Sauced

Fan of New Belgium’s Fat Tire Ale?

Then you’ll be wanting to try a dry-hopped cask version.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Feb 10, 2011 at 09:30AM 0 Comments

Fat Tire’s on cask this Thursday at two Seattle bars.

PHOTO: New Belgium

Seattle Beer News points us to two pubs tapping casks of New Belgium Brewing’s Fat Tire amber ale—which, when I was in high school, was the most coveted beer of all. This Thursday, February 10, Mulleady’s Irish Pub is offering a cask of Fat Tire dry-hopped with Centennial hops, the Latona Pub has one with Bravo hops. (Note on Latona: the food rocks.)

What’s dry-hopping? It’s when hops are added to the beer in the cask. Dry-hopping brings on the hops flavor and aroma without more hops bitterness.

What’s the difference between these two casks of beer? Centennial hops are American hops that have been around since the 1970s. (I picture them wearing bell bottoms and attending wife-swap parties). They are characterized by citrus and floral favors and a strong “bittering value.” For some good information on the Bravo hop—a newish hop developed right here in Washington—read this.

I say you try both.

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Tags: Pub Grub, Beer, Wallingford, Magnolia Village, Cask Beer

Watch the State of the Union at Kate’s Pub or Cafe Presse

A third alternative: Stay home and play a drinking game. Esquire has a good one.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Jan 25, 2011 at 10:26AM 0 Comments

Raise a glass to the big guy: Bars hosts SOTU parties.

These days nearly every bar you go to has a television, so you’ll likely be able to catch the State of the Union all over town.

But if you’re still fired up and ready to go, you should probably hit Organizing for America’s rally-the-base bash at Kate’s Pub in Wallingford. This begins at 5pm (the speech is scheduled for 6pm).

Added attraction: Kate’s has an applause-worthy happy hour that lasts until 7pm and includes half-price food.

Cafe Presse is also hosting a watch party. Presse fries up some of the city’s best frites, so you can eat your pain tastily as you contemplate joblessness, global violence, and our highly fractured national government.

If you prefer to huddle up at home and watch the speech, might I recommend a drinking game? As is so often the case, Esquire has the best one. I’m not just saying that because it includes the expression “excessive bloviation.”

Cheers!

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Tags: Capitol Hill, Wallingford, Drinking Events, Drinking Games, Barack Obama, State of the Union, Esquire

Happy Hour Spotlight: Art of the Table

This is the delicious weekly deal they don’t want you to know about.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Nov 01, 2010 at 08:50AM 0 Comments

A tantalizing salad from a previous Happy Monday at Art of the Table.

Once in a while I write about something on this blog and end up with a few WTF? emails from my friends who’d rather I didn’t spread the word about a thing they love. They want to keep these things to themselves, you see. I lost a few pals after this one, let me tell you.

And talking about Happy Mondays at Art of the Table is risky business indeed. It’s not that it’s a new thing, this weekly discount at the tiny restaurant in Wallingford. It’s just that people love it, and there is limited seating.

Most nights at AotT, guest sign on for a themed multi-course meal created for them with fastidious care by chef Dustin Ronspies. But on Mondays, this model changes. Wine bottles are $26, wines by the glass are $5, beers are $3, and there is an ever-changing selection of discounted small plates. Last week there was a kabocha squash soup for $5, a short ribs special for $14, and a flatbread with sausage, broccoli rabe, chickpea puree, and some other stuff for $8. You might not know exactly what you are going to get, but you know it will rock pretty hard.

HH at AotT runs from 5pm to about 10. Happy Monday.

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Tags: Happy Hour, Wallingford, Deals

Rat and Raven Owners Buy Goldie’s on 45th

Expect a more upscale version of the Wallingford sports bar by June 1.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Apr 23, 2010 at 01:48PM 2 Comments

Iron Bull returns to Wallingford

Goldie’s Sports Bar, on the corner of 45th Street and Bagley Avenue North in Wallingford, has been purchased by Gerald Simonsen and Bernie McGuire, the duo behind The Rat and Raven in the U District. (Simonsen also owns the building that houses Redwood on Capitol Hill. McGuire counts Capitol Hill’s Clever Dunnes, a place where I regularly try to force my coworkers to do Irish car bombs, among his assets.)

Simonsen told me they plan to keep the pool tables but restore the sports bar’s original, much cooler name: Iron Bull.

When the bar reopens, says Simonsen, it will be an upscale version of the Goldie’s we know and love, with a lot of “cosmetic changes,” including a kickass TV system with “the full NFL package.” Simonsen says the menu will resemble that at The Rat and Raven, where pub fare like burgers, fish and chips, and shrimp poppers are what’s for dinner—Just the things for luring football-illiterate little piglets like me to the sports bar.

Simonsen and McGuire hope to open Iron Bull by June 1.

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Tags: Pub Grub, Sports, Wallingford, Bar Openings

New Bar Roundup

A cocktail lounge, a wine bar, a pinball pub that self-identifies as a dive, and another cocktail lounge.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Apr 06, 2010 at 01:29PM 0 Comments

Wizard

We begin downtown with The Diller Room, the cocktail lounge inside Stella coffee house at the corner of First and University.

The Diller Room’s happy hour scores big points for lasting from 5 to 8pm and featuring $5 snacks (including two kinds of slider—monte cristo and BLT), and $3 wells and drafts. Billing yourself as a cocktail lounge and then brandishing a Bacardi logo on your web site is dubious practice, this fact does not escape me. But the Diller Room is actually quite cool and I’m happy enough with the happy hour that I can let it go.

Moving up towards the market there is ths new-ish wine bar 106 Pine, owned by the people who brought us the neighboring Chocolate Box and managed by the very knowledgeable Shannon Borg. 106 Pine has tasting events every Thursday. Next up on April 8 from 5-7pm, a rep from Woodinville’s Cru Selections will be pouring wines from Hestia, Guardian, and Cullin Hills.

Meanwhile, Wallingford’s 45th Street has welcomed a very techie-friendly new pinball bar called The Grizzled Wizard. Happy hour here starts at 4pm and also lasts until 8pm every day—I’m seeing a trend and I’m liking what I see. Right now the GW is doing ye olde frozen-dinner-as-food-menu trick, but promises bbq and tacos in the future.

Finally, Pour House, in the area of Greenlake some people call Tangletown, opened in Mid-March and has two sections—a cocktail lounge for adults only, and an all-ages dining room for families. Pour House has a $5 food menu offered from 4 to 6pm and again from 10 to close. This menu features no less than three types of slider: hamburger, portabello mushroom, and Jamaican jerk chicken.

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Tags: Downtown, Cocktails, Pike Place Market, Wallingford, Wine Bars, Dives, Greenlake

It’s Wednesday, It’s Half-Price Wine Night at Emmer and Rye

Here are some other Wednesday Wine Deals Around Town.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 24, 2010 at 09:19AM 4 Comments

If you haven’t yet checked out Emmer and Rye, chef Seth Caswell’s Queen Anne restaurant, tonight’s the night to do it. Through March, Caswell is offering a 50 percent discount on all of his wines every Wednesday night.

In other Wednesday wine-related specials, Smash Wine Bar in Wallingford has a year-round Wednesday deal: buy one entree, get 50 percent off the second. (They’ve got some other good weekly specials: all-night happy hour on Sundays (5 to 10pm), and 20 percent off wines every Tuesday.)

And in Kirkland tonight, The Grape Choice wine shop, which offers free tastings every Wednesday from 5:30 to 7:30pm, will be sampling wines from Alexandria Nicole Cellars.

Speaking of wine, I hear there are still tickets available for Taste Washington’s Grand Tasting this weekend. Hope to see you there. h4.

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Tags: Kirkland, Wine, Queen Anne, Wine Tastings, Wallingford