The Unvegan

Brews Over Burgers at Mill Street

June 24th, 2010 Tweet Facebook Digg Stumble Reddit

I like this street corner.

For a night in Toronto, I really didn’t have much of a clue about where to eat. Finally, a buddy of mine told me to check out the Mill Street Brewery. I am always up for a microbrewery since that seems to be a lost art in LA, so I looked it up. It turned out that the place was actually pretty easy walk from our hotel, so we headed to Mill Street to see what we could find. After a twenty minute walk through a mildly sketchy part of town featuring a homeless pirate watering plants with a two-liter of Canada Dry, we arrived at the Distillery area. This part of town was once some sort of huge brewery, but now had shops, restaurants, bars and people testing Smart Cars and Segway Scooters. Even before we started drinking, our goal was to take a drunken ride on/in one of these (no, we did not achieve our goal). Continue Reading»

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Beer, Brewhouse, Burgers, Canada, hamburgers, microbrewery, mill street brewery, ontario, restaurants, toronto, Travel

The Peak of Brew Burgers at Grizzly Peak

June 22nd, 2010 Tweet Facebook Digg Stumble Reddit

Looks much better with bacon on top.

Everyone in LA seems to know that the place has no good beer culture, yet no one has really done anything to fix that. Sure, there’s BJ’s (no good) and a couple other microbreweries that are difficult to get to, but come on, LA is a huge city that deserves more. So when I left LA for Ann Arbor for a bit of a bachelor party, we headed to the Grizzly Peak Brewing Company. I’ve loved the Grizzly Peak for a long time, even dating back to before I could drink their beer and drank their micro-brewed root beer. I have a lot of great memories of the place and hoped that my most recent visit wouldn’t be a disappointment. Continue Reading»

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Ann Arbor, Bar Food, Brewhouse, Burgers, grizzly peak brewing company, hamburgers, michigan, microbrewery, restaurants, Travel

Poor Execution at BJ’s Brewhouse

November 10th, 2009 Tweet Facebook Digg Stumble Reddit

A hasty pizza.

I was especially excited when a BJ’s Brewhouse opened in Culver City. Los Angeles is known as a city short on craft and microbrews, and although BJ’s is a big chain, I hoped it would fill a much-neglected gap in beer and microbrewery food.

To start out the meal I ordered their Harvest Hefeweizen. Hef has never let me down in the past, so I expected it wouldn’t again. I was wrong. This was the sweetest beer that has ever tried to pass for a real beer. Don’t get me wrong, I think a Strongbow Cider or a Leinenkugel’s Berryweiss can be very refreshing on a hot summer day, but those beers are composed of fruit and you know what you’re getting when you order them. Sure, hefeweizen isn’t the most bitter beer, but BJ’s attempt at it tasted like they accidentally spilled a carton of sugar into my beer. Continue Reading»

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Beer, BJ's, Brewhouse, Burgers, Culver City, hamburgers, Los Angeles, microbrewery, Pizza, restaurants, westfield

Rants and Raves

Cured Meats Might Need to be Renamed “Treating Meats”

July 13th, 2009

I was always under the impression that curing meats was simply a process of making meats taste better, but now it looks like curing has a double meaning. No, the meats aren’t exactly going to cure you of anything, but they just might help you treat some and prevent some diseases. The key is the nitrates and nitrites that we’ve all been taught to avoid.

According to Feedstuffs.com, “…the dietary inclusion of nitrites and nitrates may provide a rescue or protective pathway for people at risk for cardiovascular disease…[and] may also provide protection against tissue damage.”

Beer Me Some Breckenridge Agave Wheat

The taste of skiing?

Colorado is definitely a beer state, and not just because Coors comes from the Rocky Mountain State. No, it is also home to New Belgium (of Fat Tire fame) and seemingly countless other micro and craft breweries. While in Breckenridge for a ski weekend, I decided I had to at least try one of these, and because it turned out to be the only one available at dinner, my choice happened to come from the creatively named Breckenridge Brewery. The brewery, by the way, is actually no longer in Breckenridge, having expanded and moved to Denver in 1992.