Beer & BBQ: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

As I've mentioned on this blog in the past, I was a pescetarian until a few months ago. I had been so for a number of years, not because I have a problem with animals dying for human consumption per se, but because I have a lot of issues with the factory farming industry that produces most of the meat consumed in North America. (OK, there was also the fact that my wife dropped meat from her diet before I did and stopped cooking it for us, and since I'm a lousy cook, it seemed easiest just to give it up as well.)

Earlier this year, however, I decided to start eating meat again for a number of reasons. I won't go into all of them here, but I will admit that at least some of it was due to me quite simply having cravings for meat more and more often. I nearly caved a couple of times, and then finally fell off the wagon when I was given the opportunity to attend a Brooklyn Brewing dinner at beerbistro back in February where the menu featured many delicious meaty courses.

Since then, I've been eating meat on an occasional basis, most often at dinners or events that I'm invited to attend via Taste T.O. or Bar Towel. One of the most recent of these was a lunch earlier this week at Steam Whistle Brewery featuring the succulent creations of Canada's reigning Grand BBQ Champions, Team Cedar Grilling. Consisting of Steve Adams, Daryl Maybanks and Mike Adams, the Team Cedar trio are a non-profit team who depend on sponsorship to defray their travel and equipment costs (although the $6500 they won a couple of weeks ago probably helps as well - congrats, guys!). Hence their partnership with Steam Whistle who not only hosted this little media get-together, but who also have their beer featured in several of the Team's recipes.

Held on Steam Whistle's sunny patio just south of the CN Tower, the lunch started with Cedar Planked Garlic Shrimp with Asiago Gratin served to us right off the planks. There were also an array of salads available, but as we started spooning them on to our plates, one of the guys shouted over that we'd better not eat too much as there was a lot more to come from the grill.

Like, for example, their award winning Parrot Sticks. These are chicken wings that are stretched to their full length and skewered, resulting in a sort of wing-meets-kebab thing that looks kinda funny but tastes damn good, especially when dipped in the accompanying Steam Whistle Chicken Sauce.

Of course, what we really wanted to try were the ribs, and when they finally made it off the grill, they didn't disappoint. Prepared using the team's Steam Whistle BBQ Sauce recipe, they were juicy and tender and bone-sucking good. So good, in fact, that they made the Pulled Pork Sandwiches that followed almost anti-climatic. Which is too bad, because the meat itself was possibly the best pulled pork I've ever had, it was just let down a bit by the doughy supermarket style bun it was served on and the odd inclusion of cole slaw on the sandwich. Still, I ended up finishing it even though my stomach was threatening to explode from the previous courses and the couple of beers I'd already put back.

Speaking of the beer - as you'd expect, Steam Whistle Pilsner was the only beer option. This beer/brewery gets a lot of flak from the beer geek community due to the fact that it's a fairly simple, straight-forward, crowd-pleasing lager. But I've defended them in the past, and will continue to do so now. Sure, it's a simple beer, but it's also a very well-made and refreshing one, and if you drink it cool and fresh - such as the less-than-a-week-old bottles we were served to us at the brewery - it's a perfect accompaniment to eating some killer BBQ on a warm patio.

For those in Toronto, Team Cedar Grilling will be appearing at the Fort York BBQ Championships on Sept. 14-16. If you're a fan of the swine and the smoke, you should definitely plan to be there.

Book Review: Grilling With Beer with Lucy Saunders

Grilling With Beer
by Lucy Saunders
F&B Communications, 224 pp.
US$21.95

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a manly man. I don't care much for any sports besides hockey, I don't own any power tools besides a simple drill set, and I don't have any interest in cars (in fact, I don't even have a driver's license).

The one manly pursuit I do enjoy, however, is barbecuing. At our previous place, my wife and I had use of a large backyard with a great deck, and we invested in a decent quality gas grill. While my wife is a fabulous cook, she always let me man the grill (even though she actually did all the prep work), and even during our years of being almost-vegetarians, we still did up some great grilled fish and veggies once in a while. Last year, we moved into our current yard-less and balcony-less apartment, which meant leaving the BBQ behind. I sort of missed it last summer, and now that I've started eating meat again, I'm really missing it.

Rubbing salt in the wound was the recent unexpected arrival of a review copy of Grilling With Beer by American food and beer writer Lucy Saunders. If only this book existed 5 or 6 years ago when I was at the top of my grilling game and getting more and more interested in exploring different beers - I would've been in beer & BBQ heaven! Sigh.

Still, even as a member of the unfortunately grill-free set, this is a great book to own. Logically arrayed into 10 main chapters - 5 covering sauces, glazes, marinades, rubs and other basic BBQ condiments, and 5 covering various meats/seafood and sides - Grilling With Beer features well over 100 recipes to match everyone's tastes (yes, even vegetarians - the recipes for Grilled Herbed Hazelnut Flatbread, Brined Grilled Eggplant, and Grilled Potato Salad all look delicious). And thankfully for kitchen klutzes like me, most of them are pretty simple as well, with clearly written ingredient lists and instructions.

Saunders has also brought a lot of her friends to the party, and features recipes from such beer cuisine luminaries as Brian Morin (beerbistro), Gary Marx (Pike Brewing), Mario Gongora (Marin Brewing) and Scott McGlinchey (Q Real American Food). Also pitching in are the Jason & Todd Alström of BeerAdvocate.com, who provide convincing argument for grilling with beer (in case you needed one) in their preface, and the legendary beer writer Michael Jackson, who explains why Saunders is pretty much the best person in the world to have written this book.

Making this book even more of a treat are the segments between the chapters. Written by Saunders and other beer scribes such as Anne Ausderau, Dan Rabin and Jay Brooks, these interludes provide profiles of festivals and events that feature craft beer and grilled/barbecued food, ranging from the New Mexico's Rio Rancho Pork & Brew and a BBQ Oyster Fest in San Andreas, to events in such exotic locales as Hawai'i, Australia and New Zealand. And as if that weren't enough, writer and brewer Stan Hieronymus gives some tips on pairing beers with the dishes that the book helps you prepare, and Saunders wraps things up with a list of mail order resources for all of your grilling needs, and a fantastic run down on the flavour profiles of various beer styles.

And it would be remiss not to mention how visually attractive the book is. The spot illustrations and font choices give it a slightly retro look (although not to the point of parody, like so many faux-retro cookbooks that are on the market), and the event profiles feature some nice photos, as do a number of the recipes. All in all, it's a slick little package.

Like most self-published books, the best way to get your hands on a copy of Grilling With Beer is directly from the author. Mail order instructions can be found on the book's website, grillingwithbeer.com, as well as at Saunders' main site, beercook.com. If you prefer the in-person method and live in Toronto, there's a good chance that she'll have some copies for sale at beerbistro this coming Tuesday, July 10th when she's there to present a special dinner as part of the restaurant's month long American Beer & Barbecue Fest.

Sick in Seattle 2: The Nausea Continues

As previously reported, I was struck down by a bug of some sort during my trip to Seattle. It started on Saturday morning, when I woke up with what I thought was a mild hangover from my Friday night outing. It seemed unlikely since I really didn't have that much to drink, but combined with a bit of jet lag, it was a possibility.

After some ibuprofen, coffee and a light breakfast, things weren't getting any better, so I decided to get out to see if some air would help. It was grey, damp and cool outside, but the fresh air still helped somewhat, so I hopped on a bus downtown to do some exploring.

My destination was Pike Place Market, a massive complex of food stalls, shops and restaurants that makes Toronto's St. Lawrence Market look like a corner store in comparison. I spent more than 2 hours wandering around, and I'm sure that I didn't see everything. I saw them throw some fish around at the Pike Place Fish Market, took a good whiff at Beecher's Handmade Cheese, had a tasty snack at Piroshky Piroshky, and avoided the bad hippy buskers in front of the original Starbucks.

Feeling a bit better after my morning constitutional, I decided that I was up for lunch at The Pike Pub & Brewery, a spacious brewpub located a block or so from the Market. I ordered up a sampler flight of a half-dozen beers, and found them all to be pretty solid examples of their respective styles. Well, except for the Weisse - it was kinda bland. But I particularly liked the XXXXX Stout, which had a lot of great coffee and chicory character, and hints of molasses and smoke.

Unfortunately, halfway through my lunch, things started rumbling around again, and I decided that it might be a good idea to head back to my hotel room and take a bit of a break before heading uptown to check out a couple more beer spots. But when things didn't get any better in the gastro-intestinal department, plans for further outings were scrapped in favour of - well, just laying around feeling generally shitty, really.

So, that was my trip to Seattle. Half great, half lousy. Meh.

Menu For Hope III

While BB&B is mainly a beer blog, I do dabble in a bit of food-related posting (as the "Bites" in the name suggests). I've also started reading a number of food blogs recently, and many of them have featured posts in the last couple of days about a fundraising event called Menu For Hope.

The purpose of this annual event, which is being held for the third time this year, is best described by campaign director Pim Techamuanvivit on her blog Chez Pim:

To us Food Bloggers, food is a joy. On our blogs, we celebrate food as a delight or even an indulgence. Unfortunately, for many others who share our world do not share that privilege. For them, food is a matter of survival. This "Menu for Hope" is our small way to help.

The campaign involves a mass raffle that features prizes donated by dozens of food bloggers around the world, often with the participation of other culinary luminaries like bad-boy chef Anthony Bourdain and Toronto's own Susur Lee. The money raised will be donated to the UN World Food Programme, which provides hunger relief for needy people worldwide.

If you're interesting in getting involved, a full list of available prizes can be found at Chez Pim, while my fellow Canucks may be interested in seeing the list of prizes from Canadian bloggers, which is available in both English and Français at Confessions of a Cardamom Addict.

My one complaint about this thing is the complete lack of beer blogs being involved in the project. As the list hosted at Vinography attests, there are plenty of wine blogs contributing prizes, but none of my beery brethren are represented. I think we'll have to do something about this in 2007...

Gourmet Food and Wine Expo

This past weekend, the wife and I went down to the Gourmet Food & Wine Expo at the Toronto Convention Centre. It was our first time attending this annual event - we'd considered it in past years, but because we're cheapasses, we were scared off by the relatively high admission charge. This year, however, we were armed with a 2-for-1 coupon and decided to give it a shot.

All in all, we were pretty underwhelmed. Sheryl has given her impressions in a post to TorontoBits, and I'm pretty much in agreement with her assessment. As she notes, there was a lot about the event that wasn't particularly "gourmet" in nature. For example, the wine-in-a-bag pictured to the right certainly doesn't say "gourmet" to me. And I was especially offended to see Bright Pearl amongst the food vendors, as the food I was served at their booth at the Taste Of Toronto festival back in September was high on the lost of the worst things I've ever put into my mouth.

That being said, we did manage to find a few palatable food options, even for finicky pescetarians like ourselves. The grilled sardines and fish cakes from Cataplana weren't bad, and it's hard to go wrong with oysters from Rodney's (although the ones we were served could've been cleaned a bit better - nothing ruins a nice oyster more than grit between your teeth). But the highlight was definitely the sushi from EDO which was fresh and tasty, and one of the few food items on offer than wasn't sitting in a steam tray for hours. Speaking of which: The other item available at the EDO booth was a small Kobe beef burger, but Kobe beef or not, anyone willing to plunk down 7 bucks for a burger that was cooked hours before and kept warm in a steam tray is a frickin' idiot.

As for the liquids - well, as I've stated before, I'm really not much of a wine guy, so I walked past most of the wine booths with a mixture of confusion and fear. We did try a couple of wines that I liked, including this year's Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais nouveau and some other red wine that made Sheryl feel all melty and fluttery. I also had some fantastic scotch that I completely forgot to write down the name of, but I recall being told that it was a private label release of an 8 year old Lagavulin that sells for about half the price of the regular stuff. It had been a long time since I'd had a scotch, and this reminded me of how much I enjoy it.

On the beer side of things, I started with some Christoffel Blond, a favourite of mine that was being served up the Rubaiyat import agency. At the Embrujo Flamenco booth, I tried a sample of Ambar, a fairly standard pale lager from Spain. And at Black Oak, our pal Ken was serving up this year's batch of his seasonal Nutcracker Porter which was in fine form - rich and spicey, just how we like it.

The final verdict: This event may be great for wine lovers, but for the occasional wine drinker going more for the food and beer, it's a disappointment. Especially if you're paying the full admission price of 15 dollars, plus buying a stack of sampling coupons for a buck each and dropping 2 or 3 of them for each sample. It's definitely not a cheap way to spend an afternoon.

The Land Of Chocolate

As news editor at The Bar Towel, I occasionally receive invitations to press events and launch parties around town, but generally they have something to do with beer. So I was surprised a couple of weeks ago when I was emailed an invite to the 6th Annual "Chocs-O-Fun" event presented by Ganong, a New Brunswick based chocolate maker that is Canada's oldest candy company and one of the oldest family owned businesses in the country.

I wasn't sure if I should RSVP, as I couldn't really do much in the way of promoting Ganong via The Bar Towel. But when I mentioned it to the wife, her eyes lit up, and she immediately pitched it to Gremolata as a story idea. Helped by the fact that the event was also serving as a launch for Ganong: A Sweet History Of Chocolate - a beautiful book that documents the history of the company in words and pictures - the story was approved, so we could attend without feeling like freeloaders.

The event was held this past Thursday at the very swank Dominion Club at King & Yonge in downtown Toronto. Smartly dressed waiters floated around the room with plates of hors d'oeuvres, soothing jazz played in the background, and a large marble table was piled high with boxes and boxes of chocolates and fruit candies. Each attendee also received a swag bag on departure containing three boxes of various tasty Ganong treats.

There was also an open bar, but the beer selection was limited to the terrible trio of Blue, Canadian and Corona. Too bad, as a rich and roasty stout would've provided a great pairing for the chocolate bon-bons. In retrospect, we should've headed a block east to beerbistro afterwards and cracked open our gift bags to try a couple of pairings of our own. Ah well, I'm sure we'll be able to come up with some good ones here at home...

Mill Street Brewpub

For a city of its size and population, Toronto has an embarrassing dearth of brewpubs. In fact, up until a couple of weeks ago, we had exactly one of them: The Granite. It's a great place, but since I'm a downtown snob who tends to get nosebleeds if I go too far north of Bloor Street, I don't make it up there very often.

(C'est What is often referred to as a brewpub, but since their house beers are brewed off-site at Durham Brewing, they don't meet the usually accepted definition of the word.)

So when word came down earlier this year that Mill Street Brewery would be relocating their main operations to a much larger brewery in the suburbs and turning their original Distillery District location into a brewpub, there was much rejoicing throughout the local beer scene.

After months of anticipation, the Mill Street Brewpub was finally opened in late October with surprisingly minimal fanfare. I made it down for my first visit earlier this week, and I can say with very little reservation that it was well worth the wait. My only disappointment was that Alan at A Good Beer Blog beat me to the reviewing punch even though he lives about 250 kms away. Plus he never lets me know when he's going to be in town. Bastard.

Anyway. Since it's located in the Distillery District, the place has great atmosphere almost by default, but they've really gone above and beyond with the renovations that they've done over the past few months. Aside from the brewing tanks in the middle of the room, it's almost unrecognisable from its time as a regular brewery, and it strikes the perfect balance between being spacious and cozy.

It pretty much goes without saying that the beer is excellent, but I'll say it anyway: The beer is excellent. In addition to their core line-up of Tankhouse Ale, Organic Lager, Coffee Porter and Stock Ale, they've promoted their Oktoberfest, Wit and Helles Bock from seasonal to year-round status, revived their Cobblestone Stout which hadn't been available for a couple of years, and added an IPA and an ESB to the roster. A Kriek is coming soon, as well as some one-offs/seasonals, and the bar will soon be outfitted with a hand-pump for some cask ale action. Oh, and they found a keg or two of their 2004 Barley Wine that they're serving up as well.

Lots to choose from, but I was in the mood for some new stuff, so I went with the two that I hadn't tried before. The ESB was excellent - fresh, earthy & fruity with an appealing graininess and a moderately dry, herbal finish. I was less enthralled with the IPA - it was pleasant enough, with a nice, well-balanced flavour, but when they've already got the hoppy pale ale bases covered with Tankhouse, this one almost seems like an afterthought.

As for the food side of things, since pubs tend to cater strongly to the carnivore set, the wife and I were expecting a lack of vegetarian options, and our expectations were pretty well met in that regard. There are only two completely veg options in the main courses - a veggie pizza and the ubiquitous roasted vegetable sandwich - although the appetizers and salads are a bit friendlier to the meat-avoiders. Since we also eat seafood, we had a few more options than if we were complete veg-heads.

To start off, we snacked on a generous basket of kick-ass sweet potato fries. For my main, I ordered a Caesar salad and sprung an additional $3.99 to get some calamari added. At that price I expected maybe a handful of calamari thrown on top, but was pleasantly surprised to find the salad so covered in tasty golden-brown squidy goodness that I could barely see the green stuff underneath. Sheryl went with the veggie sandwich which she proclaimed to be fairly average, and our carnivorous dining companions both decided on the pulled pork sandwich which was declared good but "unusual" due to the inclusion of cheese.

Final verdict: Amazing space, great beer, decent food. It's a bit out of the way for me to visit often, but I'll happily return for new beers and other events.

New York City - Night 6: Midtown

[A month after I got home, and I'm finally getting the last part of my trip report posted. Ah well, better late than never...]

NYC - Night 6 - Friday, September 29th:

For my last night in the Big Apple, I decided to stick fairly close to my hotel and hit a few Midtown locations that I hadn't visited yet (and ultimately, one that I already had).

First up was the renowned beer emporium The Ginger Man (11 E. 36th St. between 5th Ave. & Madison). I'd first tried to visit on Monday night and found it packed from wall-to-wall, but this time I made it down early enough to beat the crowds. With high ceilings and lots of well-polished wood, this place gives off an elegant but comfortable vibe, and the combination of an astounding tap line-up of 60+ beers and a small but well-selected menu of sandwiches, salads and cheeses seemed to make it a popular place with the after-work crowd. I enjoyed a pint of Erdinger Festweiße and considered following it up with something else, but the Friday night rush was starting in earnest, so I decided to try and find some place a little quieter.

I'd hoped that place might be Stout NYC (133 W. 33rd St. near 7th), but thanks to Eric Clapton, it wasn't to be. It seemed that his concert at the nearby Madison Square Garden was being celebrated with a pre-show party at Stout being thrown by a local classic rock radio station, and as a result the place was jammed beyond belief. However, I did get a look at the tap list, and based on what I saw, I had no problem leaving without a drink: aside from Guinness and Murphy's, there wasn't a stout to be had, and the remaining taps were a couple of Brooklyn Brewing beers, a bunch of mainstream lagers, and and assortment of the usual overrated imports that are available pretty much everywhere. Apparently their bottle list does a better job of living up to the promising name of the place, but I wasn't ready to fight my way through the crowds to find out.

So I hit the road again and headed north to The House of Brews (363 W. 46th St. between 8th & 9th Ave.), a cozy lower level pub along the touristy Restaurant Row strip. I really liked the atmosphere in this place - very comfortable and laid-back, with friendly staff and a nice selection of over a dozen beers on tap and 80 or so in bottles. Based on the bartender's recommendation, I started with a pint of their cask ale selection, Chelsea Catskill Hop Harvest Ale, which was a very nice & hoppy little number that was in fantastic condition. I followed it with Harpoon Octoberfest which isn't the most exciting beer around, but still a pleasant one with a good maltiness. My only real complaint about this place was the food, as my dinner was a lacklustre order of fish & chips that featured limp french fries and soggy, over-battered fish filets. I also shared some nachos with my neighbour at the bar, and we both agreed that they were far from the best we'd ever had. Still, the vibe and the beer selection made this a great place to hang out and watch some of the ball game (I don't even like baseball, but the Jays were playing the Yankees, so I felt some obligation to my hometown team to cheer them on while sitting on enemy turf).

To cap my evening & my week in the city, I decided to head around the corner and revisit the place where I had started back on Sunday night, The Collins Bar (735 8th Ave. at 46th St.). It was a bit busier than my first visit, but I managed to find a spot at the back near the jukebox, which I proceeded to feed most of my remaining US currency in order to annoy the rest of the patrons with my eclectic musical tastes. I got excited when I saw the rare Sierra Nevada 20th Street Green Hop Ale on a list of special beers they had on tap from a Union Beer tasting event a couple of nights before, but was disappointed to find out that the keg had kicked just minutes before I walked into the bar. Combined with Sunday's Schlenkerla situation, I was definitely having some bad luck with the place, but that didn't change my opinion of The Collins as being a quintessential NYC watering hole - tons of history, a classic look that hasn't changed in decades, and needless to say, a brilliant selection of libations to choose from. Their feature beer for the night was Magic Hat #9, an interesting apricot pale ale that I'd enjoyed in the past, so I went for a pint of that before moving on to the Southampton Imperial Porter, a dark & luscious brew that was much better on tap than the bottled version I'd tried a few months previous.

With that, I woozily toddled back to my hotel, and flew home the next morning. All in all, it was a fantastic trip that proved to me that New York is an essential city for beer travellers to visit. It's only big deficiency would seem to be a lack of quality bottle shops, but since I wasn't doing much shopping on this trip, that was a minor quibble for me. Otherwise, it was remarkably easy to fill my free time with beer-related pursuits, and I hope to make it back there sooner than later to revisit a few places, as well as pay first visits to a few places I managed to miss.

New York City - Night 5: Brooklyn

[Yeah, I'm still really busy - maybe I'll get these NYC posts finished before the next time I travel down there...]

NYC - Night 5 - Thursday, September 28th:

The trade tasting event that I attended on Tuesday had brought brewers from around the world into NYC, and several of them set up other events during their visit to give their beers some more exposure to the public at large, such as the sadly cancelled Schlenkerla night that I tried to attend on Sunday at The Collins Bar. The one that I was really excited about, though, was the Rogue night at Barcade in Brooklyn, which was set to feature 20 Rogue beers on tap - including a few rarities - and brewmaster John Maier in attendance.

HopStop maps in hand, I caught the subway out to the wilds of Williamsburg for a mini barhop. Before the drinking began, I satisfied my craving for something tasty and slightly greasy with a mock-meatball sandwich at Foodswings (295 Grand St.), a vegan fast food joint that even a carnivore could love. No tofu & spouts, hippie-dippie, peace & love shit at this place - the staff is pierced and tattooed, the music is down and dirty, and the menu features vegan versions of all your greasy spoon and pub grub faves, including chili con soya, "fish" & chips, nachos and "chicken" drumsticks.

It's also conveniently located just a couple of blocks from Spuyten Duyvil (359 Metropolitan Ave.), an unassuming looking place that has been voted the #4 Beer Bar in the U.S. on RateBeer and has been named the Best NYC Beer Bar by both New York Magazine and TimeOut New York. Like many of the bars I visited during my trip, Spuyten is a small place with a friendly neighbourhood vibe and tons of quirky character. The food menu is limited to plates of cheese and cold cuts, but patrons are welcome to bring in other food if desired. The tap list is small in size (6 draughts and a single cask) but big in quality, and the bottle list is astoundingly good, featuring an impeccably chosen selection of brews from around the world, including a good number of Belgians and more than a few rare and obscure treats. Since I was visiting solo, it was hard to justify dropping the big bucks on a 750 ml bottle of Cantillon or Fantome, so I stuck with a pint of Lagunitas Pils, a lean & well-balanced Bohemian pilsner, and a bottle of Kerkom Bink Blond, a surprisingly hoppy Belgian ale.

After that, it was off to Barcade (388 Union Ave.), which is one of the few "concept" bars I've been to that I actually enjoyed. A lot. Located in what seems to be a renovated garage or warehouse space of some sort, Barcade combines two of the best things in the world: great beer and classic video games. For someone who spent most of the early 80s converting my paper route earnings to quarters in order to get my fix of Robotron 2084 and Time Pilot, this place was like heaven. I arrived with a pocket full of quarters to find the place packed to the gills, and after fighting my way to the bar for a pint of Rogue Chocolate Stout on cask, I headed to the machines and started feeding them. The Chocolate was so good that it just had to be followed by another, during which I briefly met John Maier who was being mobbed like a rock star. Second pint of Chocolate drained, I considered having a third, but then realised that of the 20 Rogue beers on tap, there were probably at least a half-dozen that I would never have a chance to try again unless I visited the brewery in person. So I went for a glass of Rogue Love & Hoppiness, a robust pilsner that Maier and his wife, Stacey Wacker, originally brewed last year on Valentine's Day to be served at their wedding on April 9th, 2005. It was a very pleasant surprise from a brewer better known for his ales, and a great choice for my last beer of the night.

Then it was back to the subway and off to my hotel in Manhattan, with one more day and night left ahead if me to enjoy the city. I'll try to get the report of my last night on the town posted in less than a week this time, but I make no promises...

New York City - Night 4: The East Village

[Sorry for falling behind on these, folks. Work has been busy since I got back, and the new hockey season started this week...]

NYC - Night 4 - Wednesday, September 27th:

If you only have one night to spend in New York and want to hit a few beer-friendly establishments, the East Village is the perfect neighbourhood to do so. There are about a half-dozen great bars within staggering distance of each other, not to mention plenty of restaurants to fortify yourself before, during or after your pub crawling.

My original plan for Wednesday night was to start with dinner somewhere and then hit several bars, but class let out early, so I had more time to myself than expected. I decided to start with a late afternoon snack at a non-beer location: Teany (90 Rivington St.), an aptly named (i.e. it's really teeny!) vegetarian cafe and tea house owned by Moby. (I'm semi-vegetarian, by the way - pescetarian, to be exact - so I spent as much time researching veggie restaurants before my trip as I did cataloguing beer destinations.) The tea menu in this place is as intimidating as the beer menus in some of my favourite bars - 98 different teas sorted by style, all with detailed tasting notes. I ended up with a white tea flavoured with chrysanthemum and a slice of very tasty vegan pumpkin "cheese"cake.

Sweet tooth satiated, I made the short walk to d.b.a. (41 1st Ave. between 2nd & 3rd St.). Located on the lower edge of the East Village, d.b.a. was one of the first beer specialty bars to open in Manhattan, and it still has a pretty solid reputation - it was voted 34th in RateBeer's list of Best U.S. Beer Bars for 2006 - although a couple of locals I spoke to later in the week have said that the selection and service have taken a downturn in the past year or two. Personally, the only complaint I had about the place was the horrendous state of the tiny washroom, although I guess it was no worse than the ones in the divey bars I used to frequent in my wayward youth. Still, I expected something a little more sanitary from this otherwise clean and comfortable place.

No complaints about the beer, though. They had a good selection of micros and imports on tap, including a couple of handpumps, and a chalkboard which not only listed their draught and cask selections, but included the dates that they'd all been tapped - a really nice touch that I'd like to see in more places. The bottle selection was also quite impressive, with lots of US micros and imports from Belgium, Germany, the UK, and even several Unibroue beers. And for those who like the hard stuff, they stock plenty of premium bourbon, tequila, whisky and other spirits. I stuck with the beer myself, and since I couldn't decide between malty or hoppy, I went both ways and had a very nice pint of Blue Point Hoptical Illusion on dry-hopped cask, and a glass of Brooklyn Oktoberfest on draught.

At my next stop, I was also offered a choice - not between malty or hoppy, but between "light or dark". Yes, I stopped in at McSorley's Old Ale House (15 E. 7th St. near 3rd Ave.), a NYC institution where they've been slinging suds for over 150 years. There's sawdust on the well-trod floor, white-aproned servers behind the weathered bar, and two types of beer, the aforementioned light and dark, served at a minimum of two mugs at a time. Brewed for the bar by Pabst/Miller, these are not hoity-toity craft beers, just simple brews that are easy to pound back. If you'd like to have a quick visit and try them both, ask the bartender for a "one & one" to get a single mug of each.

After the old-timey diversion of McSorley's, I wanted to get back to the fancy stuff, so I headed a block east and found myself faced with yet another choice: should I visit Burp Castle (41 E. 7th St. near 2nd Ave.) or Jimmy's No. 43 (43 E. 7th St. near 2nd Ave.)? OK, to be honest, I already knew that I was going to choose Jimmy's as I'd read about their Wednesday night beer & cheese tastings, as well as their menu of local and organic food. Located below street level, it looks like a tiny hole-in-the-wall on arrival, but it's actually a rather spacious place with several interconnected rooms and a very monastic decor. I stayed in the front room and grabbed a spot at the bar near the friendly rep from Merchant du Vin who was pouring small samples of Orval, Westmalle Tripel and Samuel Smith's Organic Lager to be enjoyed along with a complimentary cheese plate. Those served as a nice appetizer for a main course of their excellent mac & cheese and a pint of Six Point Bengali Tiger IPA, a wonderfully hoppy beer from a fairly new brewery in Brooklyn. I enjoyed it so much that I had their Smoked Baltic Porter for dessert - and yes, it was just as good as the name suggests. And I had a chance to meet the namesake owner of the place, Jimmy Carbone, who not only remembered me from an email I'd sent him a couple of weeks beforehand to ask about the beer & cheese night, but who also emailed me a couple of days after my visit to say thanks for stopping by. Who says New Yorkers aren't friendly?

My final stop of the night was the Hop Devil Grill (129 St. Marks Place at Ave. A), a funky hang-out with around 30 taps (mostly US micros, with a few well-selected imports) and a slew of bottles to choose from. I felt like something light to finish off my evening, so I had a pint of Brooklyner Weisse while watching the tail end of a Rangers pre-season game on the big screen. I was tempted to have another when I noticed a poster advertising their $3 Wednesday night "Kill The Keg" special, but I also noticed the time on my watch, which made me think better of it. No need to push things too far, as there would be more beer to enjoy tomorrow night. Oh yes, indeed...