Sauced

Brave Horse Tavern Debuts a New Brew

Try the American Brewing collab beginning at 4pm this afternoon.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Aug 16, 2011 at 11:27AM 0 Comments

Tonight: Brave Horse debuts a brown ale.

Photo: activerain.com

Beer nuts (by which I mean people who love beer, not salty snacks you eat alongside beer) might want to pop into the Brave Horse Tavern tonight. Tom Douglas’s bar is debuting a new dry-hopped brown ale made in collaboration with The American Brewing Company in Edmonds. It’s called Brave American Brown Ale.

According to Brave Horse’s marketing rep Amy Richardson, it was the tavern’s sous chef Warren Peterson—his coworkers call him the “beer czar”—who developed the ale with American Brewing’s Skip Madsen. Madsen is an inveterate brewer whose resume includes local enterprises Pike Brewing and Boundary Bay, according to this article I read by Washington Beer Blog’s Kendall Jones. Oh! Madsen has a nickname too. It’s “the wookie.” (A lot of nicknames in the beer world, I’ve noticed.)

Peterson (the “beer czar”) previously worked with another nearby brewery, Schooner Exact, to develop the Brave Horse’s first feature beer, a pale ale (the “pale ale”) that will remain on the menu. And Richardson says the tavern is currently at work on yet another beer, a sour cherry brew made with fruit from Prosser Farm, the Prosser property owned by the Douglas family and run by Douglas’s wife Jackie Cross (I don’t know if she has a nickname).

The brown ale debuts this afternoon at 4pm, and Richardson says a special food item will be offered in honor of the occasion. It’s fried padron peppers with parmesan, apricot, and toast. That’s $8.

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Tags: South Lake Union, Beer, Tom Douglas

The Brave Horse Tavern Is Seattle’s Next Table Shuffleboard Spot

Here are five more bars where you can slide the puck (that’s not a euphemism).

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 22, 2011 at 12:00PM 10 Comments

Shuffleboard table at the Brave Horse Tavern

This morning I attended a media thingy at Amazon’s new SLU headquarters. This included a look inside the Brave Horse Tavern, the new pretzel-and-beer bar from Tom Douglas, one of three establishments he’s opening there.

It’s very pretty. There’s lots of exposed brick and repurposed wood and old timey signage…it basically looks a lot like the new Serious Pie down the street. But check out these shuffleboard tables! Don’t they make you want to play shuffleboard?

Brave Horse opens the first week in April. If you can’t wait that long, try one of these places:

1. The entire back area of Auto Battery on Capitol Hill is devoted to shuffleboard. Claim a table early—happy hour is from 3pm to 7pm daily.

2. Big Time Brewery in the U-District has a shuffleboard table along with good beer and cheap, filling food befitting its student clientele. Stuffed baked potatoes? Yes indeed. [UPDATE: Awkward. The BTB no longer has shuffleboard even though the web site says it does. My fault, I guess I’ve been too distracted by my delicious overstuffed potatoes to notice the table went away.]

3. Garage has shuffleboard downstairs, in case you want to escape your office mates during the next bowling bonding venture.

4. In Eastlake, there’s Zoo Tavern, an amiable dive bar that serves pitchers of beer but no liquor. There’s also a snooker table. If there is a better word out there than “snooker,” I’d sure like to hear it.

5. Nobody’s trying too hard or caring too much at the 9LB Hammer in Georgetown—except at the shuffleboard table, where certain spazzy east coasters have been known to get a little competitive (and loud, much to the irritation of the people not trying too hard).

Bonus shuffleboard table: Lava Lounge in Belltown!

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Tags: South Lake Union, Tom Douglas, Bar Openings, Seattle Bars, Shuffleboard

Here’s What’s Up with Happy Hour at Seatown

A snack deal and a $20 takeaway dinner at Tom Douglas’s new Pike Place Market spot.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Oct 15, 2010 at 09:04AM 3 Comments

Seatown Snack Bar
Photo: Tomdouglas.com

I just wanted to let you know about the happy hour at Tom Douglas’s newest place, Seatown Snack Sea Bar and Rotisserie. This is important information on a day like today—if the weather holds, you’ll want to be commandeering one of the Snack Bar’s outdoor tables.

From 3 to 6pm, Monday through Friday, Seatown Snack Bar—which specializes in seafood and rotisserie meats—has a “snack happy hour.” There are two “snackwiches,” you pay $1 for every inch of ’wich. One is a salami cold-cut sandwich, the other is roasted turkey with smashed avocado and peppers.

Three kinds of wings—two per order—are $3. They come in jerk, BBQ, and Tokyo flavors. Seattle Maritime Lager is $3 a pint. A Spire cider will run you $4, and there are red (sangiovese) and white (roussanne) wines by the glass; they are $5.

If this glorious sunshine turns to rain, you can opt instead for the takeout happy hour deal at Seatown Snack Bar To Go. From 5 to 7pm on weekdays an entire rotisserie chicken, plus two large sides, is $20.

It’s Tom Douglas’s world, you know. We’re just living in it.

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Tags: Happy Hour, Pike Place Market, Tom Douglas

Happy Hour Spotlight: Palace Kitchen

Palace shows off its quieter side in the early evening, and an ever-changing flight-of-bites menu makes for tasty snacking.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on May 27, 2010 at 09:38AM 0 Comments

• HOURS: Mon-Fri 4:30-6pm; Sun-Thurs 11pm-1am
• PRICES: Small plates $3-$4; cocktails $4-$5; beer and sangria $3.

At peak hours, Palace Kitchen heaves with energy, diners who can get past the hostess sardine themselves into the bar area and pile up in booths. Once in, they shout happily at one another, making sure their own good times are included in the cacophonous chorus of another epic evening out.

And late night here tends to be blurry, nonsensical, wicked fun—I imagine a lot of iphones and credit cards are abandoned alongside forgotten bits of burger Royale and froth-crusted pint glasses.

But in the afternoon and evening, you’ll sometimes find a different Palace. The dimming sun casts a lazy bit of buttery light on all the stainless steel and the staff are purposeful but calm, chopping lemons and rinsing clams in resolved preparation for the coming onslaught. Seats at the bar are easy to come by and rewarded with friendly (but never hovering) attention from the bartender, who pours $4 cocktails (the Aviation gin, Luxardo, and lemon drink is rather tasty) and $3 pints of beer and glasses of housemade sangria. The HH food menu is small but way more welcoming than your typical happy hour fare—Penn cove mussels, an open-faced pork sandwich, lamb sausage with a white-bean bread salad. All of these are $4, and Palace also offers Dungeness crab legs for $3 a pop during HH.

But my favorite bit is the themed menu, a flight of bites that changes every few weeks. The Palace staff famously served three different preparations of Berkshire-pork “Spam” earlier this year, and one time I encountered three different lamb dishes. Currently Palace’s happy hour menu features a trio of crudos, $7 for all three. Steak tartare fans will not be disappointed. And if you haven’t tried properly prepared raw scallop, I suggest you do so as soon as possible.

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Tags: Happy Hour, Cocktails, Belltown, Tom Douglas

Saint Patty’s Season Begins with Beer Blast

Tom Douglas offers lots of local micros plus food pairings for $35.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 08, 2010 at 03:57PM 2 Comments

Patron saint of the boozies.

There are always a lot of bar offerings for St. Patty’s, but they can all seem to run together after awhile—Pogues cover band here, green beer there. Shamrocks everywhere.

So this year, let’s start things off with Tom Douglas’ Saint Patrick’s Day Beer Blast, to be held at Palace Ballroom on March 17 from 5 to 8pm. Entry is $35 per person, for this you can sample Irish ales from Snoqualmie, Big Al Brewing, Maritime Pacific, Elysian. Elliott Bay, Hales, Pike Brewing, and Georgetown Brewery. Douglas is fixing up some Irish snacks to pair with the brews, you know those will be good.

It’s funny. I’m not having the best day today, and the thought of going to this actually cheers me up. Tom Douglas is such a happymaker, have you noticed? He just knows how to make us happy. Order tickets by calling 206-448-2001.

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Tags: Beer, Holiday Events, Drinking Events, Tom Douglas, St Patrick's Day