The Beer Kitchen

September 7, 2016

I want to tell you all a little tale of culinary delight. It opens, however, with frustration and window hangings. 

A few weeks ago John and I went downtown to the Westport World Market to look for some curtains and to take back a rug I bought the previous night because an anonymous friend (KATIE RYAN) was very wrong and a 6x8 is not large enough to go under my table because my gargantuan table is...gargantuan. 

(It’s big like how an X-Wing looks like it wants to poop it’s pants next to an Imperial Star Destroyer.)

Lunch time rolls around and I hadn’t had a thing to eat yet because I exercised that morning and unless I get up at the crack of dawn I can’t eat before I work out.

 I’m doing T25 with a friend. It’s a 25m workout and four minutes in my shocked brain is screaming, “Four minutes?! I’ve been jumping up and down for ONLY FOUR FREAKING MINUTES?!” 

I want to be a ninja by the time that I’m 40. Life goals. I have to start somewhere.    

I realized, a few days in to T25, that during workouts my mind wanders quite far into elaborate fantasies about the end result of all of this jumping up and down. I imagine myself Olympian fit and either I’m beating people up a la Buffy/Nikita (which makes sense) or I’m wearing beautiful clothes in a beautiful city on a brilliantly sunny day sitting outside of some patisserie stuffing my face full of pain au chocolat.

Apparently this is my motivation to work out. 

And now we have come to the meat of this account. 

It’s lunch time in Westport and I’m hypoglycemic hangry. There are way too many options so we decide to hit up The Beer Kitchen on the corner of Pennsylvania and Westport. Their website sums them up in this way:

“HONEST FOOD & CAREFULLY SELECTED BEEF. If your heart races at the smell of a malty-sweet & robust Imperial Brown Ale and as we slide under your nose, our juicy 100% American beer burger stuffed with Kansas City-style burnt ends, lathered with house-made BBQ sauce, giant tears of joy begin to fall on the bar, then Beer Kitchen is the place for you.”

Interesting. 

We walked in and it was cool in that, “I’m all urban and have exposed brick walls and the pulls of old beer taps hanging from my ceiling” kind of way. And yet, it felt like they meant it. (Intention goes a long way.)

The menu boasted of exciting combinations like: "Tillamook cheddar with bourbon soaked raisins," while throwing around phrases like “8-hour slow braised meat.” They bandied with words like crostini and artisan and aioli and peppadew vinaigrette. They bragged of house-made ingredients like ricotta.

Be it the clever language promising me pleasures evermore, or my all-consuming hanger, the marketing was working.

I wanted to charge into the kitchen and shove fistfuls of pancetta and basil into my mouth.

I didn’t, though. 

I did, however, know what appetizer I wanted right from the minute I looked down at this tantalizing menu. I wanted the fried green tomatoes. So, you know, as things tend to go for me, the good chefs at the Beer Kitchen were still making them. As in, they were not ready for service.

We settled for the seasonal Tomato Tart because what’s the point of featuring seasonal menu items if we, the people, aren’t adventurous and give them a chance? (Heirlooms/ chive ricotta/ basil/ arugula/ olive oil balsamic reduction/ toasted almonds). 

It was a nice dish.

Perhaps my problem, let the reader understand, is that I don’t want a nice dish. I want a dish that either strikes me to the core of my being or that leaves me thinking about it’s nuances and graces for the rest of the day.

I’m being unfair. The Tart was nice. 

The tart was flaky, excellently so. And my complaint, when people get adventurous and try a tart, is that the crust is soggy by the time the dish is plated and brought to the table. But this tart did not disappoint. The ingredients were clean and the description was accurate in what flavors would be delivered.

(John wants me to note that he liked it. A lot.)

My biggest complaint was that I wanted the chive ricotta to be a little more chivey. Like, a helluva lot more chivey. Don’t be scrimpin’ on the chives, people. 

So then there was some waiting for the rest of the food. We had arrived around noon to a deserted restaurant but by the time we’d finished our appetizer the restaurant was suddenly at max capacity.

I wondered about this.

It was probably the fifteenth time in the last four months where I’ve gone somewhere to eat and it’s a wasteland when I arrive and then BOOM the crowds appear and I’m looking around thinking, “I beat the crowd! I’m magic!” 

This last train of thought is majorly derailed in light of the World Market escapade.

I must return to the Tale of the Window Hangings. Feel my pain with me. Please. Feel all of it. Every drop. 

The setting is World Market. The scene is the cash register. 

Transaction 1: We returned the rug. 

We picked out some curtains. 

Transaction 2: We bought the curtains. We walked out to the van then realized we’d been overcharged. We went back in. The unimpressed staff checked the price. The curtains weren’t on sale. We decided that no curtains were worth that much money at this point in our lives. Or, possibly, ever. 

Transaction 3: We returned the curtains. 

We picked out some other curtains that were on sale.

Transaction 4: We bought the other curtains. We were gladdened by their far lesser cost THEN realized that we had still been overcharged. We went back in.

Transaction 5: With little to no joy the girl at the register refunds the money we are owed.

When we got the curtains home and put them up we both decided that we didn’t like them in our bedroom and would have to return them. 

Well done, us.

Our bank is going to be bemused. 

I'm almost embarrassed. 

Let's finish the tale of the food. (I don't know what I'm doing. Too many words. Jo and Katie Ryan are going to print this out and scribble all over it with a red marker.)

Just go with it. 

Prior to this painful curtain revelation, earlier in Westport, the waitress at the Beer Kitchen brought out the salads and sandwiches at the same time, which wasn’t thrilling but we managed.

Right? You don't WANT those two together. Or do you? Do you want them separate at supper but together at lunch? Maybe I'm missing something here. Either way, we’d both decided to try their Lunchbox option for $11. (For the price, it was a bang up amount of food.)

I had the Field Salad. (Roma tomato, cucumber, artichoke heart, red onion, feta, pumpkin seeds, brioche croutons, white balsamic vinaigrette.) This dish was pleasantly surprising after the tart. The dressing was delightful, the perfect clean, light, bright flavor that you’d expect from a good white balsamic.

The ingredients were fresh and I enjoyed the contrast of both the composition and the textures. The artichoke hearts and the pumpkin seeds paired off well. You know how salads can leave you wanting? Like, you get down to the last four bites and it’s just the arugula and it looks so lonely and you can’t bring yourself to eat it?

This salad was nothing like that; it was like a game of Mah Jong by the pool. Every bite was enjoyable. 

My piece de resistance was the Hogtied sandwich (black forest ham, bbq burnt ends, smoked bacon aioli, chipotle white cheddar, pickle relish & cider slaw on grilled sourdough). 

Most people read that list of meats and think, “Heart attack,” or “You’re trying too hard.”

I imagine the person responsible for these particular kinds of menu items sitting down to Create, desperate for a new stand-out item, completely at a loss for ideas, glancing at the fridge, leaping to their feet, and shouting out, panic in their voice,

“Let’s put every kind of meat we have on to the SAME SANDWICH!”

This imagination of mine gets further complicated when the co-owner of the restaurant intrudes into the sacred space of the kitchen and grabs his executive chef by the collar and screams,

"My god, Jack! You'll kill our customers! What are you thinking, man?! What is this, the midwest?!" 

Honestly, it was an odd choice for me. (Not the elaborate imagining, the sandwich.)

My general feeling about sandwiches that attempt to put 12 kinds of meat together is that it’s something akin to polygamy: it seems like a great idea at the beginning but it’s way more complicated in actuality. 

I’m pleased to say that the Beer Kitchen is one of the few places I’ve eaten at that achieved the elusive perfection of meat en masse combining to make something beautiful. The Hogtied meats were perfect, fresh, flavorful, identifiable, intentional. The bread was excellent and not a bit soggy. (I HATE sogginess in all of it's manifestations. It is the work of the devil.)

The aioli was spot on, all of the flavors wooing one another in a perfect show of force and strength, nothing outshining the others. And I have to say, I’m brutally critical about aioli’s. I was delighted by the cider slaw and pickle relish; they brought that tangy excitement to the dish that a 1000 Island dressing does to a Reuben.

Each bite was surprising.

Halfway through the second half of the sandwich I was done. I couldn’t eat another bite.

It was a good time. We’ll be back for more excitement. And the damn fried tomatoes. 

That is all.