Troy Beer Garden changes but stays true to its name
A menu of fresh items, old favorites and a solid burger-and-beer deal for $18
Beer is back in the Troy Beer Garden, with 20 craft beers on tap, including New York brews C.H. Evans Kick Ass Brown Ale (Albany), Captain Lawrence Marzen (Westchester County) and a fascinating, floral Secret Dumpling Spot rice beer brewed with oolong tea from Long Island. But it’s an $18 build-ityour-way burger-and-beer deal that should grab your attention for its fair price and generous proportions. A jumble of excellent hand-cut shoestring fries joins a tasty 8-ounce Black Angus burger served pink-middled on a glossy brioche roll, with crisp, fresh lettuce, onion and tomato, and, in my guest’s case, sauteed mushrooms and onions for a dollar more. It’s available only on Tuesdays.
If the cocktail menu and the leafy, plant-heavy environment, maintained by an on-staff gardener, appears unchanged, a few differences are clear: Gone are the low-slung velvet couches and QR codes, replaced by wooden tables and chairs with tableside service, plus a new half wall dividing the dining room from the bar. And where the old Troy Beer Garden felt like a downtown outpost of former owner Matt Baumgartner’s lush June Farms, with bright young things lounging with cocktails in hand, the new version is less glam, more old school, reinforced by burgers, wings and a ‘70s playlist spanning Marvin Gaye, Rick James and KC and the Sunshine Band. Still stunning, it’s a beer garden in tropical oasis clothes.
But no complaints here. The new owners are veteran restaurateurs Mickey Blanchfield and Amy Conway, who, respectively, owned Beff ’s pubs in Delmar and Albany, and Conway’s on Yates in Albany. With Blanchfield, or his one sous chef, on the kitchen pans, you can expect consistent gastropub fare; Conway’s restraining hand keeps the kitchen just far enough from pub food that you might choose the Utica-born chicken riggies instead of taking the burger-nbeer deal. Some still expect peanuts on the floor like former sibling Wolff ’s Biergarten in Albany’s warehouse district, while others are mad they’ve canceled the vegan menu, but those who go now can expect hearty bean and bacon soup and Beff ’s Original Chicken Toes, in which white meat chicken gets the fish-fry treatment in blistered, deep golden beer batter, served with honey-mustard sauce. Look for their grilled haddock Reuben or salmon BLT, which pick up on handheld classics while delivering higher quality gastropub fare.
Those lamenting the demise of the all-vegan menu can still order battered General Tso’s cauliflower and Impossible burgers, or custom build a pizza with vegan mozzarella and gluten-free cauliflower base. But we’re smitten with the char and chewy, blistered base of their personal pizzas. Blanchfield installed two Comstock-Castle pizza ovens, and Prinzo’s Bakery in Albany still makes his proprietary dough, as it did for Beff ’s. Ours, topped with sliced pear, arugula, chevre and slightly thick-cut prosciutto, is squiggled with balsamic reduction which we mop up with torn crust.
The clutch of salads can be topped with salmon, chicken, steak or shrimp — a smart move when the classic Caesar, redwine-poached pear and walnut or chopped salad are all priced around $15. If a roasted beet and goat cheese salad feels like the signature dish of the late ‘90s, it’s still excellently done, with crisp lettuce, cranberries, a bright poppy-seed dressing and our addition of a seasoned, gently cooked salmon filet. The salmon is pricey at $9, bumping the cost to $24, but I’d order it again. This wouldn’t be TBG without cocktails, and the current list boasts some gems. I’ve grumbled in the past about excessive sweetness under the previous regime, but it didn’t show up in a smooth Deciduous Old Fashioned with birch liqueur and Cointreau, or the curiously refreshing Elder Tonic — a G&T with elderflower tonic, raspberry, lime and notes of bitter citrus peel. On a separate visit, the gin-based Woodland Forager with Allspice liqueur and creme de cassis-maple-figpecan syrup went a step too far, but those who like cocktails on the sweeter side should take note.
Our only objections were really about personal comfort: Unlike the glorious streetside covered patio in summer, in winter the seats by the wraparound storefront windows are chilly, and with cushions tied to about one in four dining chairs, the hard seats soon numbed butts. Still, it’s an easy fix.
Given the closure of Peck’s Arcade and Plumb Oyster Bar, I’d heard professed hopes that the new Troy Beer Garden would fill the gap and run with its stunning good looks to deliver higher-end, eclectic plates, maybe with a sharing menu to give Sea Smoke Waterfront Grill a run for its money without formal courses. Instead, in this high-cost, short-staffed market, Troy Beer Garden is probably positioned where it needs to be, between Brown’s Brewing and Donna’s Italian.
Before changing hands it had become a reliable meeting place for drinks and maybe a vegan snack, but it was not a serious contender for dinner. With craft burgers typically pricing around $16 by themselves at local breweries, Troy Beer Garden’s burger-n-beer combo could be an after-work pit stop or dine-in date night at less than $50 for two. Throw in the welcome re-opening of the chic upstairs Berlin Lounge on Friday and Saturday nights, with a shorter menu and occasional ticketed events midweek, and it certainly seems the Troy Beer Garden has found its niche.