FNSC: Pony Bar

This week's adventure was at The Pony Bar where they specialize in craft beers and everything is on tap.  

This is only half the tasty choices.

And they have surprisingly good food. We were on the fence about whether or not to eat there since there was standing room only even after we'd been there for an hour and it had taken half an hour to even manage a standing spot at the bar. However there were lots of beers we still wanted to try and although they only have a one page food menu there were interesting things on it.

Here I am persuading Todd that there are tasty things on the
food menu that we should try.

Sofia and I had a pretzel to tide us over until Todd and Josh arrived.  We ordered it and then we thought they'd forgotten about us but when the fresh-out-of-the-oven, too-hot-to-eat pretzel with tasty whole grain mustard finally showed up it was delicious!    

Here are our nicely made-up baskets with the sandwiches divvied up.

For real food we ordered the sirloin burger, the short rib sandwich and a fried oyster and bacon sandwich.  It was the short rib sandwich and the fried oyster and bacon sandwich that made me want to order food despite the lack of seats, but the burger turned out to be even better than it looked.  We threw in the burger because the guy next to us ordered one and it looked good, but it tasted great too.  To make things even better all sandwiches came with yummy homemade potato chips and wasabi pickles (outrageously good!).  Needless to say the food lasted only about as long as it took to take the picture before we scarfed it down.  Conveniently, right about when the food showed up we were able to get two bar stools.

From the many choices we ended up ordering these beers:

• Founders Cerise (Olivia) - I liked this because I like fruit beers of any stripe. It had a slightly syrupy flavor of very ripe cherries; a sort of chewy, but not unpleasant mouthfeel.
• Uncommon Brewers, Siamese Twin Ale (Sofia)
• Ithaca, Cascazilla (Olivia) - Not as red as it could have been, but hoppy as promised.
• Stone, Cali-Belgique (Sofia) - Everybody was 'eh' on this but Todd; he really liked it.
• Harpoon, Leviathan Triticus (Josh)
• Harpoon, Potts Landbier (Todd) - flat and uninspired, unfortunately
• Victory, Donnybrook Stout (Olivia) - I'm a sucker for Guinness like beers and I liked this one a lot. The nitrogen gave it a nice creamy head and it was smooth and tasty as promised.
• Shipyard, Pumpkinhead Ale (Todd) - We hadn't had this one in a while and they go a little overboard on the cinnamon and nutmeg, but it's still one of the better pumpkins out there (keep an eye out for a future pumpkin ale shootout)
• Left Hand, Polestar Pilsner (Josh) - flat an uninspired as well
• Two Brothers, Hop Juice (Sofia) - Nobody really liked this except me. I think it would go well with dessert because it's kind of syrupy.

If you ask they'll even give you sheets where you can record your beers and rate them, so of course we did that too.  The only downside to the whole evening was really that the bar was so packed that there weren't any seats until about 7:30 when things eased up and you could actually see across the room.  Note to self: arrive late to Pony Bar.