The Downtown Lounge

Have you ever thought to yourself, “Hey I didn’t eat anything for dinner tonight?!” or perhaps, “I think I have had so many beers it may be impossible for me to stand…ever.” And yet sometimes both of those things happen at the exact same time.

This past weekend I was up in “P-TOWN” (that is what we Mainers call Portland)(and no, not Portland OR, Portland, ME!). I was on one of those hook-up-with-the-boys and get-your-drink-on type weekends. Certainly food was the last thing on our minds. But as the immortal Jon Faverau said, “Big dog’s gotta eat!”

So after arriving on Friday evening we downed a few good brews I had brought from Mass – The immortal choice for those at the bar who are driving home, the Wachusett blueberry and a four pack of one of my all time favs the trois pistol (so good I can’t pronounce it). Anyhoo, after we found ourselves a few sheets to the wind and in a cab bound for the downtown my buddy, “the bird”, suggested that we go to The Downtown Lounge. To my surprise this jived with my friend Mike, who has an incredibly discriminating pallet. His approval was odd to me because if my memory serves me right the last time he let the bird pick our meal we were poisoned by a McFlurry somewhere in Germany. But that is another blog.

The Downtown Lounge is definitely a place for young hipsters and on a Friday it had just the right amount of people who wanted to be seen and those who were having too much fun to care. We bellied up to the bar and for once in my life I actually found a place to sit. We ordered a round of PBR bottles ASAP and that was a choice that paid off. For those of you who do not know, PBR won a contest making it America’s best beer in 1893 and is currently sometimes sold tasting like the keg was brewed that same year. To be honest I like my PBR on a frozen lake or when I am doing other manly things like cuttin’, choppin’, or haulin’. But the greatness of the PBR bottle is something you tend to only discover that you like when you are wasted, doomed soon forget. Also the simple reason that they were being sold at the rock-bottom price of 2$ it made them taste so much better.

After a few beers we got a booth and the whole ambiance of the place won me over. Small but with classic matching cushy booths and barstools it seemed like a 50s diner filled with high class hippies. I loved it. The service made it all the merrier as our waitress kept the beers coming despite our obvious steadily declining state. She also sat down with us and mentioned the fact that we might need some food! We had no idea what to order so she looked around the table, read our surely blank minds, and decided on three entrees just like that. She ordered us the fajitas, chicken wings, and antipasto. The food was decent but I am a man that needs to be fed and for me the portions were a bit on the meager side. The antipasto was by far the best, as I wondered what other person in the world enjoys a good PBR and prosciutto.

Well despite arriving early we ended up closing the place down. We did not make a scene but the bird managed to break a bottle and mishandle roughly 5 others, leaving the busboy perhaps doomed to a lifelong state of alertness. Luckily the 5 cents that we cost them did not show up on the bill. In fact we got 15 PBRs and three meals for around 50$. A great way to end any night! (Despite the fact that the girl the bird was talking up left with a guy that had a chin strap that’s just wrong)

So if you are looking for a place that most likely is filled with people a bit cooler than you but has great prices and super friendly confines, I recommend stumbling into The Downtown Lounge. If you are just looking for a good time, call Mike and the Bird.

Final Grade: B

check out these photos and other reviews

photos

Maine Today

Boston Globe

The Brickskeller

Ahhh, the Brickskeller. Touted in every Washington, DC guidebook as a “must visit” for people searching for beer in our nation’s capital, this beer cave boasts the “world’s largest beer” selection on its website (which, by the way is a terrible site). It may be true that the Brickskeller has one of the largest beer lists ever, but that doesn’t mean much if you don’t make all of these beers available on a regular basis.

There are a lot of great things about the Brickskeller, and I think visiting this place is a right of passage for anyone moving to DC or just visiting for a few days. It’s definitely a unique place where you can order beers you can’t find anywhere else. You’ll also find the staff is extremely knowledgeable about beer.

The pluses stop there.

Every time I go to the Brickskeller, I get excited beforehand. I get excited about drinking lots of weird beer, eating cheap food, and hanging out with my friends. But every time I go, I inevitably end up disappointed. Here are just a few reasons why this happens.

Unfortunately, when I order a beer, it has become a rule rather than an exception that the waiter will come back and say “sorry, we’re all out of that tonight”. This gets very frustrating, especially when it takes waiters 20-30 minutes between each time they visit your table. This has gotten so bad that I have made it a personal rule to order a “backup choice”, so that I will always end up with a beer even if my first choice is out of stock. Sadly, waiters still often come back empty handed, with both my first choice AND my backup choice being out of stock.

While the waiters are incredibly knowledgeable about beer, they are also incredibly uppity. The more I visit the Brickskeller, the more I realize that the wait staff is snobby, making me feel totally inadequate and as if it is a special privilege for me to even be sitting within a 100 mile vicinity of their restaurant. Puh-lease. I really don’t see any reason why the staff can’t be friendlier.

The service is painfully slow. The building smells, is dark, dank, and is always uncomfortable. The bathrooms are disgusting. The food is mediocre at best, terrible at worst. And the location is inconvenient.

There is really only a need to go to the Brickskeller once or twice in a lifetime. Beyond that, you are just punishing yourself.

In comparison, the Brickskeller’s sister restaurant, RFD, is one of my favorites in all of DC. They have a beer list that is obviously not as long as the Brickskeller’s, but they have a huge selection of beers on tap, and still offers one of the longest bottled beer lists I’ve ever seen. Even more importantly, they actually have their menu beers in stock. The wait staff is friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable, the place is huge and offers a fun atmosphere, there are tons of TVs for watching sports, and, in my opinion, RFD has the best nachos in the district. Oh, and did I mention it’s less than a block from the Gallery Place/Chinatown metro stop?

Why anyone would choose the Brickskeller over RFD is a mystery I will never understand.

Grades

The Brickskeller: C+. Everyone should go here once. Don’t go back more than twice.

RFD: A-. I love this place.

I’m sure this post will make me unpopular with lots of people, but I’m not the only one that thinks negatively about the Brickskeller:

The Brickskeller Kinda Sucks

The Hangar Pub and Grill

Sometimes food is more than food. Let me explain. When I was a freshman in college I went and visited my friend Mike at UCONN and was exposed to the first time to life at a state school. I couldn’t tell you diddly-poo about that meeting eight years ago except for the take-out we ordered. He vehemently insisted the we get wings and I thought ‘hey great wings are wings are wings’ – right? Well when he explained that he wanted to get flavors called ‘mustang ranch’ and ‘godzilla breath’. I knew this place was a little different. And they were earth-shatteringly good! Come to find out that all these years later I would move in a few miles away from the ‘wing’s over storrs’ flagship store The Hangar.

The Hangar is a sports bar within walking distance of the southwest dormitories on the UMASS campus. Often crowded (a line out the door) the food is worth the wait. Inside looks more like a converted garage rather than a mecca to the McNuggets older brother, but one is soon swayed by the smell of BBQ sauce. It is known for one thing, wings. Most famous is there boneless wings that come in cute sizes like DC-10 and 727. The prices are cheap and the wings are perfect. They have close to 20 sauces you can try in addition to varying levels of traditional fiery wing sauce. My favorites are ‘golden BBQ’ and ‘west Texas mesquite’ (despite my inborn aversion to everything Texan). But half the fun is picking a new sauce and the waitstaff is always helpful. For a two person order of wings you can get three sauces so fire away. I prefer the bone in wings, but both are irresistible.

Also beer. beer. the Hangar has 30 beers on tap and a few more bottled. It is cheap so if you are looking for one of those quasi-legal table kegs, the ones that make you look like you are an extra for the movie beerfest, this is the place to go. I would shy away from the watery classics here (don’t worry ‘bud’ family i still love you) and go for something fruity. Yes you heard me, fruity. And not in the lance bass kinda way. Go for a sweet beer. I find is helps to clear away the fire of the hotter sauces. I love the SeaDog – Blueberry (cuz im a Mainah) and the local Paper City – One Eared Monkey (with hints of Peach). Trust me.