Bar Hop Brewco goes beyond burgers
Bar Hop Brewco (out of 4)
Address: 137 Peter St. (near Queen St. W.), 647-348-1137, barhopbar.com Chef: Mark Cutrara
Hours: Kitchen open weekdays, noon to midnight; Saturday and Sunday, 4 p.m. to midnight. Bar open weekdays, noon to 2 a.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Reservations: No Wheelchair access: Yes Price: Dinner for two with beer, tax and tip: $65
AMY PATAKI RESTAURANT CRITIC JOSH RUBIN BEER CRITIC
Bar Hop Brewco is not your typical beer bar.
Owners Rob Pingitore and James MacDonald, whose success with Bar Hop around the corner propelled them to look for a larger second space, didn’t want to compete with themselves. So they hired head-totoe chef Mark Cutrara (ex-Cowbell) to direct a daring dining experience that doesn’t include burgers and wings.
“It’s a restaurant that happens to sell beer,” says Cutrara, 44.
But boy, do they ever have beer. As at the original location, the new Bar Hop has 36 draft taps with a rotating selection of local craft seasonal offerings, as well as some intriguing imports. There’s also a well-chosen bottle list, with gems such as highly sought-after Trappist brew Westvleteren 12 and tart, funky Timmerman’s Oude Geuze.
And there’s also a barrel room, with several house-designed brews aging in former spirits barrels. Pingitore also has plans to open an on-site nano-brewery.
Selling beer-geek-friendly brews on the fringes of the club district might not seem like an obviously successful idea. But Pingitore says it’s been working just fine so far.
“The beauty of craft beer is it reaches out to so many men and women that it creates a well-diverse environment. So the clubgoer or Bay Street worker can all be beer geeks at heart,” said Pingitore.
Here are five felicitous food-andbeer pairings. The smoothly run main-floor dining room still offers a very good craft beer selection, with a second-floor dining room set to open later this month. Pairing 1 Bar Hop Brewco makes lovely snacks that lend themselves to a pint. Or two.
Case in point: Scotch olives ($6). Meaty green pitted olives wear a double coating of homemade Italian sausage meat (note the fennel seeds) and bread crumbs. The filling is made of cheddar, saison beer and pimiento peppers from the olives. Chili flakes lurk, waiting to pounce.
Beer: Beau’s Lugtread. The gentle sweetness of this Kolsch-style beer complement the saltiness of Bar Hop’s take on a pub classic, Scotch eggs. There’s also just enough hop bitterness to parry the heat from the chili flakes. Pairing 2 Curried tempura okra ($6) shows off the spicing and deep-frying skills of Cutrara and sous chef Tara Lee.
Okra is dusted with a heady (but secret) blend of 12 spices before battering. The accompanying chutney is like peach jam that went to India to find itself. Beer: Amsterdam Boneshaker. This bold, hoppy IPA complements the spice notes in the tempura batter and chutney. It’s also got enough carbonation to cut through the richness found in anything deep fried. Pairing 3 Marinated mussels ($6) are a frequent special. The plump specimens from Salt Spring Island, B.C., some the size of a baby’s fist, aren’t so much pickled as hugged by olive oil, shallots, smoked paprika, orange zest and sherry vinegar.
The mussels are first steamed in beer, a kitchen staple. Cutrara also makes his own malt vinegar from excess draft beer.
Beer: Nickel Brook Uber. No, not the taxi-replacement. This Uber is a lightly tart, citrusy Berlin-style wheat beer. The lemony notes in the brew add an extra brightness to the mussels. The mussel marinade, meanwhile isn’t overwhelmingly tart, so it doesn’t overpower the brew. Pairing 4 The big-ticket items are main courses meant for sharing. Pig’s head nachos won’t be for everyone but a whole roast chicken ($29), chopped in the kitchen, is nicely done with judicious salting and a piri-piri rub redolent of cardamom.
The chicken is served with al dente brussels sprouts, homemade potato chips and two sauces. Skip the one they say is like Swiss Chalet. It’s not. But the Trinidadian-style yellow sauce with more bite than a litter of Rottweilers? Now that’s the ticket.
Beer: Northwinds Moonlit Wit. This Belgian-style wheat beer from Collingwood’s Northwinds uses coriander seed and bitter orange peel, both of which complement the spice rub used on the chicken. It’s also flavourful enough to stand up to the Trinidadian hot sauce, and has enough carbonation to cleanse the palate from the sludgy “Swiss Chalet” sauce. Pairing 5 Desserts at Bar Hop Brewco are recited, not written.
The classic coffee-and-doughnut combination is done here as a warm buttermilk cake ring glazed with apple cider ($4). It couldn’t be homier.
Beer: The coffee is right in the beer, in the form of the decadent, powerful and slightly sweet Imperial Vanilla Bean Espresso Stout from Etobicoke’s Great Lakes Brewing.