Monday, January 29, 2007

Brewer's Alley Revisited

Brewer's Alley
North Market Street
Frederick, MD

Anyone that visited the site over the weekend knows that I lunched at Brewer's Alley on Saturday (see post entitled "I Thought it Was Just a Mirage"). Brewer's Alley has been a favorite destination of mine since I moved to Frederick County almost three years ago.

Recently BA changed up some of their menu choices, keeping certain standby items such as the Smokehouse Macaroni and Cheese (highly recommended) and dropping other items like the Osso-buco (which was one of their few dishes that I have been disappointed with), and, unfortunately the crawfish springroll appetizer. While it's commendable that BA changes their menu in order to keep offerings fresh, change isn't always good. I ordered the BLTC (bacon, lettuce, tomato and cheddar sandwich, $6.95), which in the past was served on a nice country white bread, but this time came out on two pita rounds. The pita, which was uncomfortably chewy, dominated the sandwich in a way that bread should not.

My wife had the Po'boy of the day (priced daily based on the main ingredient) - oyster this past Saturday and stated that it was "nice quality bread, tasted fresh but they were skimpy on the oysters though. Usually the sandwiches are overstuffed, I could have used double."

As always, their beer was excellent. Currently the seasonal is the Scotch Ale, which is a personal favorite, but it's hard to go wrong with any of the beers here.

Service, as always, was good.

Brewer's Alley is also a reasonably priced respite for the entire family if shopping in downtown Frederick. Three beers ($2.85 a glass), a root beer for my daughter, 2 meals off the regular menu and an order of the Chicken Dinosaurs ($3.95) off the kids menu ran $40.00 which included a healthy tip. In spite of some of the issues, I would definitely return to try some of the other new additions to the menu (am looking forward to the opportunity to try the Crawfish Mac and Cheese).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We Love the Alley. the Beer sampler is a great value. I hope that they have not removed the Southwest Chicken Pizza!

Kevin Smith said...

Nope, still on the menu, and yes, the sampler is a great value, and a wonderful way to get a little taste of each of the beers. If you don't have to drive, have a particular favorite beer and are out with friends I would recommend ordering your beer in a giraffe - kind of like a three foot tall, thin mini keg with a spigot that will hold approximately six to eight pints.