After a nice trip offshore I took the wife out to dinner at Mark's, this church they converted into a restaurant on Westheimer in the Montrose area. Before that we hit up Anvil, which we hadn't been to since the weekend they opened. The crowd at Anvil's was rather thick, we had to get seats at the far corner of the bar, back in the cut. The blackbooard had a few beers on it, all craft beer ofcourse. I like how they have the beer on tap, and the beer that will come on that tap line next right there. We just settled in long enough to grab a Hennepin before hopping over a couple blocks to Mark's.
The other night we found ourselves just shooting the breeze at the Petrol Station. I even had the burger with cheese and egg, AWESOME. The fries are even better. Those are man's french fries, for real men. Ran about 4 miles this morning at Memorial Park to kill that one. Enjoyed some great beer as well. Some Brother Thelonios and a few others. Same phenomena with the taps, when one beer went out, the owner put another on. Plenty of great IPAs and whantnot, you just never knew what was coming next. I think some bootlegger brown made it near the tail end of our time there. It made everything very... organic.
So now the question becomes, limited taps that rotate to whatever they've got in the back, or huge taphouse with over 50 beers on tap? As I ponder this question, it seems like we are rehashing the same arguments people have for Farmer's Markets versus Wal-Mart, the Mom and Pop restaurant versus Chili's, or even Fredericksburg versus Houston. Do we go for the small, random, whatever's in the back that day place, or the huge, land of plenty, type place. I'm still not sure. Maybe as long as either option keeps me swimming in craft beer, I'll take either one. But I do like the conversation you can have with the small guys. And I have no coherent conclusion to this post, so I'll end it here.
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2 comments:
I prefer fewer taps that rotate more frequently. The only issue is if you're traveling and they only have stuff you're not really interested in. My favorite place in Providence has, I think, 16 taps that rotate pretty frequently. I've had beer at some of those places with 100+ taps. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's old. That's the problem. When you have fewer taps to worry about, you can keep the beer fresh.
Good points Jim. You have to be concerned that an obscure beer in a mega taphouse may sit there for days if not weeks on end while they burn through the local favorites and the specials. Fewer taps should give you the fresher beer, just not the variety.
Maybe I should just forget it and go with the place that has the best food.
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