Rebecca H.
Yelp
Apparently Massachusetts is just jam-packed with breweries and local craft beers. This past weekend, we put on real pants and decided to have our Worcester brewery cherry popped.
This place was the easy winner with a food menu.
Up until now in my life the breweries I have visited include carlsberg, guinness, heineken, and dogfish head. So....with those expectations, this place wasn't quite what I was anticipating. This place is essentially a bar with a bunch of steel vats in the background.
Upon entry, we were confused and it took us a few minutes to realize that it's a, seat-yourself situation as this is not blatantly stated anywhere.
Our cluelessness continued while we tried to figure out what to order. There were about 6-8 draught options, almost all of them IPAs with one porter and maybe a stout or two. As someone who isn't particularly fond of IPAs, I would have preferred a touch more variety.
I went with the goodnight moon porter and tinasaurus snagged the puff daddy, which has apparently won Massachusetts' most tasty IPA. For food, there are two vegetarian grilled cheese options: the classic with like 3-4 kinds of cheese and the caprese with tomatoes, fontina, and pesto. We ordered the latter and threw in an order of the bavarian soft pretzel with mustard and beer cheese for good measure.
We told the bartender we had no fucking idea what we were doing as this was our first visit. She was initially patient with us and described the draught options but that patience ran out real quick. I don't know about you, but when I enter a self-serve-type place, I make a bee line to the ordering counter. I don't waste time trying to wander around the dining room looking for a place to sit. For this reason, we hadn't found a place to sit when we placed our order. We were on the receiving end of some attitude from the bartender when we didn't know. I would expect bartenders to be accustomed to interacting with drunk and annoying people so the fact that we didn't yet have a seat shouldn't get your panties in a bunch.
After placing our order, I agreed to keeping my tab open. I closed my wallet and was trying to put it back into my purse before starting towards our table. While I was putting my wallet back, the bartender was like "...we keep your credit card here...." with a condescending tone. Ok...can you relax? Jesus.
We were able to find a table near the back. There are a bunch of old school video game machines and a pile of toys, seemingly to entertain kiddos while their parents knock a few back. I'm not a parent by any means but a brewery is probably not the place I would choose to bring my children. This is definitely the first time I've seen toys for kids at a brewery. Towards the end of our stay, it was more like chuckie cheese than a bar experience with kids running all over the place, yelling, hitting the walls, etc.
Now that I've gotten the doody stuff out of the way, I will admit that the food was very good. The grilled cheese was cheesy and tasty. My only criticism is that I would have preferred thicker bread but otherwise, it was a great grilled cheese.
The pretzels were incredible. They were soft and juicy, in a pretzel-kind-of way. When they first came out, they were too hot to eat. The beer cheese and the mustard were two of the best dips I've had the pleasure of slathering on my pretzels. Don't leave this place without ordering the pretzels.
The beers themselves were just ok. I could take them or leave them.
If you want to bring your dog and/or kids for a nice family outing, this is probably a good place to do so.