O Genuíno fica na Joaquim Távora, próximo ao metrô Ana Rosa (a rua fica próxima, não o bar; pra ir do metrô até lá, demora). Deixei o carro na Humberto I, aliás, recomendo. Rua tranqüila, vários prédios, tem vigia. Nada de estacionamento. Sim, fui de carro e que se foda essa lei inconstitucional.

Chegando lá, fiquei vislumbrado. É muito bonito. Tem uma varandinha com mesas na entrada, uma outra parte fechada mais a frente e, mais pro fundo, tem um espaço maior, meio aberto, mas coberto (pegaram?). A iluminação é sensacional. O lugar é grande, mas fica com um ar acolhedor, manja? E se pensa que vai passar frio, tá enganado. Olha o que eles colocaram lá:

Siiiim! Aquecedores! E não é um, nem dois. São vários espalhados pelo ambiente!

Bom, como era umas 20h, estávamos morrendo de fome. É, o preço é meio salgado, mas valeu a pena. Pedimos uma porção de provolone à milanesa (cuja receita você confere aqui) e uma porção de iscas de frango a doré com molho tártaro. Cada porção, R$ 18,00. Enquanto isso, pedimos 2 garrafas de Bohemia Weiss escura, a R$ 12,50 a unidade. Depois de tudo, pedi uma sugestão de outra cerveja de trigo, mas o garçom não sabia pronunciar os nomes, aí resolveu trazer uma carta de cervejas especiais (eu ia dar nota máxima pro bar, mas depois dessa...). Pô, por que não pensou nisso antes, anta?! Enfim, pedi uma Spaten 500ml (R$ 9,90). O garçom serviu num copão. Virou a cerveja inteira nele. Incrível. Desceu redondo. Recomendo MESMO!

No final, a conta. Ai ai. Foi uma bica, e quase nos furtaram. Colocaram uma porção de iscas de frango a mais. Outra coisa que me fez não dar nota máxima: erro na conta. E o pior: demoraram MUITO pra trazer a conta certa.

O Genuíno é um excelente bar, mas no quesito atendimento, na minha opinião, deixou a desejar. Isso porque em 2007 ganharam o troféu Colarinho de Prata, que segue os seguintes critérios: armazenagem, manutenção, tiragem perfeita do produto e prestação de serviços. É, acho que eles só sabem servir chopp mesmo...Ainda assim, recomendo. É um local tranqüilo, com gente bonita e um cardápio bastante variado. Vale a pena conhecer!

Onde? Rua Joaquim Távora, 1217 – Vila Mariana – São Paulo

Telefone: (11) 5083-4040

Cartões: Visa | Mastercard | Credicard | Dinners

Estacionamento: vallet

Horário: De 2ª a 6ª das 17h à 1h; Sábado e domingo das 12h à 1h.

Idade Mínima: 18

Faixa Etária: de 25 a 30

Lotação: 260

Site: www.genuinochopp.com.br

I left work early yesterday (that's right, Kev: Comp Time!) and, at the end of an uneventful three-hour trek up Interstate 45, found myself at the doorstep of my in-laws, where the girls have been since Sunday evening.  Long drives tend to sap my energy so my first activity was little more than watching Gracie Mae swim with Manna (her grandmother) in the pool from the comfort of the pool chair (with a room temperature Shiner Bock close at hand).

Later that evening, we packed up the plantation and rallied at the Dallas Arboretum for their summer concert series featuring one of my favourites, Asleep at the Wheel.  I absolutely love their tightly-played and enthusiastically delivered brand of Western Swing, so I was in hog heaven as we sat on the sloped lawn eating homemade chicken salad sandwhiches (not as good as Marian's!) and tipping back bottles of chilled Spaten and Heineken.  Good stuff.

In spite of the great show, I think my favourite part of the evening was during the encore as I held Gracie Mae on my shoulders and she clapped and laughed wildly to their rendition of 'Cherokee Maiden'.  It just doesn't get much better than that.

(Jackson, are you paying attention?)

OPTIMATOR

Spaten's Optimator is a doppelbock.  It was a sweet beer, like candy.  In fact, it was like mixing caramel, hard candy and whiskey together.  It was a syrupy libation, sugary sweet to my palate, not malty sweet.  It was warm.  The alcohol was present.  The hops were not, as appropriate.  It was an oily, chewy, full bodied lager.  It finished clean with a hint of grapes.  

No hops were present in the nose.  It did smell kind of like a brandy.  It reminded me of Sam Adams Utopia, which I was able to try for the first time at the 2007 Great American Beer Festival.  It was dark brown with a tint of copper 'round the edges.  Very thin, tan head.  It didn't dissipate but did not stay thick throughout.

FULL SAIL AMBER

It’s from Bend, Oregon and crafted with elan and attitude. The beer pours an amber, orange color - which would seem right since it is an amber ale, eh? It had a small white head with tiny little bubbles that lingered on the beer, yet not so much on the glass. It was a thin blanket atop the bed of hops.

There seemed to be the tiniest taste of biscuit in the medium bodied ale. It was very lightly sweet, though even this was masked by the hops presence. The body, while it filled the mouth, seemed a bit watery, too. But the star of the show was, as mentioned in every paragraph so far, the hops.

You’ll note piney, citrus-like hops.  They use Mt. Hood (duh! Oregon! It’s brewed in the Mt. Hood area!) and Cascade. Cascade provides spicy character, too.  

Well, thanks for having a drink or two with me.  We'll do it again.  You can find more detailed reviews of the above beers at the Bottled Llama Brewing Blog.  Subscribe to their blog and mine!

Munich is a funny city in that you can drink pretty much wherever you want; there are stalls at train stations, in subways, on the street, in the museum, and in the parks. Actually, drinking with friends is done especially well in the parks at beer gardens. Now that I've left Germany, the thing I will most likely miss most is sitting under the wide fronds of a fragrant chestnut tree eating and drinking with friends in a manner which is more socially acceptable than here in America.

But what do you drink when you're there?

(Table found at Munich Breweries)

The strange thing about Munich compared to America is that if you go into a beer garden or a beer hall and look at the menu, it will look very similar to this table, without some of the superfluous information. There will be no choice as to brands of beer, because each resturant, brewery, and beer garden chooses a brand--from the most upscale resteuarnt to the most casual cafe. This is indicated outside the restaurant by a sign showing the brewery's logo, for instance, the Spaten brewery's logo is a digging spade. This can be a good thing to remember if you're in Munich and are more concerned with the style of beer you are drinking than the food you are eating. In my opinion, the best beer I had in Munich was Augustiner (one hopes that after creating beers for so many hundreds of years (since the 1300s!) they would be the best).

A weißier, or wheat (white) beer, is a cloudy, sunny beer which generally comes in a half liter glass--something very important to know if you really want to drink out of a Maß, which is the "comedy" gigantic beer mug. Pils and Helles are the two other usual beers, both of which can be drank out of the gigantic beer mug. Helles, in my opinion, is slightly hoppier and therefore more appropriate for summer drinking. The dunkels and bocks may be more appropriate for winter drinking, as they are darker and maltier than the pils, helles, and weißiers.

But wait! There's more! There's also Radler and Diesel. I didn't try the diesel, which is beer+cola combo, but the lemonade+beer radler is completely amazing, having neither the specific taste of lemonade nor beer. I feel as though that stuff could get a bit dangerous after a few Maßs.

Cocktails? I guess. But they, on average, cost from 7-9 Euro. Which is too much for me.

The meats were some of the best I've had in Munich thus far, and the spatzle was almost too rich to eat--in fact, my order ended up being shared with many others. I've come to realise that spaetzle is something generally considered the 'vegetarian option' in Munich restaurents. Much better than a portobello mushroom, in my opinion.

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Optimator is a deep brown glassful of fairly heavy malty goodness, brewed (but of course) with the nothing but the purest ingredients. It's tasty, too - molasses, malt, something sugary and burnt at the back of my mind - it's all good, and very easy to drink. A little too easy, considering it's over seven percent abv... oops! No wonder their web site spends a while extolling the health virtues of beer. Did you know, for example, this:

A scientific study undertaken at the Technical University of Munich concluded that the collection of minerals and trace elements in beer have a favorable effect on nerves and muscle strength, electrolyte usage, enzyme activation and hormone levels.

Probably not! But now you do - and there's more facts over there that prove that beer's not just nice, it's actually really good for you. If it was all as good as this, I'd probably believe them.

JBB6 Rating: Will Buy Again

The Schneider Weiss was a fantastic beer and all I had been told was that it was very unique compared to other German Weiss beers, so I reached for Franziskaner Hefe-Weiss. Much lighter than the Schneider, the flavor was a bit more restrained. Very refreshing, as most Hefe's are. I used to hate wheat ales, but have begun to like them more and more recently. I think they offer a great opening into the realm of quality ber for the typical beer drinker.

Next was Optimator under the Spaten label. I am usually not a big fan of Dopplebocks. I find the malt sweetness to be a little bit much for my taste. This one was very good. I had it with a jalapeno burger and the burger went well with this rich beer.

Spaten and Franziskaner are both under the InBev umbrella and are mass produced for a wide audience. I really wish I could have tried these classic brands before they were part of a plan of world domination. In the end, I'm not inspired by the brand, but not disappointed either.

Doppelbock translates to english as double-bock (or, in my opinion, double-damned good); which makes me think of Amber Bock (not it's American cousin). Anyway, the "bock" part makes sense, as it is a dark amber sort - a favorite of mine. But, as I said before, it does have a bit of a sweet taste with a slightly bitter after taste. The pour leaves little to no head, and it goes down pretty smooth.

Rating: Amberliscious, sweetiliscious, but certainly not headiliscious!   

Oh, and at 7.2% ETOH be sure to pass off your keys to a (more than you are) sober friend a little sooner than you would if you were drinking the average American beer.

Ledaswan played Beethoven's Hall last night.  Black Friday and Sons of Sancho were also on the bill.  This is probably my third time ever in this bar and it gets better everytime.  Fromw hat I understand it only opens to the public on events like this and First Friday.  So what kind of beer do you order in a German bar if you've never had any of what they have.  Delrick just said "I'll have the green one", meaning the draft with the green handle.  Well, great choice Delrick.  He chose Spaten and  we pretty much had that for the rest of the night.  Later when we went to the Mix and I ordered Dos XX it was like drinking water.  Note:  Mexican beer is not as good after you've been drinking German beer.

Ledaswan is working on new material and I'm pretty exited about it.  We have about 4 songs that we will be working on that I am sure will soon find their way into our set.  So for those of you that keep coming out to the shows (thank you), you'll be hearing some new songs really soon.

The Monk's Kettle

We started the evening off at the Monk's Kettle which, at the time, had only been open for a month. Here's what Yelp thinks about the place. They bill themselves as a "craft beer focused beer and wine tavern". I would describe the feel as "modern cozy"...the bar was a huge, antique fireplace mantle and the decor was bathed in earth tones and natural textures.

Although they were serving up some pretty tasty looking food I focused my efforts on the liquid bread. My first pull was a beer that is no longer on their menu and I can't remember what it was called although it included the terms, "one year" and "toast". My efforts to google it have proved fruitless. It was a pretty tasty, crisp, hoppy beer. My second pull was the Fuller's London Porter. Damn...that's good beer. I can't believe I'm saying it, but I actually like it better than Guinness. Even though it's a porter, it's like an even better version of Guinness.

Walzwerk

After the Monk's Kettle we headed over to Walzwerk for dinner. This is home-cooked food, Eastern German style. I was a bit skeptical at first because I come from a German family and my grandmother knew how to make German egg noodles like no other. But my workmate Knut Graff ensured me that it would be authentic food. He was so right. Yelp generally agrees as well.

I really appreciated the design of the restaurant...it was a blend of old German country decor, industrial materials & textures, and propaganda posters.One wall even sported the portraits of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. The bathroom was filled with German kitsch...lunch boxes, old consumer products, and vinyl from 60's pop stars.

Here's their dinner menu so you can reference the dishes I'm describing. We started off with the small potato pancakes - tasty - and the matjes herring - freaking INSANELY good. I didn't know what to expect from the matjes, it's served cold and the ingredients are a bit suspect but they all come together in an absolutely perfect combination of flavor. I ordered the "Vegetarian Cabbage Roulade." Delicious. The two giant...err, "roulades" (I guess) were cabbage leaves filled with couscous-like rice, cauliflower, carrots, and some other veggies. It was topped with a slightly tangy tomato sauce similar to a marinara. The waitress accidentally ordered the "Cheese Spätzle" for us and brought it out for free. Oh, hells yeah. It was good. The egg noodles were as good as my grandmother's. For desert we had the "Cold Dog" which was also very good.

After a couple of Spaten Optimators and all that heavy food, I was feeling pretty logy. And then a waiter brought us this magical elixir that goes by the name of Underberg.

I was told it aids in digestion. It tasted pretty awful. No, it tasted really awful. I'm not a fan of the black liquorice flavor, but combine that with bitter herbs and alcohol...yikes. Nevertheless, I downed it and it was quite refreshing despite the harsh taste. Sure enough, I quickly felt quite a bit better...far less sluggish; I think my eyes even popped open on their own accord. I'm looking for the stuff here in Austin. If you know of any place that sells it, let me know please.

So, if you find yourself in SF anytime soon do yourself a solid and check these places out!