Eataly’s Birreria: A Beer Geek’s Review

Ever since Eataly was announced back in 2009, I have been awaiting the arrival of Birreria, the rooftop brewpub atop the Italian megastore. New York City truly is the world’s greatest, but it is desperately lacking in the brewpub department. There is good local beer — Brooklyn always puts out a fine product and Sixpoint is in a well-deserved popularity explosion — but apart from a few restaurants with house brews, all brewpub-seekers have had in NYC are the thoroughly underwhelming Heartland Brewery locations.

But since we heard about Birreria, NYC’s beer geeks have dared to hope for a world-class brewpub in Gotham. Sure, with Mario Batali involved and the Flatiron location, we knew that the prices would be outlandish and the lines absurd. It would all be worth it, though, when we were sipping a one-of-a-kind brew, looking down at the peons ambling down 23rd street, master of all we surveyed, or at least drinking better beer than all we surveyed.

Birreria opened last weekend, and sure enough, the lines were Depression-soup-queue-esque. (I heard stories of three hour waits.) But last night, I braved the insanity to celebrate with a friend who just passed the halfway mark toward becoming the most badass Doctor alive. My first impressions of Birreria follow. Please excuse the picture quality. I couldn’t find my camera, so it was a cell phone photo kinda night.

To answer your most pressing question: yes, you’re going to have to wait. They control the crowd by only letting people upstairs when there’s actually room. You give your name and phone number, and they text you when your table is ready or bar space is open. This is a nice feature, since you can wander Eataly or head over to Madison Square Park and Shake Shack while you wait. They won’t let you upstairs until your entire party arrives, so tell your dawdling friend Will that you’re meeting 45 minutes earlier than you actually are.

Once we got upstairs, while waiting for our table to be ready, I explained to my companions that one of the principals of the Birreria collaboration is Dogfish Head honcho and would-be reality TV star Sam Calagione. If you’ve been following Birreria’s development closely, you’ll remember that at one time Vinnie Cilurzo, boss of California’s beloved Russian River Brewing Company, was attached as well. I wondered aloud why Vinnie had dropped out. The hostess overheard my query, and explained that, as far as she knew, it was difficult enough for Sam and the Italian brewers to get their heads together for the beer collaborations, and adding Vinnie all the way out in Cali to the mixture wasn’t practical. They tried to make it work, but Vinnie had to abandon it in the end. So she knew her beer, or at least the industry. This boded well.

The Atmosphere

We headed out to our table. The space is obviously busy, but the crowd control ensures that it doesn’t get nuts. There’s a long bar along one wall, and a couple dozen tables. There’s a retractable roof, just to add some much-needed Safeco Field ambiance. It really is quite beautiful. As you’re sipping your beer you can look out on the Empire State Building and the Flatiron Building. You can’t really look down over the roof, though…so much for belittling peons.

It’s good that Birreria is a lovely place to sit around, because we did a lot of sitting around once we got to our table. The table service really left something to be desired. We waited a long while for our waiter to appear, and then a really long while for our beer to come out. (Our cheese and meat plates actually came before the beer did.) All told, it was about 20 minutes from butt-in-chair to beer-in-hand, which is not so good. Our server wasn’t exactly an expert but he knew enough about the food and beer to speak about it intelligently. I didn’t try the bar service but it looked like there were enough bartenders to handle the crowd.

The crowd at 9 PM on a Monday was very much the older yuppie set. Seemed to be mostly people in their 30s in suits. I suspect that this early in the venue’s life it’s still very much a “see and be seen” crowd but that could just be me being judgmental.

The Beer

What of the main event? The beers named after Italian babes that O’Leary was going on about aren’t ready yet. In the meantime, on the menu were three beers bearing the Eataly moniker — two pale ales and a brown ale. As best as I can tell, these beers are Dogfish Head brews given a new twist for the restaurant. I ordered the “Eataly Indian Brown Ale,” described as a brown ale brewed with maple syrup. Dogfish’s IBA is one of my all-time favorites, so I was looking forward greatly to this beer. The beer was fantastic, though I don’t think it was different enough from Dogfish’s regular Indian Brown to justify the $10 price for the pint. Also, they didn’t pour the full pint, which sucks. I had a couple of sips of Sarah’s beer, a pale ale brewed with thyme. It was a bit too herbal for my tastes, though clearly expertly crafted.

Apart from the $10 Eataly pints, there are a handful of tap selections from the usual American craft beer suspects and some Italian ones as well. The prices on those are normal for a trendy NYC spot ($7-ish).

Overall

Birreria definitely has a few issues to hammer out. The service needs to get better, in terms of speed and serving the correct amount of beer. The crowd and prices are more than some people will want to deal with, though you can’t really take off points for that since it’s to be expected. I hope for more creativity with the beer itself. But the visions of a world-class brewpub in NYC are tantalizingly close to being realized. As long as you’re prepared, you’ll have a great time.

Bar Review: 4th Avenue Pub

This is the Director’s Cut version of a review that will (hopefully, at some point…) appear on NewYork.com.

The Backyard

The Setting: The titular “4th Ave”  is a main artery of Park Slope, which is jam packed with good bars. 4th Ave Pub stands out from the crowd. The interior is medium sized with the bar and small tables in the front of the room and larger booths in the back. The bathrooms have chalkboard walls, which is always fun (as long as you don’t really think about what else people were doing while they used the chalk). Mainstream indie music (Arcade Fire, TV on the Radio &c.) plays at a volume loud enough to hear but not distracting.

The inside is cosy, but 4th Ave also has a large, beautiful outdoor courtyard. I highly recommend bringing a few friends and maybe a deck of cards and grabbing a picnic table out back.

The Crowd: This place gets pretty packed, so come early and plan to stay for a while. I’m a big fan of the vibe of the crowd. People are mostly young and hip (though I did have a nice chat with a beer geek in his sixties), but it completely lacks that forced “scene” feel you get in similar places in, say, Williamsburg. The bartenders really know their stuff and are some of the friendliest I’ve met.

4th Ave Pub seems to have a lot of regulars, and so most of the crowd has a good handle on the beer. Speaking of which…

The Beer: 4th Ave rocks 24 taps and a cask. The taps are on constant rotation, featuring craft brewers from near and far. This bar seems to really focus on breweries’ special releases — my last visit I counted 5 different beers I’ve never seen before from widespread craft breweries.  They also have a large bottle list which includes some nice rare treats. The tap beers are typically $6, occasionally $7 or $8 for the really fancy stuff. That’s average for the area, but the long weekday happy hour (3-8) knocks $2 off each beer.

Lots of good choices. I went for the Super Friends.

The Food: Except for the free self-serve popcorn, 4th Ave Pub doesn’t offer food. Fret not, hungry beer-lovers: the bartender keeps a folder overstuffed with takeout menus from dozens of local establishments that will deliver to you at the bar. Within 20 minutes I had a Cuban sandwich that was better than anything I was likely to get at a bar, anyway.

Overall: 4th Ave Pub has a lot of great competition, with Pacific Standard a few doors down and several other beer bars within easy walking distance. But the crowd, the backyard and their devotion to tough-to-find beer make the place a standout.

The Stag’s Head: Exile in Broville

This is the Director’s Cut version of a review that originally appeared at NewYork.com

The Setting: The Stag’s Head is a craft beer haven nestled in the Midtown East frat-house-if-well-whiskey-cost-$7 scene. Bar hop in the neighborhood and you’ll see a lot of polo shirts with their collars up. My choice of beer and inability to sing along to the Jack Johnson song playing at 115dB would likely be described as “faggy” at the local hotspot Turtle Bay Tavern. In fact, Stag’s Head is separated by nothing but a curtain from Cornerstone, a sports bar more representative of the neighborhood.

But The Stag’s Head has the true beer bar feel down. It’s like coming home after doing battle in Oz. There’s a basement with a few tables and a U-shaped bar, as well as an upstairs section with additional seating. The TVs all had sports, and the music playing was at a reasonable volume.  Paste magazine named it one of the 30 Best Beer Bars in America in April. Not sure about that, since it’s not in the elite tier of bars I’ve been to, but it’s certainly solid.

Downstairs at the Stag's Head

The Crowd: A large portion of Stag’s Head’s clientele seems to be made up of young professionals who find the frat house redux scene at nearby bars unfulfilling. While most of these people aren’t beer geeks yet, they want to try something different. More than one person asked for a Bud Light/Stella/etc., but most of them remarked how much better the beer they actually received was (even if they couldn’t get over the hilarity of the name ‘Dogfish Head.’) And if even one of those folks thinks twice about ordering the Stella next time she’s at a bar and she’s feeling “fancy,” then The Stag’s Head is providing a great service.

The bar does have frequent brewery nights, for which representatives from craft breweries near and far stop by to peddle their wares, and the beer geek crowd certainly comes out for those.

The Beer: The bar has 16 rotating taps and only pours craft beer, featuring a nice mix of breweries and styles. One thing that sets Stag’s Head apart is that it serves exclusively American craft beer. You can find German and Belgian styles, but they’ll be made by U.S. breweries.

Stag’s Head also has about 30 bottle and can choices, including Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys, which seem to be the only non-craft beer in the place and (unfortunately) were big movers. The beers on-tap range from $6 to $9 each, which is par for the course for New York City. The massively long happy hour (daily from 11 a.m.- 7 p.m.) knocks about half of the taps down to $4 and $5, which is pretty good.

To try an American take on a classic German style, I chose a pint of Brooklyner Weiss, a hefeweizen (wheat beer) made right across the East River at Brooklyn Brewery. This is one good-looking beer, with its golden apricot color and foamy white head.

The smell of Brooklyner Weiss is fruity and tangy, with citrus fruit and clove prominent. The beer’s flavor is subtle and restrained, which is characteristic of many Brooklyn Brewery beers. It has the nice earthy bitterness of a wheat beer, along with fruit and yeasty flavors. Brooklyner Weiss is a solid brew, but not flawless. It’s a little too light and watery, with little to no aftertaste. It’s also missing the spicy bite that some other wheat beers have. It would be a good choice to sip by a lake on a hot day, but there are better hefeweizens out there, both German and American.

The Staff: The Stag’s Head bartenders were friendly and reasonably attentive and knowledgeable about what they were pouring. I’ve always sat at the bar, but people at tables seem to get enough attention, too.

The Food: Typical bar food-type grub, with a bit more variety than usual. It’s a little expensive, but not outlandish. I had a plate of nachos, which used an unfortunate combination of real cheese and Cheez Whiz, about which the less said the better. The burgers looked better, but maybe like the nachos they’re actually made of some processed meat-like product.

Overall: The Stag’s Head is impressive enough that it’s worth braving Broville, especially on a brewery night.

Toast: Uptown’s Oasis

The taps and bottles at Toast

The Setting: Toast is in that area of North-ish Manhattan that I don’t really know the proper name for these days. I think it’s Manhattanville? Maybe Morningside Heights? Hamilton Heights? Pretty sure it doesn’t count as Harlem anymore. I call it “Fairwayville,” personally. In any event, it’s in the shadow of the elevated 1 Train tracks, and it’s a short walk from the lady friend’s house, so it’s almost a neighborhood bar for me. It’s also the only decent beer place for at least a mile in any direction. [1]

It’s a nice space, with tables taking up most of the floor and a bar along the wall off to the side. It’s a small bar (maybe 10 seats) and it gets a little cramped, but I’ve never seen it really overcrowded. The atmosphere is very relaxed and low-key. The crowd changes a good deal based on the time of the day. During after-work hours it seems to be mostly 30-somethings who come in groups from work. There is more racial diversity than most beer spots, which is likely a product of the neighborhood. Not a lot of beer geeks for sure, and mixed drinks and cocktails are more commonly ordered, but patrons who drink beer seem to like to try new ones.

At night, the place gets much more student-y, with Columbia, City College and the twin religious seminaries in the neighborhood. Unlike many bars that fill up with college students, though, there’s no sense of a frat house redux — Toast gets busier and louder but stays chill. The bartenders seem to match the crowd based on the time. After work, the bartenders are a bit older and more adept at making a mojito than telling you about the new Dogfish Head selection. At night, the bartenders are a bit younger and know more about the beer.

Some of the fine breweries they pour

The Beer: Toast has a solid 16 taps. About half of them seem to be constant (I think at least Blue Point Toasted Lager, Gaffel Kolsch, Yuengling, Cape Anne’s Fisherman’s Brew, and Guinness have been on tap each time I’ve been there…maybe a few more, too). The beers that are constant aren’t all that exciting, but at least they don’t serve BMC and there are a couple of decent brews in there.

The half of the selection that rotates is more exciting, albeit I’ve never seen anything there that’s hard to find. Still, the rotating taps pour selections from Smuttynose, Dogfish Head, Bear Republic, Founders, and other top notch craft breweries. Last time in there I had a Dogfish Head Raison D’etre, the popular Belgian-style brown ale brewed with raisins which I’ve had bottled but never on tap. [2] They only have a few bottles: Chimay, Duvel, Maudite, and a few international adjunct lagers (Red Stripe, Amstel and so forth). It’s not the greatest selection in the City, but it’s perfectly fine for a neighborhood joint, and gets bonus points for location scarcity.

The beers each cost $6 (except for Yuengling, which is $5), which is on the cheap side. They’ve also recently started filling growlers, which is always welcome in a beer bar. Happy hour, from 5 to 7 every day, knocks the prices down to $4, which is tremendous. The food is cheap, too, and very good for the price (the fries are great). It’s a good place to have a nice but low-key dinner out.

Overall: Toast isn’t a bar that you would necessarily seek out, but if you’re in the neighborhood, it can’t really be beat. The beer is good, the atmosphere’s nice and the price is right.

3157 Broadway (South of 125th St.
betwixt Tiemman and LaSalle)
NY , NY 10027
ph: 212-662-1144

http://www.toastnyc.com

1. Except I guess for Dinosaur BBQ, but that place gets so nightmarishly crowded that I don’t count it as a viable bar. Great place to enjoy a really good beer while going to town on some outstanding ribs, though, if you get reservations (several days in advance).

2. No need for a full-on review here, but I’ll say that I didn’t much like it. Well-crafted and unique, sure, but not really to my taste. Same impression as when I’ve had it bottled.

The Pony Bar: Go West, Young Man

(This is the Director’s Cut of a review that originally appeared at NewYork.com)

Half of the Pony Bar's beer list

The Setting: Walking across W. 45^th street from the 1 train to the Pony bar is a rather schizophrenic experience. You go from 7^th Ave (bright lights, big tourists…and no, guy, I don’t want any comedy club tickets!) to 8^th Ave (the resilient porn shops that survived the Giuliani pogroms) to 9^th Ave (cute, quiet little restaurants that a half million New Yorkers got to before you did) to 10^th Ave (three story buildings? Gas stations? Dollar pizza? Am I suddenly in Kansas City?)

Fortunately, once you reach 10^th Ave, you are handsomely rewarded with the Pony Bar. In terms of atmosphere, the Pony hits a lot of golden means. It’s crowded, but not too crowded (I stood the whole time I was there, but seats were opening up). Lively, but not too lively. The bar takes up one wall, and the rest of the room has tall barrels that serve as small tables, along with larger tables. There are a couple of TVs. One excellent feature: the tap list takes up the entire wall behind the bar, so you can read it from anywhere in the room.

The Crowd: The ratio of t-shirts to polo shirts to dress shirts on the men in the room was almost precisely 1:1:1; i.e., it has a mixed clientele. You’ve got your business-types, your frat types, and your laid-back beer geeks. But like a watering hole on the Serengeti, everybody gets along while they drink. On a Friday night, almost everybody seemed to be under 35, which is a bit unusual for a beer spot.

The Beer: Like the Stag’s Head, The Pony Bar only serves American-made craft beer. These beers come from breweries from coast to coast, and include a few hard-to-find goodies (e.g. yours truly enjoyed a Double Bastard from Stone Brewing in California, a 10.5 ABV beast that’s rarely seen on tap in NYC. It’s the big brother of Arrogant Bastard, the popular gateway craft beer). The bar features 20 taps as well as 2 casks. They carry 2 bottles: Bud and Bud Light, which I guess is a concession to bland friends who get dragged here and are unwilling to try something interesting.

Here’s what really sets the Pony Bar apart: every single beer is $5. How do they get away with it without going bankrupt? Most beers come in a 14 oz glass, while other bars typically use a 16 oz pint glass. Believe me: you will not know the difference. Losing $2 or $3 off the price is easily worth losing 2 oz on the pour. You’re here to try the best that the American beer world has to offer, not (just) get loaded. The really high ABV beers come in an 8 oz tulip. Happy hour (4:20-5:20…hur hur) is short but sweet, as everything’s $4.

"Rye Knot" from Chelsea Brewing Company

I’m a big fan of rye beers, so I couldn’t pass up “Rye Knot,” a new concoction from Chelsea Brewing Company, the only Microbrewery in Manhattan. Chelsea’s beers have never impressed me much, but I confess a certain fondness for them, since their Checker Cab Blonde Ale is a popular stepping stone for New Yorkers to get into craft beer. Anyway, Rye Knot certainly ranks as my favorite Chelsea concoction yet. It pours a bright orange-amber with a medium-sized white head. The smell is surprisingly light on the rye; instead, earthy and almost herbal hops dominate. The taste is where the rye comes through, as that sharp malt dominates. The rye is complimented nicely by the earthy hops. The taste is a little too one-dimensional for Rye Knot to rank as an elite rye beer (try Righteous Rye by Sixpoint, brewed in Brooklyn, for an outstanding take on the style), but it’s a solid effort in a category without enough contenders.

The Staff: The bartenders matched the clientele – late 20s, clean cut, etc. While they weren’t unfriendly, they were rather curt and strictly business. You can’t hold it against them, since the place was so busy. They definitely knew their beer, even if they weren’t keen on chatting about it. They did a reasonable job of making sure that everybody at the busy bar got served, though assertiveness is definitely rewarded here.

The Food: The bar was too hopping for me to sit down and try the grub. The Pony Bar has a one-page menu featuring mostly sandwiches (burgers, short rib, grilled cheese and more) for about $9 each, which isn’t an amazing deal like the beer but isn’t bad for these parts.

Overall: I’ll resist the urge to make an equine pun and just tell you that based on the selection, the atmosphere and especially the price, the Pony Bar is one of the elite beer bars in New York City. It’s well worth the trip to the netherworld of Midtown far west.

637 10th Avenue
New York, NY 10036-2904
(212) 586-2707

http://www.theponybar.com