Pubs, Tavs, Diners and Restaurants – Page 21

Last Night I Heard The Jet Planes Land

Somehow, Toronto achieved a late spring evening without humidity or auto exhaust or heat or crowds or any of the other things that make me not love going to Toronto in the warm months. Maybe they were all at other events or at the cottage. Whatever it was, it was a great night for walking from bar to bar with good company. A good night for taxis, too, as the only hotel room I could get was out by the airport. The planes land every 45 seconds through the night. In case you were wondering.

We met in the mid-afternoon at Stout, a pub off Parliament on Carleton. Ron was drinking Nickle Brook’s imperial stout. He must have liked it because he had another. Jordan was drinking a sensible Muskoka Detour. We were joined by home brewer Peter Friesen who had arranged Ron’s presentation the next day at Toronto Brewing Co. Ron is on the Great Lakes portion of his global tour. We then drove about 25 miles to drop off my car and then taxi back into the Junction district via highways showing their age, past 1970s concrete office towers with neon signs proclaiming things like “Canada Bread” where, according to Jordan, Carol works in accounting. We stopped at Indie Ale House and 3030 in the Junction before finishing at Bellwoods.

I won’t play by play the consumption but a couple of things stuck with me. One thing was a lot of of the people out and about were loud mixed groups of friends with, especially at Bellwoods, almost half being young women. Sure people were on dates, too, but there was solid representation of the genderless interest in good beer and good food that gave me hope for my school-aged daughters’s future. Also, a difference between Indie Ale House and Bellwoods was primarily in their brewing choices. In many other ways, they were very similar. The food at both places was excellent and reasonably price… and both served their meals on those individual slabs of lumber which will one day keep cottagers toasty as these burn in their fireplaces after this trend passes.

What set them apart was how at the Indie the beers were decidedly leaning towards the added flavours school of craft brewing while at Bellwoods there was a bit more of a traditional approach. Both were largely excellent. The IPA at Indie was extremely fruity, even more fruit cocktail than, say, Kipling. But it was cut neatly by the arugula side salad next to my smokehouse burger. At Bellwoods, an undoctored guest cider from West Avenue went down exceptionally well with a rabbit on toast thingie. OK, it was rillettes de lapin which I have only bought in Quebec so I translate it as thingie so you will understand. The unadorned brown beer there was also really good. Jordan convinced me to eat a duck heart. You should eat a duck heart.

A good evening out. But for the lack of hearty north woods plaid chic, you might have even thought you were on Duluth in Montreal. Which is a very good thing.

Perhaps The Best Way Craft Beer Dies Off

With all the talk of bubbles and schisms, it is good to be reminded that the path to success for any good brewer is normalcy. If a brewery is accepted and its beers stand along taps and bottles of well accepted beers and bought along with them does anyone care what those other beers are?

That is what I saw at the Loose Moose in Toronto last night. Local craft brewers lined up again macros and imports. Local beer drinkers having whatever they liked without a sneer either way. People were paying attention to the game, the food and their friends without any concern for appearances. Loud music but not too loud for the smallest kid. Uncle Jordan picked a good spot. Not a snifter was in sight, thank the Lord. I had an Eephus by Left Field as well as Nicklebrook’s Headstock with my burger. Two of my favourite Ontario craft brews. I could have had a Coor Light, too, which is or is close to Ontario’s best selling beer. Peaceful coexistence. The food was good sport pub fare and the prices reasonable for the city.

So, if good beer is absorbed without being assimilated, if it takes its place without insisting others leave… isn’t that victory?

Travel: A November Saturday Night In Albany

I finally figured out how to pronounce the name of the capital city of New York state. I knew “Ahhhlbany” was wrong but could not figure out “Awlbany” until I heard it was called “Smallbany” too. So it rhymes with small. There you go. We were there for an Albany Ale Project event at the Albany Institute of History and Art. It was a great event which I will likely write about over at the beer blog but wanted to note a few things for now about the travel aspects of the trip.

First, as illustrated, we had a great brunch at the Gateway Diner handy to the simply majestic Oliver’s Beverage. The place was big for a diner but the spaces were broken up so that you had a sense in each part of it that you were in a busy family diner. Service was fast and friendly. The coffee was good. I like having New York strip steak while in the Empire State. This was my first one with eggs. Poached. One must be careful these days.

The diner was not that far from where we were staying, the CrestHill Suites on outer Washington near the State Campus. We picked this up for 91 bucks on Hotwire. Clean. Generous room with a real kitchen that defied the use of nook. Armchair and sofa. Quite even if near the highway. We had room 312. We will book again. Best thing was the laundry basket in the bathroom. A $1.79 item that meant we did not have to leave damp used towels on the floor and, presumably, allowed the staff to clean up with a little more dignity than getting down on all fours to recover the last facecloth from under the sink. A simple smart thing that earned our respect.

Last, after the event three couples went for a Mexican dinner before heading for beers at the Lionheart Pub closer to downtown. The restaurant, El Mariachi, sits across the street from the Institute. Its one of those spots you go to in the States that reminds you that Canadians thing BBQ is a wiener on the hibachi. I won’t go into much detail except that supper for six was only a bit over $80 and that I had something that really rearranged my thoughts about Mexican food – chicken with pumpkin seed sauce. Fabulous. I am now going to make pumpkin seed sauce and pour it over everything. Generous portions. Great service and cozy small spaces.

So, as you can see, I have thought about something I want to write about in this space other than gardening. I mean I could write how the fence blew down on Friday but… really?

Ontario: Women And Beer Before Temperance

sessionlogosm This month’s edition of The Session is about women and beer which, if you think about it, represents 50% of everything in our beery culture. Sure it does – as long as you have your methodology correctly aligned. So, there should be a wide range of topics. For me, I noticed a few things along the way as Jordan and I have been researching and writing the history of brewing in Ontario and especially things prior to 1860 that are well worth sharing. Why 1860? Temperance and trains, of course. The whole society changes when trains and temperance get a major foothold.

The thing is that – before temperance and trains – beer seems to be a townie drink, a drink that you get when you are within reach of a brewery or a transit point. Consider this as you consider that, as set out in the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1991: Public Eating Proceedings, in the chapter “Temperance Hotels and those ‘Damned Cold Water Drinking Societies’” Powers and Duncan describe at page 238 how Catherine Parr Trail:

… gave advice to immigrants in 1852 and included recipes for making beer, noting the absence of the ‘sweet well flavoured home brewed beer of the English farmhouses. Unfortunately, she said, “the taste for beer has often unhappily been superceded by that of whiskey.’ She provided recipes for treacle beer, beet beer and maple beer as an alternative to whiskey.

See, once you get anywhere away from town and a cartloads of hooch is heading your way, it is going to have the most concentrated form of the stuff on it unless there is a compelling reason not to do that. And until trains and temperance push to the forefront, there just isn’t a reason. And see Parr Trail missed the “sweet well-flavoured home brewed beer of the English farmhouse”? This backs another thing we suspect: that there was not a lot of surplus barley floating around Upper Canada even well into the middle third of the 1800s. One farmer interviewed in his old age recollected that he didn’t even see barley until he was in this twenties in the early 1840s. Which leads to beet beer on the frontier. You do what you can.

So, what was the place of women in such a culture. Fortunately, I have my copy of In Mixed Company by Julia Roberts reviewed back here in 2010. Roberts has a chapter in her book entitled “Public Life for Women in the Era of Separate Spheres” which discusses the experience of women in Upper Canadian taverns. And I have a handy copy of Wives and Mothers, School Mistresses and Scullery Maids: Working Women in Upper Canada 1790-1840 by Elizabeth Jane Errington, a historian who I have had the pleasure of meeting. Errington’s books has quite a number of observations of the intersection of women and alcohol in the colony during that period.

And what do we learn? One thing is that women were present in taverns as daughters, wives and widows working under or as licensee but also as travelers stopping at the inn and even local drinkers. Roberts indicates that as early as the 1830s inns were advertising special separate provisions for female customers. These provisions were further divided by class and included separate entrances, parlors and waiting rooms as well as balconies. And in some cases they are recorded as drinking alcohol including beer:

At Robinson’s tavern in Prescott, “Sarah” charged half a pint of beer in 1844… Widow Wilson lodged at Robinson’s for two and ah half weeks starting 31 October 1847. On her first day, she charged a glass of whisky, a glass of brandy and several pints of beer. She then stuck to beer and her tally on the last day of her stay was fifty-six pints, an average of three pints a day. Treating others accounted for part of the total.

As the title indicates, Errington’s book focuses on the working life of women. She notes that even when a couple ran a tavern together, as noted by one traveler in 1797, the husband ran the farm while the wife ran the tavern. As the post-Revolution economy evolved, wives were less involved in maid’s work and more often acted as hostesses especially in more established hotels. On the frontier, however, things were not as genteel. Errington quotes from Susanna Moodie on the preparations for a work bee when neighbours came to achieve some collective goal:

…our men worked well until dinner time, when, after washing in the lake they all sat down to the rude board which I had prepared for them, loaded up with the best fare that could be procured in the bush. Pea soup, legs of pork, venison, eel, and raspberry pie, garnished with plenty of potatoes and whisky to wash them down, besides a large iron kettle of tea.

Women and beer? Before the rise of temperance as a political force to be heeded and before the train when barrels of beer could be gotten in as far as the rail line went, it was a townie thing in Upper Canada. And women were there as they were everywhere.

Vermont: The Farmhouse Tap & Grill, Burlington

Back from the road. There is still time ahead away from work but my banker and I agree that we would do well to pull back from the Atlantic shore and pull into the driveway. Not that I am grumbling. It was the attack on marine life that I had been hoping for. Good restaurants are a training ground for both manners and inquiry. Or at least that’s what I tell the bankers. I picked Farmhouse Tap & Grill for Sunday brunch, however, for one thing – line avoidance. See, it is a place that you have half a chance of getting a beer from Vermont’s celebrated brewery Hill Farmstead without driving off the road, up the hill and apparently waiting in line. Not a training ground for manners or inquiry. My own, that is.

First, this was brunch and it was a good one. By chance, we hit the place in a lull that turned into a blur of plates, eggs and coffee cups. And In that blur a mistake was made. A blessed mistake. We were served the wrong thing. When I pointed out that the Farmhouse sandwich was not mushroom and kale laced Eggs Benedict, we were told not to worry, to nibble on that and the proper order would be out soon. I scoffed the lot. I did offer to pay for both but there was none of that. So I upped the tip. Tipping well on the right occasion is a proper lesson for the young as well. Shun those who calculate closely after sharing a meal or a few pints. Shun them.

The beer from Hill Farmstead was named Edward. I thought we were past the inside baseball naming of beer but I guess not. Edward was the brewers’ grandfather. I will think of this as Gramp’s Pale Ale from herein out. It’s a bitter pale ale with weedy and black tea hop over, my companions agreed, apricot fruity malt. Not really the citrus and pine as advertised but that’s par for the course, right? Its creamy texture was cut by bite of the hopping. Minerally without being drying and dour. A fitting companion for drippy egg and kale. A lovely appetizing beer which cost $6.5 for a 12 oz snifter. Fine for one at a brunch but a bit steep for the session which its weight at just over 5% might invite.

An excellent place. The sort of place in the sort of city you can build a weekend trip around. I took photos of the drinks menu which I thought might be good fodder for discussion. I will post them in a bit when I figure out a handy way to display them. Quebec beers seem to earn a premium while some US craft were quite modest. It struck me as uneven. But the marketplace is a good educator in relative value. Or so I told the kids. School is coming up, I said. Back to math class.

New York: Wolff’s Biergarten, Broadway, Albany

The big bald tattooed guy working for the valet parking at the hotel backed up Craig‘s decision that our families’ breakfasts would be had at Wolff’s Biergarten. Fact: big men with bald heads and tattoos often have a strong sense of what makes for a good breakfast.

The scene was decidedly un-Ontarian where alcohol may not be served until 11 am. At 9:15 in the morning, the crowd was well into the early games from Germany and England. The five kids in our group caused no one concern as the hefes and dunkels were passed across the bar side by side with coffee. Stacks of pancakes kept them quiet as the former fire station turned into a garage of picnic tables and beer watched the games. Goals caused eruptions of belly deep roars of approval while kids played tag in bright summer sunlight.

Waking Up At The Wrong End Of Lake Ontario

Did I write wrong up there? I meant “western” or at least “other” I suppose. Having a house emptied by the call of a cottage as I stay home to work next week, I needed something to do. And I had a bit of business to take care of with Jordan. That thing I didn’t get into any details about a couple of weeks ago. Book deal. Or rather a “promise to write a book” deal. We had to sign some papers and what better way to celebrate than a short tour of some beer spots around his hometown.

Once I got to the hotel, I got directed out of the downtown that I am most familiar with to head out in a taxi, past the protesting Egyptians at the legislature, around the mass of celebration that was the PRIDE event and north to The Rebel House, a pub celebrating its 20th birthday this year. I found Jordan out back in the beer garden. Well, he called it a beer garden but I would have called it a back patio. Which was about the only point over the next six or seven hours that I did not raise with him. I deeply don’t care about the difference but wonder why I think things like that. I had tweeted as I drove west that I wanted a Left Field Eephus and the spot was picked well as it was in very good shape for a dappled table in a backyard on a perfect June afternoon. I am not used to Toronto being this pleasant. At this point of the afternoon I attributed it entirely to the gem of a drinking spot.

Finished up and then jumped into a taxi for another flying trip back south to the Queen and Beaver on Elm off Yonge for a few more pints and a bit to eat. I was there by myself back in late 2009. Supper ended up bring a variety of minor cuts of meat. Cured and dried lamb, ox cheek and deviled lamb kidney that Jordan reported gave him dreams of zombies. Note the action photo of beer nerds at a feeding to the upper right pausing not to pray but to take digital photos. I suspect the great moral order gave him nightmares for that alone. The best thing – or a best thing – was the dimpled mugs of County Durham ale, the quiet capable and utterly unmarketed brewer to the west of Toronto. Black tea hopping did a great job cutting the rich bits of mammal and the accompanying sauces. Quiet downstairs as the place was packed watching the fitba upstairs. First time I encountered one of these, too.

After dinner, we marched south down Yonge through the PRIDE celebrations during which I realized what was going on in my mind. Toronto did not smell Toronto-ish. With so much of the downtown shut to cars and with it being Sunday not to mention one free from the heavy heat the city gets in summer, well, all the towers were washed with cool sweet lake air. One last stop at beerbistro! where a third local Ontario ale was the focus, Peterborough’s Publican House Square Nail pale ale. We passed on the Baladin investment opportunity as I suspected the owners might have wished they had. Baltimore slapped the Yanks on the big screen behind the bar.

On the way home, I hit Churchkey 40 km north of the 401 picking up a White IPA and a few strong brown ales, then carried on to Sharbot Lake for a few packs of bacon and sausage at Seed to Sausage apparently in celebration of my ale and meat themed trip. Or thus themed life. Drank many ales, ate many meats. Call the headstone carver.

No, I Do Not Want An Imported Man Mug Thanks

So, could the menu offer a Woman Wine? I would have preferred that the mug was manly as opposed to simply masculine. I had no idea mugs were, in fact, gendered. What do they get up to in the dishwasher? I also didn’t know that while their masculinity was superior when not in frosted form – something many males might agree upon – that they were inferior to pitchers. Makes one want to work on that two fingered fastball a bit more… if you know what I mean.

I Have No Irish In Me And Don’t Drink On Sundays

This is a difficult date on the calendar for me. Like in many places, the Irish, lapsed or otherwise, and their fellow travelers in small town eastern Ontario have gathered and tightly packed themselves into traditional bars like the Douglas Tavern or the Tweedsmuir drinking macro lager dyed green and/or Guinness and/or whatever else is going. But I am not of them. Scots me. These celebrations can get quite elaborate and have been mentioned in our national Parliament. They seem to rival the… err… passion seen in the larger urban St. Paddy’s events in US centers like Syracuse where it lasts so long it forms its own season. The day seems to serve the need for a New Year’s Eve party ten weeks after that hammering of the brain cells – and one with less of the pretense, more of the getting pickled for being legitimately pickled sake.

I say legitimately as these descendants of the Irish in this part of North America embrace themselves and the generations before them through this ritual. Me? It’s been tea and water for me today. A Saturday even. I am being sensible, see. Sensible. Four years ago, I called for the embracing of March 17th by the fans of good beer. Things may have changed. From the Twitter feeds and Google news items floating by good beer fans seem to be rejecting rejection. And some craft brewers are getting into the day. Beaus, as Bryan recently noted, has a seasonal beer out now called Strong Patrick. Are there others? Why not? If ever there was a reason to brew a seasonal beer it is in response to a season focused on beer. One problem, however, is that craft beer has somewhat abandoned standard Irish stout. As Andy noted last fall, it was the least competitive category at the 2012 Great American Beer Festival. Imperial Irish reds are all very fine in their way but why not make an Irish dry stout for when the Irish are dry? I might even join in.

Election 2012: While I Still Have The Power To Blog….

I better make some comment on this election, make some statement given the history around here even if the digital world has deemed blogs to commentary what 8-tracks are to fine audio media.

I was over in the states yesterday and found an active economy. My favorite lunch spot, the Fairgrounds Inn where I have been going for at least six years now was hopping on a Friday lunch. I had the Italian Combo, thanks for asking. And I got my hair cut. The guy getting sheered next to me went on about the Biden debate. Unhappy but a bit shallow. Was there really cause to gripe? Businesses were expanding. On the way out of town, my rear passenger side wheel just about seized and we were lucky to come over the hill on #37 and see Frenchy’s Auto Repair right there. An hour was all it took to get a part delivered and see us back heading to the border. We lapped up the warm late late summer air on a gorgeous rural vista out back of the repair ship. Everyone in the place was happy and busy and working. Some were having a beer. One of my favorite things about the slice of the USA I get to see is how it is both so similar to the Maritimes as a bit of a hard luck corner of the nation but also how frankly cheerful and confident folk are. The restaurant was at a dull roar of conversation the whole time we were there. It was hard to tell if the auto repair was a place of work or a fairly hearty social club given all the people coming and going while we were there.

What will America do on 6 November? My take is that Obama has not been passed, the Federal Senate will not budge and a number of member of the House will move to the left, not the right. There will not be a throw the bums out movement. I don’t think Mitt Romney would be a catastrophe any more than four more years would. No wave of nuttin’. But the next four years one way or another will be about managing recovery. Whammo. Not sure the will be a WHAMMO!!! but there will be a Whammo.

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