellphone pictures.  Blurry and dark -- it wasn't until the cheese course that I figured out the night-photo feature of my new phone.  I wish I could show you the massive pork chops we were served, or the delicious pork-belly skewers candied and dusted with Indian spices.  [Update: A generous reader is willing to share her pictures of the dinner. Check out those courses.] Last night's menu was very pork-o-centric, but I noticed that a diner at the next table was provided with vegetarian replacements, so I suppose if you call ahead they'll accommodate you.

Next month's dinner features San Francisco's 21st Amendment Brewery.  Good food, good beer, good deal, all for a good cause.

Clinton Street Brewing Disappears

The status of Clinton Street Brewing (warning: noisy website) -- next to the movie theater at 26th and Clinton -- has been weird for quite a while, since the little in-house brewing operation was assimilated by Captured by Porches. But it appears that the whole thing is now kaput. A new banner on the awning declares the establishment to be "The Workshop", and there are no CSB or CBP taphandles behind the bar.

As I peered in the window today, I got some details on the change from the barbecue chef, who was sitting at a picnic table outside. In my usual blundering way, one detail I didn't get was the gentleman's name, but his outfit is Smoky Mountain BBQ, most recently serving at the Queen of Hearts Tavern near the Mt. Scott Rec Center. Anyway, the Smoky Mountain Man said that the new owners will also brew their own beer -- in fact are apparently already brewing it -- but not at the place itself. That may be a good thing, considering the scary-looking setup pictured above that Clinton Street used.

Right now The Workshop opens at 5 PM; next week they hope to open at 2 PM, and eventually serve lunch. The barbecue is pork-leaning North Carolina-style. You can still buy a beer to take in to the theater next door -- the taps I can recall are Jubel and Pabst... there were three or four other choices, none remarkable one way or the other.

Seattle: Brouwer's and Tap House Grill

A couple weeks ago Carla and I spent a weekend in Seattle. It wasn't a beer trip, but of course we ended up at a couple of beer spots: Brouwer's Cafe in Fremont, and the Tap House Grill downtown.

Brouwer's is well-known to Northwest beer aficionados, but it was my first visit to the place. I wasn't disappointed. Fifty beers on tap, hundreds more in bottles, all served in correct glassware and accompanied by delicious food. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but the spacious interior provides a wonderful atmosphere. As you can see in the picture, the bottles are part of the decor behind the bar, lovingly displayed behind evenly-spaced cooler doors. There are five different kinds of seating: you can sit at the bar, in a booth along the outside wall, at a table on the ground floor, at a table up in the loft area, or in one of the couches by the stairs. Make that six -- there's patio seating outside also. No minors allowed -- it's just for the grown-ups.

For Portlanders like us, the big attraction was the draft Washington beers that are not available in Oregon, like the lovely cask-conditioned Port Townsend Hop Diggity IPA, and the masterful Boundary Bay Dry-Hopped IPA -- which you might have tried at the OBF this year. But there were many other attractions at Brouwer's: I finally had to order a St. Bernardus Abt 12 after seeing so many other patrons hefting their chalices of dark Belgian ale. And I got my hopes up when I saw Port Brewing's Old Viscosity on the bottle menu, but had to settle for a bottle of Port's Santa's Little Helper since the OV was sold out.

The Tap House Grill in downtown Seattle is a different beast from Brouwer's, but worthy in its own right. It boasts 160 beer taps, and it was a short walk from our hotel, so it seemed like an obvious choice for our first night's dinner. Descending from street-level into the restaurant, my first impression upon taking in the corporate atmosphere and TVs above the bar was "Uh oh, this is gonna be like Henry's Tavern in Portland". That feeling was reinforced when I opened the beer menu: it was printed up in almost exactly the same format as the Henry's menu -- beers categorized by style, no prices listed, asterisks next to the rare or expensive beers.

My inquietude was quickly pacified, when I found out that our waiter actually knew something about the beer. He was able to help us choose between a couple of Washington beers that we were curious about, and he knew which ones were served in pints and which in smaller glasses. (That's what earns Henry's my enduring scorn -- I have never been served there by anyone who knew anything about the beer, including the quantity served.) Even better, when I asked what the Tap House's seasonals were, the waiter was able to punch a button on a cash register and get a printout of the 20 taps which weren't on the menu. Bravo!

I had a decent Biere de Garde from Iron Horse; the Silver City Fat Scotch was a nice Wee Heavy. Carla enjoyed her Elysian Dragontooth Stout -- I know, I know, we can get that in Portland, but it was probably the best beer on our table. It seems like we had another Washington beer at the Tap House, but I can't remember what it was. The food was quite good also -- I had a spicy Thai salad that kept me reaching for my beer. We were there without kids, but I noticed kids at three or four tables -- it seemed to be a reasonably kid-friendly place.

Any trip to Seattle must include a trip to Brouwer's. You probably knew that already, and now I do too. And I think the Tap House Grill is worth a visit if you're staying downtown -- not the most inspiring atmosphere, but family-friendly with good food and a great beer selection.

Faultline Brewing, Sunnyvale

I spent last week at my company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. We have a teenage fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in our house, so we jokingly refer to Sunnyvale as "Hellmouth" -- the vampire conduit that Buffy's town of Sunnydale sits atop. If you're a Portland beer snob the South Bay is indeed a kind of beer Hell. San Jose is the third-largest city in California, twice as big as Portland, and it sports a measly four brewpubs. Sunnyvale is relatively lucky, with two brewpubs, and a Tied House location nearby in Mountain View. How is it that Palo Alto has no brewpubs? I thought Stanford was full of geniuses. All right, forget brewpubs, there should be some good beer bars.... Tacky Irish pubs seem to be about as good as it gets, which isn't so good.

The saving grace in the area is Faultline Brewing, just off 101 in Sunnyvale. They have a decent selection of regular beers, nitro taps and a cask engine, and interesting seasonals. The Maibock seasonal was too strong at 7.2% for session purposes last week, so I stuck to the cask Pale Ale and the Best Bitter on nitro. The Pale is perfect for dinner and conversation, floral but not too bitter. The cloudy cask-conditioned version was a little more flavorful than the regular tap.

Not to belittle the beer, but what's even better is the food at Faultline. It's not cheap -- $18 to $25 dinner entrees -- but it's wonderful. The portions are embarrassingly large, which is an embarrassment I'm always willing to endure. Sometimes large portions mask an inattentiveness in the food quality, but that's not the case at Faultline. The seafood gumbo was dense with fish, shrimp, and sausage, and threatened to spill over the brim of its large plate. The Macadamia-Crusted Tilapia was perfectly crisp, and similarly huge. I'm racking my brains trying to think of a Portland restaurant to compare it to. Maybe a cross between the big plates at Deschutes and the interesting menu at the harborside McCormick and Schmick's, with higher quality than those two put together.

Click here for the Beer Mapping Project's page on Faultline Brewing Company

Faultline Brewing Company

Information provided by Beer Mapping